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 THE COMPREHEI^SIVE 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND; 
 
 CIVIL AND MILITARY, 
 RELIGIOUS, INTELLECTUAL, AND SOCIAL, 
 
 PROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO 
 
 THE SUPPRESSION OF THE SEPOY REVOLT. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES MACFARLANE, ax» the Rev. THOMAS THOMSON, 
 
 Al'THOR OF "ouft INDIAN EAIPIRE," "TRAVELS IN AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF SCOTLAND," SUPPLEMENT TO 
 
 TURKEY," ETC., ETC. "LIYE3 OF EMINENT SCOTSMEN," ETC., ETC. 
 
 THE WHOLE REVISED AND EDITED BY THE REV. THOMAS THOMSON. 
 ILLUSTRATED BY ABOVE ELEVEN HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 The liistoiy of a country is not exclusively impressed upon its battle-fields. These, indeed, 
 are the great landmark.s that first arrest the eye, and over which the popular feeling is most 
 delighted to linger. The deliverance of a land from thraldom, and the heroic deeds through 
 whicli a small nation lias become a great one, are, certainly, of paramount importance, and 
 should therefore be duly commemorated. But the adaptation of a people for these achieve- 
 ments, although a silent and unobtrusive, has also been a most essential process ; and its 
 record is to be traced, not upon the heaving surface, but in that under-current of progress by 
 which the people liave been borne forward — by which they have been taught the full value 
 of national freedom, and the best modes of securing it. But here some one else than the 
 successful soldier has been at work, and something else than mere military training. The 
 wise and the good, who carried on that improvement, and made each generation better than 
 the preceding, are a country's veritable heroes; — the progi'ess of that improvement is its 
 I'eal history. 
 
 But while these arc truths so obvious that it seems almost impossible to overlook them, 
 history, as it has hitherto been written, has been too exclusively devoted to military achieve- 
 ments and political movements, without reference to that moral and intellectual progress by 
 which a country emerges from barbarism into civilization, and its people become intelligent, 
 happy, and free. This defect in historical writing has often been felt, and, on two occasions, 
 attempts have been made to produce histories of our own country as they ought to be written. 
 The first of these was Dr. Henry's well-known voluminous but unfinished work ; the other 
 the Pictorial Hisiori/ of England, which was an improvement on the plan of Henry. In the 
 present Work an attempt has been made to improve upon both : and the piau which has 
 been followed for that pui'pose we shall now proceed to specifv.
 
 In tlie CoMrREHENsiVK History op England, wliile due preponderance has been allowed 
 to the Civil and Military annals, constituting, as they do, the most distinct and important 
 part of the narr.itive, special attention liixs boon given to present a History of the People op 
 England, as well as of England itself — of the state of Religion and the progress of Social 
 Refinement, as well as of Conquest and Political Aggrandizement. More particularly, the 
 following subjects have been grouped together in two sections, and suitably detailed at each 
 important period or epoch of the History. The first of these treats of the State of Religion ; 
 the second embraces the Industrial Condition of the People and their Agricultural and Mer- 
 cantile Progress — the Dress, Distinctive Habits and Customs, and the General Aspect of 
 Society at each step of ti-ansition — the Progress of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts; 
 and notices of those individuals by whose unobtrusive labours the several departments of 
 Art, Science, and Literature were improved, and their influence extended over the com- 
 munity at large. 
 
 In treating of these subjects, care has been taken neither to be too abstruse nor yet too 
 prolix. Instead, therefore, of entering into a minute record of each custom, art, and science, 
 and thus encumbering the general narrative with disquisitions by which the reader's patience 
 might be too severely tried, the principal points have been selected and introduced, for the 
 purpose of giving strength, distinctness, and continuity to the History, as a Record of the 
 Religious, Intellectual, and Social Progress of English Society. 
 
 The Civil and Military section is an abridgment from the Pictorial History of England, 
 by the author of that section, Charles Macfarlane, Esq., and was abridged in order to adajst 
 the Work to the popular taste, as well as means of purchase; this portion has undergone a 
 careful revision by the Editor of the Comprehensive History, in the course of which many 
 emendations have been introduced. Of the chapters on Religion, some are abridged from 
 the Flclorial History with important alterations, while others are specially written for this 
 Work. Besides adding the chapters on the History of Society, above adverted to, and the 
 chapters on Pieligion just noticed, the Editor has brought down the History from the year 
 184o to the Suppression of the Sepoy Revolt. Numerous Illustrative Notes have been 
 appended from the works of Bruce, Giles, Turner, Palgi'ave, Kemble, Lappenberg, Pauli, 
 Hallam, Guizot, Carlyle, Macaulay, Bancroft, and other eminent historical writers. With 
 these alterations and extensive additions, the Comprehensive History op England forms 
 essentially a new production. 
 
 The ILLUSTRATIVE ENGRAVINGS, above Eleven Hundred in numher, have been 
 carefully prepared, with a view to the real elucidation of the History, and not simply to 
 decorate its pages; though while aiming chiefly at the former, the latter result has not been 
 overlooked. They comprise examples of the interesting Relics of periods long antei'ior to any 
 written record of the country — Illustrations of the Dwellings, the Shipping, the Armour, 
 Dress, Manners and Customs, and Utensils of our Ancestors at various periods; Views of 
 Historical Sites, Buildings, and Monuments; Maps and Plans of Battles, Battle-fields, 
 Forts, Towns, (fee. ; Portraits and Statues of Illustrious Persons; and also Engravings on 
 Steel, consisting of a Frontispiece and Vignette Title to each volume, representing important 
 Historical Incidents, and views of some remarkable localities. 
 
 With these explanations, the Publishers trust that they have succeeded in presenting a 
 more interesting and Complete GENERAL and FAMILY HISTORY OP ENGLAND 
 than has yet been attempted. 
 
 *.u* The Work is completed in 3G Parts, 2s. each, forming four handsome Volumes, 
 Euper-royal 8vo.
 
 TESTIMONIALS. 
 
 From the Kev. John M. Charlton, M.A., President of 
 tlm }\''esteni College, Fhjmoutk, 
 
 T HAVE read Avith much interest considerable portions 
 of Messrs. Blackie tS: Son's CoMrKEHENSiVE Histuiiy 
 OP England, and juds'"S from wliat I have seen, I feel 
 myself warranted to speak of it in very high terms, it 
 is really what ita title professes — comprehensive. AVIiile 
 the materials are presented in a style which cannot but 
 liold the attention of the reader, and while party ques- 
 tions are discussed on the whole with much impartiality 
 and fairness, information is largely afforded respecting 
 the manners and customs of Society, and the progress of 
 civilization, in the different periods of timctlirough whicli 
 the History extends. It is impossible, perliaps, to name a 
 work on English History so exactly adapted, as this is, 
 to the wants of the more intelligent class of young men, 
 to whom the beautiful engravings, with which it is pro- 
 fusely illustrated, will invest it with an additional charm. 
 
 JOHN M. CHARLTON, M.A. 
 
 January, 1860. 
 
 From tJie Rev. P. Holmes, D.D., F.R.A.S., Tfcad Mas- 
 ter of the Mannamead School, Pbjmotdh. 
 
 I HAVE great pleasure in expressing a liighly favour- 
 able opinion of the CoMruEHENaivE History of Eno- 
 LAND. now issuing from the press of Messrs. Blackie «& 
 Son, Glasgow. I have examined the first three Volumes 
 with some attention, and I hardly know whom more to 
 commend — the Author or the Publishers; they have vied 
 with one another in producing a work worthy of the sub- 
 ject. The Author, in addition to the merit of a clear 
 and agreeable style, has adopted that very intelligent 
 mode of treating our History, which is well carried out 
 ill the well-known Pictorial Sistor;/ of Fug hi ml, wherein 
 the reader has a record of the nation's progress in its 
 civil, social, political, and religious aspects; -while the 
 Publishers have, in a most liberal degree, contributed 
 not only beautiful print and excellent paper, but the best 
 
 resources of pictorial art — events, costumes, places. &c., 
 being admirahly illustrated in a rich treasure of well-exe. 
 
 cuted btetl and wood engravings. 
 
 PETER HOLMES, D.D , F.K.A.S. 
 
 March 27th, ISGO. 
 
 From KonERT Ross, Esq., Lecturer on English Tlistoi-y at 
 St. Mar}fs Hall and the Training College, Cheltenham. 
 
 I HAVE read carefully the more important parts of the 
 iSuxon History, testing llio narrative as I went along by 
 the iiglit of our best modern writers on that period, and 
 have satisfied myself that your CoMi-JtEMENsivE JIisxoRY 
 OP England may be recommended as very superior to 
 anything yet offered to the public ■within the same limits 
 and at tlie same price. 
 
 The Chapter on the History of Saxon Society is ex- 
 cellent; the Annotations are extensive and judiciously 
 made, from late and good authorities. 
 
 More fully to test your Comprehensive History of 
 England, I have gauged it along with the Histories of 
 Hume and Lingard, and obtained the following result. 
 Taking at a venture one of the more important reigns in 
 the Middle Age period, I find, in respect to mere quan- 
 tity, the three Histories stand thus: — 
 
 liLACKiE's Comprehensive History, . 3-i 
 Hume's History, .... 31 
 Lingard's History, . . , .30 
 
 And in respect to leading facts, or classes of facts ; — 
 
 Comprehensive History, . . .103 
 Lingard's History, . . . .75 
 
 Hume's History, . . . . G8 
 
 These results do not include any part of the Sections 
 on Religious and Social History. 
 
 Not the least important feature is the number of neat 
 district Maps and Pictorial Illustrations, the latter of 
 which, in nearly every case, serve the purpose of vivify- 
 ing the Text, which is the true function of illustrations 
 in works of instruction. 
 
 ROBERT ROSS. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 Tlie Globe. — "The arrangement is clear and judi- 
 cious, the style graphic and vivid, the narrative resem- 
 bling the hard outlined established histories only as a 
 living breathing form resembles the skeleton it covers. 
 When completed, the volumes promise to form a Work 
 as useful to the student as agreeable to the reader." 
 
 Court Circular. — "-It deserves the encouragement 
 both of the press and the public. Absence of prejudice 
 and thorough intelligence of the characteristics of the 
 periods pre-eminently distinguish the publication. It 
 will rise, therefore, and deservedly, to as high a reputation 
 for its ability as a work of intellect, as it will achieve 
 extensive popularity for its marvellous combination of 
 embellishment, research, and economy." 
 
 Economist. — " The illustrations arc well chosen and 
 cleverly exccuteil, and the Work altogether promises to 
 be a valuable addition to tlie 'Family library.' " 
 
 News of the World.— "The illustrations of the 
 text are supplied with a judgment that takes account 
 of what readers are likely to require, and rejects the 
 trivial and uninteresting. Altogetlier, an illustrated idea 
 of the varied times and manners is conveyed in this ele- 
 
 gant publication, whicli will secure the admiration of 
 
 all classes of the people We should say that this 
 
 is likely to be one of the most popular versions of our 
 national history." 
 
 Educational Times. — "Wc have much pleasure 
 in directing the attention of our readers to tlie Compre- 
 hensive History of Exr.LANn. It is styled 'compre- 
 hensive,' because it considers tlie history of Old England 
 under^t'c aspects, characterized as civil, militarily religions, 
 intellectual, and social. It is plain that men's attention 
 is only just now beginning to consider the importance of 
 socirt/ questions as inseparable from a nation's happiness." 
 
 Wesleyan Times. — "Stricter attention is be- 
 stowed oil tho moral and intellectual progress of the 
 nation than by any previous historian, not excepting Dr. 
 Henry, or even tlie writers of the Pictorial ili^tunj of 
 Eiighiiid.'^ 
 
 The Patriot, — " The Work is written with accu- 
 racy; it is liberal in its tone, and the religious portion 
 of it is treated in a thoughtful and reverent spirit. It 
 is a Work which, when completed, wc ehall be glad to 
 place in the hands of our children." 
 
 2000040
 
 Th,e ]Sra. — '* The illustrations are numerous and 
 v:\rii'ii, ami nevt-r before did history come before us so 
 stronj;ly as real life. In its usual div form it consisto of 
 little but the quarrels and wars of kiii;;s, mid tlie misfor- 
 tunes of the threat aud pood. Combined with these 
 jiaiiiful details, we Iiave now the social and relipnuM life 
 of the period placed ck'Jirly belore us, end we can believe 
 at last ia the flesh and blood life of our lon^-departed 
 ancestors. We commend this deli;.,'htful serial to the 
 public, confidently believing that no one wlio purchases 
 it will be disai>pointed in the result." 
 
 Jolm Bull. — " We regard this publication as by far 
 the must beautiful, cheap, and really 'comprehensive' 
 history of the n:itiun which has ever yet appeared." 
 
 Civil Service Gazette. — " An admirable re- 
 cord, not only of military and political events, but of 
 moral and intelleetual prop-ess, thus eomprisinf,^ in fact, 
 a real History of Kngland. . . . Of the illustrative 
 enj^raviugs it is impossible to speak too highly. They 
 are exceedingly numerous, and, for the most part, sueh 
 as really elucidate the narrative, aud are not merely de- 
 coiative of the hook." 
 
 Britisll Standard. — " The spirit which pervades 
 the narrative is enlightened and liberal, while the judg- 
 ment which guides it is sound and vigorous. Society 
 is viewed on all sides, and its interior penetrated by an 
 astute and sagacious intellect, as far perhaps as it is 
 possible. The History when finished will do credit to 
 the age, afid be incomparably the best history of Eng- 
 land, of its class, in our language. To say all in one 
 word, the CoMPREirEXSiVE Histoky of England is 
 worthy of the Imperial Gazi'tfeer, the Imjyenal Atlas, and 
 the Imperial Dictioiiary^ by the same publishers; and it 
 is impossible to give it higher praise." 
 
 Morning Herald. — ""W'e can unhesitatingly de- 
 clare that this history is without a rival, for accuracy 
 of statement, comprehensiveness of matter, soundness 
 of philosophy, elevation of religious and moral senti- 
 ment, and elegance of diction. "We have been through- 
 out the perusal charmed by the easy elegance of the style 
 — the very acme of historical narrative. AVe do not 
 know any work deserving the name of history that 
 carries such a charm in the musical cadence of its sen- 
 tences. This ought emphaticiilly to he entitled the 
 * Family History of England.'" 
 
 The Era [second ?wticc), — " Tliis admirable work 
 has now extended to the reign of Edward VI. with un- 
 diminished vigour and value. It is comprehensive in 
 the real sense of that term, embracing every point of the 
 national character, as developed through centuries of 
 progress in arts and arms, in religion, intellect, and 
 social habits; and we feel sure that a popular dispersion 
 of this history will greatly tend to a general apprecia- 
 tion of the glories and grandtjur of Old England." 
 
 The Freeman. — " Those who are acquainted 
 with their [Messrs. Blackie's] admirable Imperial Dic- 
 tionary will scarcely need any recommendation of ours 
 to become possessed of this Work also. It is in truth a 
 most excellent, and in its way, incomparable history. 
 As in the Imperial Dictionarij, the illustrations form a 
 epecial and peculiar feature, unrivalled in any similar 
 publication. They are just what is wanted, nothing 
 superfluous, nothing lacking. We tliink ourselves jus- 
 tified in expecting that the CoMruEHENSiVE History or 
 England will be as nearly perfect as such a work can be." j 
 
 Aberdeen Free Press, — "The Work is one 
 of permanent interest and value; a Work, indeed, that, 
 after a pretty leisurely examination, we have no hesi- 
 tati(tn in pronouncing to he of a character that must 
 at once connnend it to all who wish to learn, not only of 
 how our forefathers quarrelled and fought, and killed 
 each other, but of huw tliey lived, and thought, and 
 acted in their daily life." 
 
 Clerical Journal. — " All the advantages of the 
 Pirtorial Jlistori/ of Eiujlaml are jiossessed by th:it 
 before us, with those improvements and additions which 
 the lapse of twenty years has suggested," 
 
 Eastern Counties Herald. — " The narrative 
 is very clear and forcible, yet it has a notable fulness 
 withal, which somehow or other makes the historical 
 narrative as it were a series of real tableaux vivana. 
 The illustrations of castles and historic scenes are also 
 delightful little episodes in the march of the history." 
 
 Brighton Gazette. — '* We admire the arrange- 
 ment of the History. It is not a mere narrative of the 
 battles and great occurrences which have ever been re- 
 garded as the landmarks of history, but it also traces 
 through all tlieir phases of development, the moral, in- 
 telleetual, social, and spiritual progress of the people, in 
 their development from a condition of barbarism to the 
 refinements of civilized life." 
 
 Glasgow Herald. — "The author writes in a 
 plain and perspicuous style, carrying us pleasantly down 
 the current of history, instructing us as he goes. He 
 makes judicious use of ample materials prepared to his 
 hand by former annalists and historians, and has, in 
 addition, studied with great care, and used with much 
 discernment, the state papers which have recently been 
 made accessible, and by means of which, history, as 
 hitherto read, has been illustrated and corrected in many 
 essential points." 
 
 Royal Leamington Spa Courier. — " In a 
 
 word, tlie publication, when completed, will form a his- 
 tory of our native laml, which, in point of the extent 
 and richness of its illustrations — the superiority and 
 fidelity of its text — the beauty of its exterior embel- 
 lishments — and the moderation of its cost — has never 
 been equalled by any similar work issued from the press. 
 We can therefore heartily recommend it to the favour- 
 able consideration of the public." 
 
 Liverpool Mail. — "The spirit in which it is 
 undertaken, and the yet greater spirit with which it is 
 being brought out, are significant marking points in that 
 march of intellectual progress of which we hear so much 
 but unfortunately see so little." 
 
 Pljnnouth Journal. — " Narratives of legislation, 
 battles won and lost, and persecutions inflicted and suf- 
 fered, constitute the staple intelligence of most of the 
 histories wliich the public, and especially the yoiyig, 
 have hitherto had access to. In this, we have the"^ro- 
 gress of intellectual advancement exhibited, and the im- 
 jirovement of the people, in a social aspect, displayed 
 in a measure suited to a period in which the conquests 
 of man's intellect have exceeded far and away the mighti- 
 est achievements of his physical prowess." 
 
 London "Weekly Dispatch. — " The matter is 
 admirably airanged. and tlie infoimation very compen- 
 dious. ... It bids fair to he the best history of our 
 native country for the general reader yet issued." 
 
 ELACKIE AND SON: LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND GLASGOW.
 
 I'NINO?: FFlNKy ANT) CIITRF .mSTICE (iASCOlftW,, 
 
 N. s]J»seow. "EmirmrRGH * .
 
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 1 N B ij a ^T H , &c 1, o :•; D o N .
 
 THE 
 
 COMPREHEFSIVE 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND; 
 
 CIVIL AND MILITARY, 
 
 RELIGIOUS, INTELLECTUAL, AND SOCIAL, 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST PERTOD TO 
 
 THE SUPPRESSION OF THE SEPOY REVOLT 
 
 CHARLES MACFARLANE, and the Rev. THOMAS THOMSON, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "our INDIAN EMHRE," "TRAVELS IN AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF SCOTLAND," SUPPLEMENT TO 
 
 TURKEV," ET^., ETC. "LIVES OF EMINENT SCOTSMEN," ETC., ETC. 
 
 THE WHOLE REVISED AND EDITED BY THE REV. THOMAS THOMSON. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY ABOVE ONE THOUSAND ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 DIVISION I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 BLACKIE AND SON, PATERNOSTER ROW; 
 AND GLASGOW AND EDINBURGH.
 
 GLASGOW : 
 , »I.AeKIE AND CO., 
 VlLLAFiEIJ).
 
 THE 
 
 COMPREIIENSIYE 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 ENGLAND BEFORE THE ROMAN INVASION. 
 
 Claims of the fabulous part of British history to our attention — Its commencement— Samotlies, the first sovereign 
 of Britain, and his four successors — Albion conquers the island — Marriage of liis giants with the Danaides — 
 Arrival of Brutus and tlie Trojans — Their conquest of Britain — Successors of Brutus — The reigns of Ebranc, 
 Bladiid, Lear, and Cordelia — Bremins declared lo iiave been a Briton — Laws of C,)ueen Mertia — Eoinantic his- 
 tory of King Elidure — Reigns of llely and Lud — Tliey are succeeded by Cassivellaunus — Causes of the remote 
 antiquity claimed in the fabulous history of Britain — Power of the Druids — Influence of the sovereigns — Evi- 
 dences of a su])erior race having lived among the Britons — Mercliandise of the Britons — Tlieir tin — Resort of 
 Phoenician traders to the Tin Islands — The secret of these islands carefully concealed — People of the Cassi- 
 terides— Remissness of the Britons in navigation— Their measure of civilization, as attested by buried remains 
 of weapons, tools, utensils, &c. — Account of funeral depositories and their contents — Beacon stations, Druidical 
 structures, and fortresses of the Britons— Tlieir sailing vessels— Tlieir ornaments. 
 
 N commenciug the history of a 
 country, the mythic or fabulous 
 portion of it is coramonlj' treated 
 by modern writers as a ravel- 
 led skein, wherein truth is so 
 mingled with error, as to defy 
 extrication. But in the legendary 
 records of our land, ho wever garbled 
 ' y by the allegories of early fabulists and 
 bards, and llie accidents of oral tradition, 
 we may discover traces of the origin of the 
 ' people, and tlie cliauges that operated upon 
 their habits and character up to the period at which 
 these become associated with authentic history. 
 The fabulous lustory of Britain continued to be an 
 article of faith during tlie time of the Plautage- 
 nets, and it supplied Edward 1. with arguments 
 for his aggressions upon Scotland, and the com- 
 meuceraent of the longest and most impoi-tant 
 W5^i-lare in which England was ever engaged. 
 ] t continued to be received in the Elizabethan 
 age, and was studied as veritable historic truth 
 by the brightest intellects which this country has 
 produced. Even at a still later pei;iod, also, the 
 same pen that wrote Paradise Lust did not tlis- 
 daiu to illustrate those shadowy ages in which a 
 Vol. I. 
 
 Trojan rule was established in England. With 
 these reflections we are justified in glancing at 
 those early legends upon which Milton employed 
 his learning, and from which Shakspeare himself 
 derived some of his happiest illustrations. 
 
 The collectors of these earliest traditions who 
 first adventured upon a written history of Eng- 
 land, after alluding to the people by whom Eng- 
 land was inhabited before the Deluge — and about 
 the records of whom tliey modestly profess their 
 ignorance — are contented to begin as late as 
 200 years after that memorable event. It was 
 then that Samothes or Dis, who was either the 
 fourth or the si.\th son of Japheth, planted Gaul 
 and Britain with the Celtic race, and from him 
 the island was originally called Samothea. This 
 Samothes is also alleged, npon the authority ot 
 Berosus, to liave taught his people the arts of go- 
 vernment and the use of letters. After him suc- 
 ceeded Magus, who w;is not only a learned scholar, 
 but a mighty magician ; Sarron, a founder of 
 schools and colleges ; Druis, the originator of the 
 order of Druids ; and Bardiis, the father of the 
 Bards. In this way, four great stages of imj^rove- 
 nieut are comprised within four short genera- 
 tions, and impersonated in as many names : it was,
 
 2 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 ))erliaps, a desperate attempt to comprise within a 
 brief intelligible sketch whole centuries of general 
 progress, about which no recortl existed beyond 
 (he foct that such changes had actually occurred. 
 It was necessary for the earliest writers of the 
 records of these four reigns to give them a his- 
 toric a.'speot, and, therefore, they quote Berosus 
 for their authority. But where is this record of 
 Berosiis ? It was evidently nothing better than 
 a historic forgery, in the absence of authentic 
 documents; and, while it sufficed for present in- 
 quiry, it only enveloped truth in deeper dai-kness, 
 and increased the difficulties of research. 
 
 Having thus peopled the island with a Celtic 
 race, and described those institutions by which 
 the people were distinguished, a change occurred, 
 under which the ancient name of Samothea, that 
 was first affixed to Britain, was to pass away, 
 and be superseded by that of Albion. This was 
 in consequence of an arrival of hostile strangers, 
 who landed in Britain during the reign of Bardus, 
 and became mastei-s of the island. These victo- 
 rious invaders, who have been described as giants, 
 were under the command of Albion, the son of 
 Neptune; and on winning possession of the coun- 
 try, they commemorated the valour and good for- 
 tune of their chief by giving his name to the 
 island at lai'ge. But the career of Albion was 
 brief; for Hercules, the destroyer of giants, was 
 abroad, and the gigantic sons of Neptune were 
 his especial enemies. Bergion, King of Ireland 
 and the Oi-kneys, having been assailed by this 
 formidable wanderer, Albion, his brother, has- 
 tened to his assistance ; but in an engagement 
 that followed, the two brethren fell, with the 
 greater part of their army. In this story, Her- 
 cules, instead of going forth alone with his club 
 and lion's skin, is at the head of a host, and 
 makes war in regular fashion, and with the ordi- 
 nary weapons, while the provocations that have 
 moved him are such as any ancient chief would 
 liave made the ground of a warlike euterjirise. 
 The whole narrative, indeed, is evidently nothing 
 more than that of a liostile invasion which was 
 made upon Britain at a very early period, while 
 the rude chroniclers who first reduced the report 
 to writing, invested the successful assailant with 
 the well-known classical name of Hercules, to 
 give additional interest to the story. 
 
 The success of this story of Hercules upon the 
 credulous minds of the British nobles and priests 
 of the eai'ly ages, was not lost sight of; and the 
 next arrival of strangers into the island was alle- 
 gorized in the same spirit of classical license. It 
 was the old Greek story of Danaus and his daugh- 
 ters, naturalized into the annals of England. This 
 Danaus, whom our early writers by mistake call 
 Dioclesian, King of Syria, had fifty daughters, 
 wliom as many of his nephews sought in marriage. 
 
 and that, too, at the sword's point. Com|iel!ed 
 to submit, but still resolved that his nephews 
 should not profit by his submission, he gave a 
 sword to each of his daughtera, with which she 
 was to murder her husband on the wedding 
 night. With this they all complied, except one, 
 who saved her husband, Lyncseus; and, in requital 
 of their barbarity, this young prince caused the 
 forty-nine faithless brides to be put on board a 
 ship, and set adrift to the mercy of the waves. 
 The vessel was borne by the winds to Britain, 
 and the giants, whom the death of Albion had 
 set free to follow their own devices, were so de- 
 lighted with the arrival of these congenial spirits, 
 that they took thera in marriage, and became 
 fathers of an oflspring more gigantic and tyran- 
 nical than themselves. In this way, it may be, 
 the arrival of a foreign female influence, and the 
 origin of an unpopular aristocracy iu Britain, 
 were embodied under the guise of the old Greek 
 story. 
 
 In such a fashion as this, the mythic history 
 of England is carried onward through the earliest 
 periods of antiquity to the era of the Trojan war. 
 It is well known how eagerly this event was laid 
 hold of Ijy the Roman poets and historians, to ag- 
 grandize the origin of their countrymen, as well 
 as that of their noblest families. But in spite of 
 these fables, by which historic truth was so much 
 obscured, we also know how greatly a Pelasgic, 
 if not a Trojan ancestry belonged to the founders 
 of Rome. The idea of such an honoured deriva- 
 tion was not confined exclusively to the Romans; 
 the Britains also claimed a similar paternity, and 
 Geofirey of Monmouth, who was its chief recorder 
 and advocate, continued to be copied by his suc- 
 cessors until the beginning of the seventeentli 
 century. It was only then that they dismissed 
 it indignantly as a pious fraud, without inquiring 
 as to what particles of truth it may have con- 
 tained, or even what important change or era iu 
 our ancient history it may have obscurely sym- 
 bolized. 
 
 The commencement of the strange story, by 
 which a Trojan ancestry is secured for the an- 
 cient Britons, is thus told by Giovani Villani, a 
 Florentine, in his Universal History, as quoted by 
 Holinshed : " Sylvius, the son of yEneas by his 
 wife Lavinia, fell iu love with a niece of his 
 mother, the same Lavinia; and by her he had a 
 son, of whom she died iu travail, and therefore 
 he was called Brutus; who after, as he grew in 
 some stature, and hunting in a fore.st, slew his 
 father at unawares; and thereupon, for fear of his 
 grandfather, Sylvius Posthumus, he fled the coun- 
 try, and with a retinue of such as followed him, 
 passing tlirough diverse seas, at length he arrived 
 iu the isle of Biitain." 
 
 Such is the earlier portion of the tale, embel-
 
 BEFORE THE ROMAN INVASION. 
 
 lished with many a strange pireumstance, partly 
 of tlie classical, and partly of the chivalrous agea. 
 On arriving in Albion (not yet called Britain) the 
 roving Trojan had been directed in his choice by 
 a dream, in which Diana had delivered to him an 
 oracle in Greek, afterwards rendered into Latin, 
 and finally translated by Milton into English, to 
 the following effect : — 
 
 " Brutus, far to the west, in the ocean wide, 
 Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lioj; 
 Begirt it lies, where giants dwelt of old; 
 Now void, it fits thy people; thither bend 
 ITiy course — there slialt thou find a lasting seat, 
 There to thy sons another Troy shall rise; 
 And kings be bom of thee, whose dreaded might 
 ^hall awe the world, and conquer nations bold." 
 
 On landing, Brutus found the promised island 
 wasted of its ancient inhabitants; none now dwelt 
 in it except a remnant of those giants, the de- 
 scendants of the Danaides, whose ferocious rule 
 had been so sanguinary, that they are termed 
 " devils " in the ancient legends. The strangers 
 on commencing their exploration, had roused the 
 Titanic brood, who sallied out from their caves 
 and dens to give the intruders battle; but it fared 
 with them as it has done with every other people 
 who have exceeded the standard mea.sui'e of 
 humanity, for they were quickly put to the rout, 
 and cut down with ease by their puny antago- 
 nists. One of the strongest of these giants, called 
 Gogmagog, who was twelve cubits high, having 
 been preserved alive, either as a specimen or a 
 trophy, Corineus, a gallant chanipiou of the Tro- 
 jans, longed to wrestle a fall with him; but at the 
 outset was encountered with such a hug, that 
 three of his ribs were broken. Nothing daunted, 
 however, by this unpromising embrace, he heaved 
 the giant up bj* main force upon his shoulders, 
 carried him to the next high rock, and there 
 hurled him into the sea. That part of the cliffs 
 of Dover from which the unfortunate Gogmagog 
 was thus thrown, as Milton writes, "has been 
 called ever since Laugocmagog, which is to say, 
 the Giant's Leaji." To reward him for his valour, 
 Brutus bestowed upon Corineus the whole county 
 of Cornwall. These events, which are stated 
 to have taken place about the time that Eli the 
 high-priest governed Israel, betoken the monk- 
 ish origin of this part of the legend, and show how 
 its author must have thought of the occupation 
 of Canaan by the Israelites, and the destruction 
 of the gigantic race of Anak. On becoming un- 
 disputed lord of the island, Brutus erected his 
 capital city of Troia Nova, afterwards called 
 Trinovautum, and now London; parted Britain 
 among his three sons, and, after a reign of twenty- 
 four years, died in ])eace. 
 
 After Brutus succeeded a line of kings as long, 
 and withal as shadowy, perhaps, as those which 
 passed before the bewildered eye of Macbeth in 
 
 the cave of Ileealo. These different sovereigns 
 love and hate, make peace and war, build cities 
 and subdue jirovinccs, in the usual fashion of 
 ancient history, until their very names as well as 
 deeds are confounded with each other; but amidst 
 the throng, who might otherwise have passed into 
 utter oblivion, are some whom accident, strangely 
 enough, has exalted into full immortality. Of 
 these, Ebranc, the fifth King of Britain after Bru- 
 tus, was the first of British sovereigns who in- 
 vaded Franco, where he seems to have been as 
 successful as Edward III. more than 2(100 years 
 afterwaixis; he also built Mount Agned, or the 
 Castle of the Maidens, round which Edinburgh 
 was to grow in future years. The fourth in suc- 
 cession to him was Bladud, who had the singular 
 merit of discovering the medicinal virtues of the 
 hot springs of Bath, and of founding that famous 
 city, which was originally called Caerbad. The 
 end of this king, which was truly dolorous, sup- 
 plied, in future ages, an inijiortaut chapter to 
 Johnson's Rassekts. "This Bladud," says Holiu- 
 shed, "took such pleasure in artificial [jractices 
 and magic, that he taught the art throughout all 
 his realm. And to show his cunning in other 
 points, upon a presumptuous pleasure which he 
 had therein, he took U])0U him to fly in the air; 
 but he fell upon the temple of Apollo, which stood 
 in the city of Troynovant, and there was torn iu 
 jjieces, after he had ruled the Britons by the 
 space of twenty years." [Here we find a temple 
 of A])ollo iu Loudon before Rome itself was 
 founded ! ] 
 
 Bladuil was succeeded by his son Lear — and. 
 what a name to Britisli memory and British feel- 
 ing ! It seems as if King Lear had died but yes- 
 terday; and that our own eyes had seen him, first 
 as an arrogant sovereign, and unreasonable exact- 
 ing father, and afterwards as a discrowned king, 
 wandering helpless and unattended upon the 
 heath, with his white locks beaten by the tem- 
 pest, aud streaming iu the wind. The whole stoiy 
 of his dotage, in which his daughters dujied him 
 with a show of fulsome and fl:itleriiig affection, 
 and the manner iu which they stripped him of 
 the last relics of his royalty, aud cast him loose 
 into the world, were presented to Shakspeare iu 
 all the bald, dry, circumstantial narrative of the 
 legendary scroll — and with a touch he lighted its 
 letters into living fire, and made it a tale that 
 shall live for ever. According to the original 
 story, however, the old king left the land in which 
 he had no longer a hovel to shelter him, and 
 betook himself to Fi-ance, of winch his rejected 
 Cordelia was queen. Aud then it was that she 
 showed the full meaning of that sinqile reply for 
 which he had disinherited her, when she s;iid to 
 him, after her sisters had done speaking : " Father, 
 my love towards you is as my d\ity bids; what
 
 4 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 slioulil a father seek, what can a ohiKI jiromiso 
 more? Tliey wlio preteiul beyouJ this, flatter." 
 For, with the permission of her husband slie raisei 1 
 an army, passed over to Enrjland, and replaced 
 Lear upon the throne. This close is different 
 from that of Shakspeare; but heart-rending as is 
 that of the poet, it would have been the best after 
 all, compared with the sequel as it e.xists ia the 
 original history. For we are there informed, that 
 after the death of Lear, Cordelia, now a widow, 
 succeeded to the sovereignty of England, where 
 she ruled in peace, until two sons of her unnatural 
 sisters, having now grown to man's estate, con- 
 ceived themselves defrauded of their inheritance, 
 and made war against her. She was defeateil, 
 deposed, and imprisoned; "wherewith," we are 
 told, " she took such grief, being a woman of a 
 manly courage, and despairing to recover liberty, 
 there she slew herself, when she had reigned the 
 term of five years." The two victors, who were 
 the veritable children of such mothers as Goneril 
 and Regan, after having parted the island be- 
 tween them, soon quarrelled about their share of 
 the spoil, and Margan, the elder, in a battle that 
 ensued in Wales, was slain by Cuuedag, his cousin, 
 who became sole sovereign of Britain. 
 
 Wo now pass over an interval during which 
 Rome was built, reigned over by its seven kings, 
 and finally changed into a republic. We might 
 well wonder what Bi-itain could have to do with 
 such remote events ; but so it was ; for Brennus 
 and his formidable troops were not Gauls, as the 
 Roman historians have erroneously reported, but 
 true-born Britons. This Brennus, it appears, ac- 
 cording to British chroniclers, was the younger 
 son of Dunwallo Molmutius; and being discoa- 
 tented with his inheritance, which comprised the 
 whole of England north of the Ilumber, he m.ade 
 war upon his elder brother, Belinus, to obtain the 
 sovereignty of the whole realm. But being de- 
 feated, he afterwards joined his forces to those of 
 his brother, overran Gaul and part of Italy, and 
 finally ap]>roached the gates of Rome. Having 
 thus settled the most essential part of the story, 
 which was to convert the Gaulish invaders into 
 Britons, the narrative falls into the track of the 
 Roman writers, in the capture of the city and the 
 final defeat of Brennus by Caiuillus. This was 
 surely enough to console the wounded pride of 
 the Britons for the subsequent conquest of their 
 isl.and by the Romans! Tlieir countrymen had 
 been a civilized people when their proud enemies 
 had been mere barbarians ; and had entered as 
 masters the city gates of the world's metropolis, 
 and compelled it to purchase their forbearance. 
 At this point, however, Milton shows his incre- 
 dulity, and professes himself unable to reconcile 
 the different parts of the story, so that he dis- 
 misses it with this brief statement : "Thus much 
 
 is more generally believed, th.at both this Bren- 
 nus, and another famous captain, Britoniarus, 
 whom the epitomist Florus and others mention, 
 were not Gauls but Britons; the name of the first 
 in that tongue siguifying a king, and of the other, 
 a gre.at Briton." 
 
 After this feat of the sacking of Rome, we havo 
 another long arr.ay of kings, of whom the early 
 annalists had by this time begun to grow weary, 
 for their deeds are very briefly recorded. During 
 this course, also, if these early legends are to be 
 believed, Euglaud must already have been over- 
 spread with those stately cities which the Romans 
 had afterwards the credit of founding, and been 
 governed by those wise laws which are usually 
 referred to a Saxon origin. Thus the ISIereian 
 law, which has usually been attributed to Alfred 
 the Gre.at, is represented to have been actually 
 devised and formulated by Mertia, wife of King 
 Guithelin or Guiutoliii; but here Milton, who 
 admits the fiict of such an early origin of tho 
 Mercian law, while he scorns the thought of a 
 female legislator, thus gets out of the difllculty : 
 " In the minority of her son, she [Mertia] had the 
 rule, and then, as may be supposed, brought forth 
 these laws, not herself, for laws are masculine 
 births, but by the advice of her s.agest counsel- 
 lors ; and therein she might do virtuously, since 
 it befell her to sujiply the non.age of her son : else 
 nothing more awry from the law of God and 
 nature, than that a woman should give laws to 
 men." Among the kings who followed, was 
 Elidure, whose fate as a sovereign was a rarity 
 in royal annals ; for he wa.s thrice deposed, au<l 
 as often replaced on his throne. He was also a 
 very par.agon of justice and generosity, as may 
 be learned from the following romantic incident. 
 His elder brother, Archigallo, who had reigned 
 oppressively, having been disjilaced, and himself 
 advanced in his room, it happened that one day, 
 after having reigned five years, Elidure, while 
 hunting in a forest, met his deposed brother, now 
 an impoverished w.anderer, and meanly attended, 
 after he had vainly roamed about through the 
 different courts of Europe in search of aid to 
 replace him in his kingdom. The forlorn Archi- 
 g.allo w-as recognized ; but Elidure, instead of 
 sweeping such a dangerous I'ival from his p.ath, 
 as the kings of that period would have done 
 without scruple, took him privately to the city 
 Alclud, and hid him in his own bed-chamber. He 
 then feigned himself to be grievously sick ; and, 
 as if unable to endure a crowd, he summoned his 
 nobles one by one to his bedside, th.at he might 
 consult with them about the afl'airs of his king- 
 dom. The nobles singly repaired to him, and 
 then the apparently dying Elidure prevailed upon 
 them to swear allegiance to Archig.allo. Ha">'ing 
 in this w.ay obtained the consent of the whole
 
 BEFOEE THE ROMAN INVASION. 
 
 iiobility, the dying kiug quickly got well again, 
 siimmoued a council to meet liim at York, aud 
 there so handled the matter, that Archigallo was 
 received by the commons as he had been by the 
 lords; after which, Eliduro, with his own bauds, 
 placed the ro_val crown upon his brother's head, 
 aud was the first to liail him as king. Penetrated 
 to the heart's core by such a wondrous instance 
 of justice, generosity, aud brotherly lov-e, the now 
 restored wanderer became one of the best of kings, 
 and dying childless after a reign of ten years, 
 was succeeded ouce more by Elidure. 
 
 We now gladly rush to the close of this array 
 of shadows and phantoms, and hasten into the 
 dawn which begins with the period of Caesar's 
 Cassivellaunus. The father of this last-men- 
 tioned kiug was Eli or Hely, who reigned forty 
 yeai's, and the most distinguished event of whose 
 reign is thus specified by Holiushed, on tlie au- 
 thority of the old British historians: — "Marry, 
 this is uot to be forgotten, that of the aforesaid 
 Hely, the last of the said thirty-three kings, the 
 Isle of Ely took the name, because that he most 
 commonly did there inhabit, building in the same 
 a goodly palace, aud making great reparations 
 of the sluices, ditches, aud causeways aliout that 
 isle, for conveyance away of the water, that else 
 would sore have eudomaged the country." Nine- 
 teen years before the arrival of the Romans, Hely 
 ivas succeeded by his eldest son, Lud, who is 
 described in higli terms as a jolly feaster, war- 
 rior, legislator, and reformer of abuses, and also 
 a great builder, repairing many of the old towns 
 and stately edifices that had gone to decay. He 
 also enlarged the city of Troynovant, and sur- 
 rounded it with a strong wall of stone, in conse- 
 quence of which it thenceforth obtained the name 
 of Lud-town, or London. Among those ai'chiteo- 
 tural undertakings with which he aggrandized 
 the capital, are particularly meutioued Lud's 
 Gate, afterwards called Ludgate ; the palace in 
 its neighbourhood, afterwards the Bishop of Lon- 
 don's palace ; aud a temple, which subsequently 
 became St. Paul's Church. Such were but a few 
 of his many undertakings, which are recorded by 
 the old British historians with careful circum- 
 stantiality aud most praiseworthy gravity. 
 
 On the death of Lud, whose two sons were 
 still minors, Cassivellaunus, his brother, suc- 
 ceeded to the royal power. And now it is that 
 the old British annalists, feeling themselves ham- 
 pered between the Commentaries of Cajsar on 
 the one hand, and the fanciful traditions of the 
 country on the other, proceed in their course 
 with unwonted caution. On this account they 
 are unable precisely to determine whether Cassi- 
 vellaunus was raised to the throne, or merely 
 a]ipointed regent. By their statement, however, 
 his administration was so just and able that he 
 
 was worthy of the esteem of the Britons, who set 
 aside the claims of his nephow.s, and recognized 
 him as their only king. Ciussivellaunus acted a 
 generous part towards these orphans, by invest- 
 ing the elder with the sovereignty of London and 
 Kent, and the younger with that of Cornwall. 
 And hero the iSfuse of ancient British history 
 abruptly retires, like onodctected in fal.sehood, aud 
 gives pl.ace to a more crcilible witness, after hav- 
 ing fabled for the long course of lOuS years. And 
 here alsoJIilton, who had followed the narrative, 
 frequently in doubt, and sometimes in utter dis- 
 belief, thus welcomes the appi-oachiug change: — 
 "By this time, like one who had set out on Iiis 
 way by night, and travelled through a region of 
 smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives 
 on the confiues, where daylight aud truth meet 
 us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, 
 thongh at a far distance, true colours and shapes. 
 For albeit Ctcsar, whose authority we are now 
 first to follow, wanted not who ta.xed him of mis- 
 reporting in his Commentaries, yea, in his Civil 
 Wars against Pompeif, much more may we think 
 in the British affairs, of whose little skill in writ- 
 ing he did not easily hope to be contradicted; yet 
 now, in such variety of good authors, we hardly 
 can miss from one hand or other to be sufficiently 
 iufoi"med as of things passed so long ago." 
 
 In the foregoing history of Britain, which we 
 have so briefly passed over, the first thouglit that 
 strikes us is the long series of kings, whose cha- 
 racters and deeds are as confidently sketched as 
 if they had been men of yesterday ; and the ex- 
 tended ))eriod of time which they necessarily 
 occupy, stopping short only within a brief dis- 
 tance of the Deluge itself But this difficulty is 
 easily got rid of, when we remember the nature 
 of that government which prevailed among the 
 Celtic people. Among them a king was but 
 the chieftain of his own tribe, and not of the 
 nation at large; ami, therefore, sometimes not 
 less than a dozen of sovereigns might have been 
 found reigning in Bi'itain at one and the same 
 time. Nothing was more natural at a later pe- 
 riod, than to mistake these reijidi for sole kings 
 of the whole country, and to arrange their his- 
 tories into successive periods, instead of making 
 them contemporaneous. Such has been the case 
 in the early annals of many other countries 
 where this patriarchal system of government 
 ])revailed; and the great perjjlexity of antiqua- 
 ries and historians, in such instances, has been 
 occasioned by a long course of life and action, to 
 which the earliest antiquity could afford no room. 
 
 By keeping, then, the fact in mind, that our 
 island was divided into many families and septs, 
 each of which had its own rnler, several kings 
 may be comprised within a single generation, and 
 a whole century condensed into a few years. lu
 
 fi 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 tliis way, the mytliic history of Britain before 
 the Roniau invasion can be reduced, in point of 
 time, within a very reasonable compass, and the 
 wonderful achievements, stripped of their poeti- 
 cal embellishments, may become sober realities. 
 And keeping in mind the evidence of a mixed 
 population set forth by these writers, corrobo- 
 rated, moreover, by the veritable authore who 
 succeeded them, it is to be conceived that there 
 existed within the compass of the island many 
 peoples — not a community : some in a degree of 
 civilization approaching that of the nations of 
 antiquity; others, and by far the greater number, 
 in a rude and barbarous state. The Druid priest- 
 hood, indeed, who were likewise the lawgivers, by 
 their superior knowledge, as well as through the 
 superstitious deference of their votaries, main- 
 tained a community of power in all aftairs, civil 
 and religious; but in other respects we see no evi- 
 dences of that combination of classes which con- 
 stitutes a nation. In most parts of the island 
 the king or military chief of a tribe, and his prin- 
 cipal warriors, usurped the lion's share in the 
 resources of his dominion ; while the herd, the 
 tiller of the soil, and the hunter, stood in much 
 the same relation as that of an Irish kerne of the 
 fifteenth century to his feudal superior. On parts 
 of the coast, however, communities of a more 
 settled and more uniform character were held 
 together by the mutual interest of traffic, and the 
 benefits ensuing from an intercourse with stran- 
 gers from the opposite shores, as in the instance 
 of the Trinobantine mart of London, which is 
 described by Tacitus (a.d. 62) as a place most 
 renowned for the concourse of merchants, and 
 for its stores of goods. The period quoted is only 
 nineteen yeai-s after the Romans had got posses- 
 sion of South Britain, and were still struggling 
 to maintain it, and therefore not likely to have 
 had a part in the establishment of this early seat 
 of British commerce. Allowing for this, and 
 taking a broad view of the fabulous relations, 
 we may observe the gi'owth of a population fed 
 by the incursions of wandering and adventurous 
 bands, who flowed on these shores in successive 
 waves of population. Striving for a footing in 
 the land, the conquerors or colonists still brought 
 in an accession of strength or diversity of charac- 
 ter, such as, by a view of subsequent annals, we 
 observe to have been infused down to the period 
 of the Norman conquest. Hence, it may be con- 
 ceived, was derived that spirit of enterprise which 
 has obtained for the British race such a wide 
 geographical extension, and so potent a predo- 
 minance. The original colonists, a branch of 
 the Celtic family, to whom, as the descendants of 
 Japheth, were given the isles of the Gentiles, were 
 replenished by successive offshoots of the same 
 prolific stock, carrying with them such modifi- 
 
 cations of character as had been induced by the 
 influences of climate and situation, and the na- 
 ture of their resources. Hence, whatever features 
 of barbarism may appear in our first view of the 
 Britons, as they are delineated by the authen- 
 ticated writers of antiquity, these may be looked 
 upon rather as proper to a condition declined 
 from early civilization, than as the signs of a 
 primitive state. If, for instance, they were iu- 
 capable of steering their wicker, hide-covered 
 vessels any distance beyond that of a mere coast- 
 ing voyage, or, at the furthest, to the neighbouring 
 islands, they must have, then, been in a worse 
 condition than when they first efieoted a landing 
 on these shores; — and if they be found dwelling 
 in holes and caves, or in miserable huts of daub 
 and wattle, and we contrast with sucli mean 
 fiibrics the colossal and symmetrical structures 
 of Stonehenge, Avebury, and other similar monu- 
 ments, whose vast relics seem the production of 
 a race of giants and sorcerers — these must appear, 
 in such a point of view, the vestiges of a vastly 
 superior age, or the memorials of a race elevated 
 fai' above those who surrounded them. 
 
 But respecting these considerations there is 
 but slight footing even for speculation ; for the 
 few authentic authors of antiquity who tre.at of 
 the Celtic Britons, evidently do so upon very par- 
 tial information. That Britain had become the 
 seat of several tribes differing greatly in many 
 respects, and bringing with them the character- 
 istics of their race, is evident in the observations 
 of authors of the period, especially those of Taci- 
 tus, who, in his Life of Agricola, thus writes :— 
 " Now what manner of men the first inhabitants 
 of Britain were, foreignly brought in, or born in 
 the land as among a barbarous people, it is not 
 certainly known. Their complexions are differ- 
 ent, and thence may some conjectures be taken; 
 for the red hair of the dwellers in Caledonia, and 
 mighty limbs, import a German descent. The 
 coloured countenances of the Silures,' and hair 
 most commonly curled, and site against Spain, 
 seem to induce that the old Spaniards passed the 
 sea and possessed those places. The nearest to 
 Fi-ance likewise resemble the French, either be- 
 cause they retain of the race from which they de- 
 scended, or that in countries abutting together, 
 the same aspects of the heavens do yield the same 
 complexions of bodies. But, generally, it is most 
 likely the French, being the nearest, did people 
 the laud."- Diodorus Siculus, whose Bibliothecai 
 HistoriccE is considered to have been written 
 shortly after the death of Julius Caisar, places 
 the Britons somewhat on a parallel with the 
 
 ■ The inhabitants of South Wales (Deheubarth). The qualifi- 
 cation appears here to mean naturally swart or dark, and not 
 the artificial appearance produced by dyeing the skin, said to 
 have been practised by the Britons. ^ Grenewey's Trans.
 
 BEFORE THE ROMAN INVASION. 
 
 UomPilc warriors. After deacribiug the j)osition 
 ;iud beariiif^ of the island — " Further," he con- 
 tinues, "they say that its original tribes inhabit 
 Britain, in their u.sages still ]ireserving the jiri- 
 mitive modes of liio ; fur in their war they use 
 chariots, as the ancient Greek heroes are reported 
 to have done iu the Trojan war." 
 
 The people of the Cape of Cornwall are dis- 
 tinguished by the same author as " singularly 
 partial to strangers; and, from their intercourse 
 
 with foreign merchants, civilined in their habits." 
 "These people," he continues, with i-eference to 
 their tratlic, "obtain the tin by skilfully wurkiug 
 the soil which produces it. This, being rocky, 
 has eaithy interstices, in which working the ore, 
 and then fusing, they reduce to metal, and when 
 they have formed it into cubical shaiies, they con- 
 vey it to a certain island, lying olf Britain, u.-imed 
 Ictis ; for at the low tides, the intervening space 
 being laid dry, they cari-y thither in waggons 
 
 =»*fe-r: 
 
 Thk Land's End, Cuknu'all.—Ui.iwh Jioia nature .in.i on wood, by J. S. Prout. 
 
 the tin iu great abundance." But previous to 
 that era this production, so valuable before the 
 art of tempering iron was discovered, iiad at- 
 tracted the Phffinicians to our shores. A history 
 of early Britain would be incomplete without a 
 fuller notice of the subject. This trade of the 
 Phcenicians may be considered the beginning of 
 that British commerce which has outlived its 
 ancient teachers, extinguished every successive 
 i-ivalry, and secured a main ]iart of the wide 
 world's traffic, in all its niuuberless departments, 
 up to the present day. 
 
 It is now generally allowed, that what the 
 Greeks termed chalciis, although translated brass, 
 was not the metal commonly known under that 
 name. It was rather that composition of copper 
 and tin which we denominate bronze. It was 
 with this bronze that the Greeks and Pkomans 
 composed tlieir statues, and many of their im- 
 jilements and ornaments; and of this also the 
 Carthaginians, and even the early Homeric he- 
 roes, fashioned their swords and spears, as well as 
 their defensive armour. Tin was likewise used, 
 as is supposed, by the Tyrians, in i)roducing the 
 rich purple dye for whicli they were famous, and 
 was known to the Israelites, before the Babylon- 
 ish captivity, uniler the name bedil. But going 
 atill further back, we find that brass (that is, 
 
 bi-onzc) was not only an imjjortant material iu 
 the construction of Solomon's temple, but a 
 metal precious as gold, with which the Isi'aelites, 
 who must have obtained it from the Egyptians, 
 adorned their tabernacle in the wilderness. In 
 the former instance, we learn from the Sacred 
 Writings that the artificer employed by Solomon 
 in the decoration of the temple was Hiram, a 
 native of Tyre, one of the cities of the Phoeni- 
 cians, the early traders in tin. Here we trace 
 the use of bronze up to the Mosaic period, and 
 consequently of tin also, without which bronze 
 cannot be made. And where was this tin ob- 
 tained i At such early jjeriods it Wiis only to 
 be found iu two countries — Spain and Britain. 
 These were, then, the valued sources from which 
 the nations of earliest antiquity derived a metal 
 that ministered so largely to their wealth, their 
 luxury, and convenience. And these countries, 
 jierhaps, were that mysterious Tarshish, lying 
 somewhere beyond the pillars of Hercules, from 
 which such precious shijimonts returned, and 
 whose locality our biblical eommeutatoi's and able 
 hydrographers liave so long endeavoured to dis- 
 cover. 
 
 In such an important fact, it matters little 
 whether the hidden treasures of Spain or of Bri- 
 tain had tlie honour of the first discovery. It is
 
 8 
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 sufricieiit for us to know iliat 1h;it. portion of tlie 
 British territory culled the Scilly Islands was 
 known to the Carthaginians ajjes before the Chris- 
 tian era. This is pretty distinctly iutim.ated in 
 the account given to us by Festus Avienus of 
 the voyage of Ilamilco, an ancient Cartliagiuian 
 navigator. In this voyage, we are told, Ilamilco 
 reached the islands of the CEstryninides within 
 less than four months after lie had set sail from 
 Carthage, and from the description of Avienus we 
 are compelled to conclude that these CEstryuiuides 
 could be no other than our Scilly Islands. They 
 were, he tells us, in the neighbourhood of Albion 
 and of Irelaud, and within two days' sail of the 
 latter, which he terras the Sacred Island. He de- 
 scribes those islands as abounding in tin and lead, 
 and inhabited Viy a bold, active, trafficking people, 
 who, having no timber for the building of ships, 
 made adventurous voyages in boats made of hides. 
 These islands, also, he intimates, were not iirst 
 discovered by Ilamilco, but had previously been 
 visited for tralUc by the jieople of Tartessus and 
 Cartli.nge. They were afterwai-ds explored with 
 such industry, that their tin was at length ex- 
 hausted, and nothing apparently remains of it 
 except the traces of the ancient mines; but Corn- 
 vi'all was not far off as a field for fresh opera- 
 tions. It was probably this peninsula which af- 
 terwards obtained the name of Cassiteros (from 
 the Greek woi'd cassitcron, signifying tin), while 
 the Scilly Isles, described as ten in number, of 
 which only one was uninhabited, were called Cas- 
 siterides, or the Tin Iskinds. Under this name 
 tliey are mentioned by Herodotus, the father of 
 history, nearly 500 years before the Cliristian 
 era, although their geographical position he was 
 unable to discover. 
 
 The causes of this ignorance in so important a 
 matter it is not difficult to explain. In their 
 knowle<lge of these Tin Islands the Carthaginians 
 possessed a treasure which they were resolved to 
 monopolize, and hence their jjarticular locality 
 was carefully concealed from all the world, and 
 especially from their formidable and enterjirisiug 
 rivals, the Eomaus, who were anxious to leai-n 
 the secret. The latter, tlierefore, lay ou the 
 watch, and were ready to give chase, while the 
 former studied to out-manoeuvre or out-sail them. 
 At length, as we are informed by Strabo, a ship 
 of Carthage having set out on a voyage to the 
 Cassiterides for tin, the captain of a Koman gal- 
 ley, who had been appointed to observe him, 
 followed in close pursuit. The Carthaginian 
 tried e\ery expedient to elude his adversary, but 
 being closely jjressed, and finding esca])e impos- 
 sible, he ran his vessel aground, and thus sacri- 
 ficed both ship and cargo. His fidelity in thus 
 concealing the I'oute to the Tin Islands was so 
 liighly appreciated by his countrymen, that on 
 
 returning linnie he was reiiaid, to the full value 
 of his loss, out of the public treasury. 
 
 But cunning although the Carthaginians were, 
 it was impossible that such a profitable route, 
 pursued for centurie.'i, could always remain ex- 
 clusively their own. The Greek colonists of Mar- 
 seilles had turned their .attention to the subject; 
 and from their superior intelligence and nautical 
 skill, they were at length enabled to discover the 
 whereabouts of this rich terra incognita. Accor- 
 dingly we are told, that only a century after the 
 time of Herodotus, Pytheas, a Marseillais navi- 
 gator, was the first of his countrymen who pene- 
 trated into the British seas. This enterprise ap- 
 pears to have been so successfully followed, that 
 the secret of the Cassiterides was at length laid 
 open to the Roman colonies on the south coast of 
 Gaul; and thus, even before the arrival of Julius 
 Cassar, a brisk trade in tin had been carried on 
 between them and the people of the Scilly Islands 
 and Cornwall. The effects of this traffic were 
 exhibited in the superior ' comfort and civiliza- 
 tion of those parts of the British coast which the 
 strangers visited. Diodorus informs us that the 
 Britons inhabiting the Land's End (Bolerium) 
 were much more civilized than the rest of their 
 countrymen, in consequence of their traffic with 
 the foreigners. Such was also the case with the 
 natives of the Ciissiterides, although they are 
 pictured of a somewhat strange appearance, not 
 imlike that of figures upon some of the earlier 
 Etruscan vases. According to Strabo, they wore 
 comfortable dresses, and these also of cloth, while 
 most of their inland countrymen had notliing 
 but their own painted skins. He tells us that 
 they wore long black cloaks, which reached to 
 iheir ankles, and were girded about the waist ; 
 that they walked about with staves in their 
 hands, and that their long beards gave them the 
 appearance of goats. He is careful especially to 
 mention the lead and tin mines with which these 
 islands abounded, and their traffic with foreign 
 traders in these metals and skins, in return fur 
 bronze articles, earthenware, and salt. 
 
 It might be asked why Kome herself, who had 
 been so solicitous to discover these wealthy mines, 
 was afterwards contented to purchase theh- trea- 
 sures at second hand from her own tributaries? 
 But the Romans were no navigators, and cared 
 little for commerce, unless it was brought to their 
 doors; and as for wealth in general, they regarded 
 every country as their storehouse, which they 
 could empty at their own good pleasure. 'While 
 the sword could procure tin at any time, they 
 would neither condescend to sail in quest of it, 
 nor labom- in digging it ; and hence, until they 
 conquered Britain, they regarded its people as 
 " toto orbe divisos." 
 
 And why, it might also be asked, were the Bri-
 
 BEFOKE THE UOMAN INVASION. 
 
 9 
 
 tous themselves so remiss iu improving to tlie full 
 those advantages of intercourse with I'oreiguers, 
 which they had eujoj-ed for so many centuries? 
 Tliey had been visited successively by tlie most 
 enterprising and civilized of the nations, and yet 
 had leai'ued comparatively so little! It may be 
 answered that civilization had eutei-eU, but had 
 not pervaded tlie land. Even the most important, 
 and yet most obvious step in advance which the 
 Britons might have been expected to adopt — that 
 of constructing good barks for themselves, mo- 
 delled from those of the strangers, and thus carry- 
 ing on such a gainful tnide on their own account 
 — appears incomjjrehensible. This discrepancy, 
 however, is to some extent met by the statement 
 of Festus Avienus, that tlie islands frequented by 
 the Phceuician mariners did not produce wood for 
 the construction of ships. Further, the peculiar 
 genius and circumstances of the people may be 
 taken into account — the influence of superstition 
 under the rule of the Druids so similar to that 
 of the Egyptian priesthood. The ancient Egyp- 
 tians had the same commercial temptations, and 
 the ability to build ships; but it appeai-s from 
 
 Stone Celts and Arrow Hi-;.\ds. — Prawn by J. W. Atcher, 
 from examples in the British Mujseuiii. 
 
 Herodotus that they abstained, from a loathing 
 of the sea, looking ujion it as the domain of the 
 abhorred Typhon. The Britons evidently did 
 not possess those national qu.alities that are need- 
 ful for patient and enduring sailors. It was not 
 imtil the Saxon and the Dane had become settled 
 inhabitants, that the "meteor flag of England" 
 was to float in undis])uted ascendency. 
 Vol. I. , 
 
 Where tradition and history arc both insufli- 
 cient to enlighten our inquiries into the origin 
 and condition of our early jiopulation, we have 
 buried beneath the soil, .a liistory which a high 
 state of intellectual cultivation enables tlio in- 
 quirer to discover; and to read in obscure caverns 
 —the places of sepulture — a lesson on the condi- 
 tion of those eai-ly tribes, whose record we might 
 otherwise have abandoned in despair. 
 
 In the endeavour to comprehend the bearing 
 of those vestiges upon our pre-historic era, a 
 ehissification has been adojitcd, by which the im- 
 plements, weapons, &c., found in baiTows and 
 excavations, are arranged under the Stone, the 
 Bronze, and the Iron periods. This formula, how- 
 ever convenient, is not foundeil upon such sufli- 
 cieut authority tlict it can be adojited as an ar- 
 bitrary rule, and instead of jieriuds, it is more 
 prudent to say conditions; for, with regard to the 
 use of the materials of bronze and stone, it is pro- 
 bable that the one appertained to the great, and 
 the other to the lowly, in the same way that the 
 rich man of the present day eats his fish with a 
 silver fork, and the poor man with an implement 
 of Sheffield hardware. In ad- 
 verting to the stone condition of 
 the Celtic Britons, we find a 
 great variety of weapons and 
 implements, along with the 
 buried remains, aa the things 
 moat valued by the departed, or 
 adapted to his u.se in a future state. Among 
 these the stone hammer appears in a variety of 
 form.=i, from that of a i-ude stone to those in 
 which it has been f:ishioued into a shapc^ly and 
 convenient instrument, such as is represented 
 in the accompanying cut, No. 8. In Nos. 1, 2, 
 3, we see implements in their original handles 
 of deer's horn, one a rude fl.-ike of flint the other 
 two chisel -shaped, and suitable for flaying the 
 carcasses of animals, &c. No. 4 is a large flake of 
 flint, found in a tumulus at Alfrlston, in Sussex, 
 which has been chipped into an imperfect sha))e. 
 Nos. 6 and C are composed of a hard greenish 
 flint, symmetrically formed and finely polished, 
 but of a shape unsuitcd ior handles. In No. 
 we observe a stone with a flexur<i in the siiles, by 
 which it could bo held by a pliable handle bent 
 round it, and tied at the junction, like No. 1 1, a 
 stone hammer used b}' the natives of Northern 
 Australia. In No. 7 tlie stone imi)lement is 
 jierforated for the insertion of a handle, like 
 No. 10, a stone hammer froin Western Australia, 
 in which a wooden handle is inserted, and fui-- 
 ther secured by a cement of native gum; but in 
 No. 8 the sides of the stone are scooped as well 
 as ])ierced, for the purpo-se of binding the handle 
 with thongs or oziei's. There are likewise found 
 a variety of javelin head.'!, Nos. 12, 13, 16, and
 
 10 
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 nnow lifads, Nos. 14, 15, 17, 18, of (lint, for w;ir 
 or the chase, nnd which, iu dexterous li:mds, may 
 have served to knock down the deer or beaver, 
 but are scarcely of suflicient deadliness for the 
 capture of the urus or inounlain bull, or the wolf 
 and boar of the great British forests. Nos. 19 
 and 20 are the flint pile and knock of a Pata- 
 gouian arrow, the former showing the manner in 
 which the pile is bound to the shaft with veget- 
 able fibre, probably resembling the mode of at- 
 tachment employed by the ancient Britons. In 
 the British tumuli are likewise found flint knives 
 and daggers, and weapons of bone and horn. 
 Of this description were the lances or harpoons 
 which have been found alongside the relics of 
 stranded whales, pins and bodkins of bone and 
 wood, with a variety of oi-naraeuts, such as beads, 
 bits of amber, &e.; the drinking cup of the de- 
 parted Briton; and, where cremation has been 
 jjractised, the funeral urn, containing the ashes 
 of the deceased, wrapped in a linen cloth, and 
 secured by a ])in of bone, wood, or bronze. 
 Articles of bronze found in British barrows 
 
 seven and a half of copper.' Among these are 
 found a variety of the hatchet-shaped instruments 
 commonly denominated celts. In tlie accompany- 
 ing cut is represented a selection of those instru- 
 ments, some of which are speculatively adapted 
 to handles, together with the representation of 
 an Assvrian sap]ier and miner employed in re- 
 ducing the wall of a beleaguered city by means of 
 an instrument precisely similar to the British celt, 
 No. 1, ■nhich is shaped for the longitudinal inser- 
 tion of a handle. Moulds for casting these im- 
 plements, as well as swords and spear heads, have 
 
 .^ 
 
 V„^^^ 
 
 MoDLD FOR Castino Cfl.Ts AKD RiNOs, found Hear Walliiigton, 
 Noi-lliuiiibtTlaud, now in tlie ijritish Museum. 
 
 been found both iu Britain and Ireland— in some 
 instances together with lumps of metal .ind quan- 
 tities of cinders —and hence it is concluded that 
 the Britons were in the practice of casting their 
 own tools and weapons. 
 
 Of the funeral depositories in which these arti- 
 cles are discovered, the stone cist appears to have 
 been the earliest. This is made evident, by the 
 series of subsequent interments in the mounds 
 
 Bronze Celts.— Drawi: by J. T>'. Archer, from esamples in 
 the British Museum.- 1, Brome Celt; 2, 3, 6, 7, Bronze Celts 
 with handles speculatively adapted ; 4,5, Ditto, ^ .irious ; 
 8, Figure using Celt, from Niniroud Sculptures. 
 
 have been subjected to analysis, and found to con- 
 tain, in the instance of a spear head, one part of 
 tin to six parts of copper; in a,u axe head, one of 
 tin to ten of copper; aud in a knife, one of tin to 
 
 Cist containino a Skeleton.— From the Aichajologia. 
 
 beneath which the cist is found. The accompany- 
 ing cut represents a cist found under such an ac- 
 
 1 Meyric's Original InhabUants, and Phil. Trails, for 1796
 
 BEFORE THE ROMAN INVASION. 
 
 11 
 
 cumulaliou, near Driffiekl, in the East Riding of 
 Yorkshire. This rude sarcophagus was reached 
 after the removal of the remains of superincum- 
 bent interments. It was found sunk in the ground, 
 till the upperedges of the sides, which were formed 
 of four slabs of sandstone, came on a level with 
 the natural surface, and was paved witli small 
 irregular pieces of the same kind of stone. Tlie 
 dimensions were, on the north side three feet nine 
 inches, on the south four feet two inches, on the 
 east two feet five inches, and on the west two 
 feet eleven inches. It was two feet six inches in 
 depth. On the floor lay a skeleton of large size, 
 the thigh bones measuring nineteen inches. It 
 was placed, as is common in cist burial, with 
 the knees drawn up, and lying on the left side, 
 the arms bent, and the palms of the hands to- 
 gether ; the bones of the right arm were laid in 
 a very singular and beautiful armlet. No. 4, made 
 of some large animal's bone, about six inches long, 
 and the extremities (which were a little broader 
 than the middle), neatly squared. In this were 
 two perforations, about half an inch from each 
 end, through which were bronze pins or rivets, 
 with gold heads, most probably to attacli it to a 
 piece of leather, which had passed round the arm, 
 and been fastened by a small bronze buckle, that 
 was found underneath the bones. Immediately 
 behind the vertebraj, as if it had fallen fi-om the 
 waist, was a small bronze dagger in a wooden 
 sheath, having a handle of the same, No. 2; round 
 the neck were three large amber beads of conical 
 form, No. 1, having the under side flat, and which 
 were pierced by two holes, running upwards in a 
 slanting direction, until they met at the centre. 
 At the lower end of the vault, between the extre- 
 mity of the spine and the feet, was a highly orna- 
 mented drinking cup, No. 5, completely covered 
 with rows of marks and indentations, each row 
 being divided by ridges or bands. About the 
 centre of the pavement, in front of the body, was 
 the upper part of a hawk's head and beak, No. 3. 
 A mass of what seemed to be linen cloth lay under 
 the entire length of the skeleton.' In some in- 
 stances it is observed that bodies were inclosed 
 in wooden coffins, composed of planks rivetted to- 
 gether with bronze, or of a length cut from the 
 stem of a tree, and hollowed out for their recep- 
 tion. In the soutliern parts of tlie country the 
 burial repositories are barrows or tumuli; in the 
 north, piled-up heaps of stones, called caii-ns. 
 The former are mounds of a diversity of shapes, 
 some extending to the great length of 400 feet. 
 On being opened some of these large tumuli were 
 found to contain but few bones, and are supposed 
 to have been dedicated to great chiefs; others are 
 conical or bell-shaped, which latter, fi-om contain- 
 
 * Arcluxologia, vol. xxxiv. 
 
 ing trinkets and articles of female use, are taken 
 to have been appropriated to women of high rank. 
 
 Trinkets and Articles of the Toilet, fruiDd in Koi-rowa on 
 tlie Wiltshire Downs. — From Hoaies Ancient Wiltshire. — 
 Nos. I, 2, Pins; 3, 4, Gold Ear-rings; 5, 6, Bends; 7, 8, Gold 
 Beads; 9, Ornament of amborset in gold, to be worn suspended 
 — All actual size. 
 
 A classification of the various shapes and desti- 
 nations of these mounds has been attem])ted, 
 but the formula is not entirely satisfectory. A 
 cromlech on the plain of L' Ancresse, in the Island 
 of Guernsey, i.s described" as a vault formed of 
 vertical single stones, or shafts, in close lateral 
 approximation, or actual contact, supporting a 
 roof of large transverse blocks, the flatter sui-face 
 of which, as of the shafts, is turned toward the 
 interior. The area is usually of a long triangular 
 shape, having the apex directed toward the east; 
 the capstones lie from north to south. The east- 
 ern narrow end of the cromlech is prolonged into 
 a contracted avenue, rarely more than three feet 
 high. The difficulty of conveying the dead by 
 the depressed passage into the penetralia, is ex- 
 plained by the fact that bones only, burned or 
 otherwise, were conveyed there. The western 
 end is closed like the sides. This large cromlech 
 is forty-five feet in length, by fifteen feet wide, 
 and nearly eight feet in height within the area at 
 the western end. This space is covered by five 
 
 2 Arcliaologia, vol. xxjcv.
 
 12 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 larger find two smaller blocks of granite. The 
 western is computed to weigh about thirt^ tous; 
 
 Articles of Jewellkry,* foimil in barrows on llie "U'iltshire 
 Dow-ns. — From Hoare's Ancient Wiltshire. 
 
 it is nearly seventeen feet long, ten and a half 
 ■wide, by four and a half in thickness. The second 
 is sixteen feet long, the third again 
 smaller, and so they gradually di- 
 minish to the seventh. The crom- 
 lech contains two layers or burial 
 floors, on which were human bones, 
 m-ns of coarse red and black cLay, 
 amulets and be.ads, pins, &c., the 
 layers being separated by flat frag- 
 ments of granite; the iirst stratum 
 lay on a rude pavement, placed on 
 the natural soil. The remains were 
 disposed in the following remark- 
 able manner: — Unburued bones 
 covered either end of the floor, the 
 middle third being allotted to 
 those which had been submitted 
 to the action of fire. The urns in this part 
 were of remarkably rude shape and material. 
 
 The bones were heaped together cor.fusedly, and 
 each heap surrounded by a ring of small flat 
 pebbles. The urns were near or within the rings. 
 Some heaps consisted, as it were, of parents' and 
 children's ashes mingled together, for within the 
 same ring of pebbles were the bones of indi- 
 viduals of all ages. In this cromlech was an 
 abundance of the bones of very young children. 
 I The next stratum contained on!y burned bones, 
 I among which were interspersed the tusks of 
 i boars. Be it remarked, that in no instance was 
 I the um found to contain the ashes of the dead, 
 but had, no doubt, been filled with food or liquor. 
 I Four flat discs, from si.K to twelve inches in dia- 
 raeter,and one inch in t hiekness, were found formed 
 of the same ware as the urns, and doubtless they 
 served as lids to some which had broad flat edges. 
 As these liils are furnished with central handles, 
 it may be inferred that the urns were visited and 
 replenished from time to time. About 150 urns 
 — some whole — were removed fi-om this vault. 
 When these repositories had become filled by 
 successive deposits, it is found that additions were 
 made of collateral cists, to supply room for further 
 interments. The custom of cremation and urn 
 burial appeal's, by the independent style of many 
 vessels containing burned funeral remains, to have 
 prevailed before the intercourse of the Romans 
 with Britain. A very large and fine series of 
 sepulcliral urns, discovered by Sir Richard Colt 
 Hoare, Bart., attest the variety of pattern used in 
 the formation of these ves-sels ; one in particular 
 
 ^^SlSi 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 7^^ 
 
 iNTERIOn OF A CroMLECH O^ TTR PlMN OP L'ANCRESSE, UUtlRNSEY. 
 
 From the Archaiologia. 
 
 which was found in a tumulus neav Stonehenge, 
 is of entii'ely unique pattern, and from this pecu- 
 
 * No. 1, Ornaments of bronze plated with gold, to be worn sus- 
 pended — full size; 2, Necklace — half size; 3, Glain NeidjT, or 
 Adder-stone — full size; 4, Tweezers. — The Glain Neidyr was 
 found in a bell-shaped barrow — for reasons adverted to in the 
 text, supposed to have been reserved for women of consequence. 
 The Gemmas Anguinre, or Glain, were sacred to the Dniid 
 order; and the fact of this specimen having been found in a 
 baiTOw of the kind conject\ired to have been set apai-t for the 
 interaient of women, con'oborates in some measm-e the conjec- 
 ture, founded upon some ancient \vriter3, that females were 
 
 likewise initiated into the Dniid rites and mysteries. These 
 insignia are small glass amidets, commonly about as wide as 
 our finger-rings, but much tldcker, of a gi-een colour usuaUy, 
 though some of them are blue, as in the present specimen, and 
 others curiously waved, with blue, red, and white. Mr. Owen 
 (Owen's D'ict.y, says they were wora by the different orders of 
 Bards, each having its appropriate colour. The blue ones be- 
 longed to the presiding Bards, the white to the Dnuds, the 
 green to the Ovates, and the tliree coloui-s blended to the dis- 
 ciples.
 
 BEFORE THE ROMAN INVASION. 
 
 13 
 
 liaritv, as well as on account of its large size — fif- 
 teen inches in diameter at the top, and twenty-two 
 inches in height — it is distinguished as the Stone- 
 hense Urn, and contained an iuternieut of burned 
 
 Celtic FuNEHAt. Drns.— From Sir R, Colt Hoare's 
 Audeut Wiltshire. 
 
 hones. It forms the largest figure in the accom- 
 panying wood-cut. The vessels on either side are f 
 richly ornamented drinking 
 cup, found with a skeleton 
 (primary deposit;, in a bar- 
 row at Amesbury Downs, 
 andasmall urn inverted over 
 an interment of burnt bones. 
 Other kinds of vessels dis- 
 covered, two examples of 
 which are here represented, 
 are supposed to have been 
 used as incense cups. They 
 are about three inches in 
 diameter, one of them is 
 studded overwith projecting 
 knobs, which seem to have been first made in the 
 form of glass stoppers to a bottle, and afterwards 
 inserted into circular — ,— 
 
 a ditch, for the security of themselves Hud cattle 
 against the incursion of their enemies;" and 
 Strabo corroborates this in the following words: 
 — "The forests of the Britons are their cities; 
 for when they h.-ive inclosed a very large circuit 
 with felled trees, they build within it houses for 
 themselves, and hovels for their cattle. These 
 buildings are very slight, and not designed for 
 permanence." 
 
 It is conjectured that these notices refer only 
 to the winter habitations of the Britons, and that 
 the circumvallated hills called British cainijs, were 
 in summer the residences and sanctuaries of the 
 Celtic rural populations. These are the caer of 
 the WeLsh and the Gaelic dn.n. A lengthy range 
 of these intrenched hills appears on the downs of 
 the Sussex coast, and interspersed with them are 
 a series of hills which present a smaller surface 
 at the top, and their site so chosen that where one 
 occurs between two of the larger hills, the next in 
 succession is situated on a spur of the downs, at 
 an angle with the preceding one, so as to be 
 visible clear of the chain of hills to the next 
 eminence of a similar kind. These are surmised 
 to have been adapted as beacons, for spreading 
 
 
 holes in the cup, which 
 appear to have been pre- 
 viously drilled for receiv- 
 ing them. Between these 
 gi-ape - like protuber - 
 ances are other perfora- 
 tions which remain open. 
 This curious vessel was 
 found in a tumulus near 
 Heytesbury. 
 
 The dwellings of the 
 dead have proved more 
 permanent than those 
 once approjiriated to the 
 living. "What they," 
 
 the Britons, "call a town," Coesar says, " is a tract 
 of woody countiy, surrounded by a vallum and 
 
 JIOl'NT Caburn Beacon, near Lewes, Sus-sex. — Drawu from uatuic aud uu wood, 
 by U. G. Hine. 
 
 an alarm in case of invasion, or for the rites and 
 observances of fire worship. The Herefordshire 
 Beacon, one of the Malvern Hills, is a conspicuous 
 example, being surrounded by a triple rampart; 
 and with others of a similar kind, bears a striking 
 analogy to the presumed original form of the 
 great tower of Babel, of which, perhaps, its con- 
 struction was a tradition, and its purpose a similar 
 temple of Belus, for the adoration of the sun and 
 fire, its type and symbol. We have the authority 
 of Cfesar for the skill of the Britons in the art 
 of castrametation: and he instances the capital of 
 C'tissivellaunus, which he describes as "admirably 
 defended, both by nature and art." A Celtic 
 stronghold in Cornwall, called Chun Castle, may 
 be cited as a remarkable specimen of this kiml 
 of fortified habitation. It is girt about by two 
 circular walls, each separated by a space of thirty 
 feet; the wails are of the kind of masonry callcl 
 Cyclopean, being constructed of granite masses of 
 
 Incense Vessels. — From 
 Hoaro's Ancient Wiltshii-e.
 
 14. 
 
 niSTOEY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 vai'ious forms and sizes, some of which ai-e five 
 or six feet long, fitted together without cement, 
 so artificial!)' as to offer an equal external surface. 
 The outer w;dl was surrounded by a ditch nine- 
 teen feet wide. A portion of the wall is ten feet 
 high, and about five feet in thickness. It is sur- 
 mised by Borlase that the inner wall must have 
 been at least fifteen feet high, in consideration 
 of its bulk, which is full twelve feet in thickness. 
 This stronghold has only one entrance, which 
 is towards the south-west; and it attests great 
 proficiency in the art of defence. This open- 
 ing is si.K feet wide in the narrowest part, and 
 sixteen where the walls diverge and are rounded 
 off on either side. There are also indications 
 of steps up to the level of the area within the 
 castle; and the remains of a wall, which crossed 
 the terrace from the outer wall, divided the en- 
 trance into two parts at its widest end. The 
 inner waU of the castle comprehends an ai'ea of 
 175 feet north and south, by 180 feet east and 
 west. No indication of buildings appears in the 
 centre, but all round the inner side of the wall 
 are the bases of circular inclosures, which appear 
 to have been the chambers or habitable pai'ts of 
 the castle, similarly disposed to those in the walls 
 of the Saxon castle at Coningsburgh in Yorkshire, 
 and the subsequent early Norman castles. These 
 chambers are from eighteen to twenty feet in 
 diameter, but on the northern side there is a larger 
 apartment, measuring thirty feet by twenty-six.' 
 Other vestiges of Celtic castles of a similar kind 
 exist in Coi-nwall and Wales. The remains found 
 within these inclosures throw but little light 
 upon the habits of their ancient occupants; deer 
 horns, heaps of bones, and the quern or hand-mill, 
 
 Ancient Qoehn, from an example in the EritlsU Museum. 
 
 for grinding meal, only attest the pursuit of the 
 hunter, and the produce of agi-iculture, by which 
 the lords of those ancient strongholds employed 
 the time which was not engrossed in the more 
 stirring affairs of defence and warlike aggression. 
 The observation of these vestiges serves to 
 prepare us for the contemplation of the more 
 august remains connected with the faith of our 
 early progenitors, among which the monuments 
 of Stonehenge and Avebury are conspicuous. 
 The symbolism of the sun and the serpent, it is 
 conjectured, was betokened in their mystic order 
 
 1 Anhaologiv, vol. xxii. p. 300. 
 
 and disposition, as well as in the kindred monu- 
 ment of Carnac in Brittany, in which laud many 
 of the tribes of Britain found a retreat on the 
 departm-e of the Romans, and the inroad of Hen- 
 gist and Horsa — the Teutonic Castor and Pollux. 
 The dolmen or quoit — the witch stone of the 
 scared rustic — is conceived to have been the 
 Druid altar on which the human offering was 
 immolated, when the Vates took their prediction 
 from the convulsion of the limb.^, and the parti- 
 cular direction in which the blood of the victim 
 flowed. Whatever may have been its purpose, the 
 dolmen abounds in Armorica, as here, and is to 
 be found in most parts of the Old World. In the 
 ship temples of Ireland, the tradition of the ark 
 is thought to have been symbolized. The hare 
 stone^ is associated with the patriarchal boundary 
 and memorial stones, and may be relics of a tribe 
 who reached this island at a period prior to the 
 Celtic inroad, and among whom there shone a ray 
 from the dawning of the light now spi-ead over 
 the world in the books of Moses. But while in- 
 dulging in many a surmise conjured up by the 
 evidence of those monuments, whose interpre- 
 tation lies buried in the depth of ages, we are 
 awakened by the question of by what means of 
 transport those ancient tribes made their way to 
 the shores of Britain. 
 
 It has been inferred, from some passages in 
 C'eesar, that the Britons were in possession of a 
 navy. In one of these passages he states that his 
 enemies, the Veneti of Western Gaul, having taken 
 into alliance other neighbom-ing tribes, sent for 
 aid from Britain, which lay directly over against 
 their coast; but while it is not stated that the aid 
 thus sought was of shipping, no other account 
 indicates that such was the case ; and we find 
 no remains of vessels, but those of the simplest 
 and most rude description, to inform us of the 
 attainments of the Britons in the naval art. 
 The canoes that still continue to be dug up from 
 the alluvial beds of our rivers, and the antiseptic 
 depths of our mosses, both in England and Scot- 
 land, are of the rudest description. They are 
 made of the entire trunk of a tree, and have been 
 pai'tly hollowed bj' fire, and partly by the opera- 
 tion of the stave adze, while the outside exhibits 
 no trace of ornament, and very little even of close 
 lopping and smoothness. Of the canoes thus dis- 
 covei-ed, the length of the smallest varies from 
 seven to eleven feet, and, like those of the Indians, 
 they have been impelled by paddles. One of the 
 largest, now in the British Museum, measures 
 thirty-five feet four inches in length, one foot ten 
 inches in depth, and four feet six inches in width 
 
 - Hoar or hare stones, signifying border or boundary stones, 
 the nuien hir or mennie gv:yr of Wales ; men Uars in Armorica, a 
 boxmd-stone. — A Letter by the late William Hamper, F.S.A., 
 Arch(fotogia, vol. xxvi.
 
 BEFORE THE ROMAN INVASION. 
 
 1; 
 
 at tlie centre. Another ves.'^el of similar chai-ac- 
 ter is described by Sir Jolm Clarl< as having been 
 exhumed in tlie Uarse of Fallcirk, in May, 172G. 
 It measm'ed thirty-sis feet in length, and four in 
 extreme breadth, and was finely smoothed and 
 polished, both inside and outside, having the usual 
 pointed stem and square stern. It was in such 
 vessels as these that the ruder Britons cai-ried on 
 their coastiug and river navigation; and in these 
 also they fished with hooks of bone, and even 
 ventured to attack the whales tliat happened to 
 get stranded on their coasts or in their estuaries. 
 As such vessels were evidently not intended for 
 adventurous voyages, they requii-ed little labour 
 or ingenuity of construction, beyond the mere 
 hollowing of a pine, to render it more buoyant 
 upon the waters. The cii'cumstance of locality, 
 or the genius of a different tribe, may have ]iro- 
 
 Welsh Fisherman of the Pbhsent Day with Coracle. 
 duoed the variety of canoes of lighter but more 
 fragile materials. These were the barks of ozier, 
 covered with the skins of animals, 
 which were of more ample stowage 
 and lighter draught, but which also 
 required a greater degree of skill to 
 manage, as well as to construct them. 
 The Britons, at the arrival of the 
 Romans, were famed for their in- 
 genuity in basket-worlv, and this 
 they had turned to the purposes of 
 navigation, when they substituted 
 for the clumsy log a large floating basket. In 
 such, we are told, they could make a six days' 
 voyage, and maintain a close connection with 
 Ireland. These vessels, upon a small scale, and 
 for the purposes of fishing and river naviga- 
 tion, are still used in Wales uuder the name of 
 cwrwgyl, or coracles ; and are so light and por- 
 table that, on leaving the stream, the fisherman 
 commonly carries off his boat on his back. 
 
 At the period of Coesar's invasion a gr^at 
 change had taken place in the transition of the 
 expoi-t trade of the Britons, from the western to 
 the southera shores of the island; and an exten- 
 
 sive intercoui-se with the Gauls, together with the 
 intermixture of Germauic tribes, had greatly as- 
 similated the manners and resources of tlio in- 
 habitants of South Britain to those of the opposite 
 coasts. Their land produced grain in abundance, 
 and they possessed numerous flocks and herds ; 
 whereas the people of the interior, according to 
 Coesar, grew no grain, but lived on the milk and 
 flesh of their cattle. The inland people, living 
 among their forests and marshes, and in the 
 course of intestine wai's of tribe against tribe, had 
 lapsed into a state calculated to develope only the 
 ruder energies ; and the more northern parts of 
 the island were yet lower in the scale, jjrocuriug 
 a sustenance from the milk of their flocks, and 
 wild fruits, and whatsoever they could procure in 
 hunting ; but when these resources failed, they 
 eked out a sustenance by devouring roots and 
 leaves, and in extremit}' they had recourse to a 
 certain composition, by which, it is said, when 
 they had eaten about the quantity of a bean, their 
 spirits were so admirably supported, that they no 
 longer felt hunger or thirst.' 
 
 In addition to the abundance of fuel possessed 
 by the Britons in their vast forests, they ap])ear 
 to have been acquainted with the use of coal, 
 quantities of which have been found in Bi-itish 
 deposits. According to Strabo, they had in use 
 cups, and other vessels of glass, probably im- 
 ported. Many articles, fashioned in gold and 
 silver of great purity, have been found, which 
 attest the possession and appreciation of those 
 metals. A fine specimen in gold was discovered 
 in a cairn at ]Mold, in Flintshire. It is a gold 
 breastplate or gorget, embossed with a fig-ured 
 pattern in various degrees of relief. It was 
 
 Remains of British Ureastplate or Gorget, found at Srold, and now in 
 the British Museum. 
 
 found, with bones of the former owner, as it 
 had been worn, with remnants of coarse clotli or 
 serge, amber beads, and pieces of copper, upon 
 which the gold had been probably fastened. Its 
 extreme length is three feet seven inches, being 
 made apparently to pass under the arms, and meet 
 in the centre of the back, and its width in front, 
 wliei'e it is shaped to fit the neck, eight inches. 
 
 Such are a few of the specimens of early Bri- 
 tish life that have survived the wreck of eighteen 
 centuries, and which a growing .spirit of inquiry, 
 
 ^ Xi][>ldlin. in Sa'n.
 
 16 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 tiiiil gi-eater diligence in exploration, are continu- 
 ally enriching with many mid valuable additions. 
 It is by such antiquarian researches, be it re- 
 membered, however lightly they may be esteemed, 
 that the conditions of a race who have departed 
 are made accessible to the world. The buildings 
 which constitute the homes of a people, and the 
 household utensils that minister to the comforts 
 of daily life, have passed away; the costume by 
 which one nation is distinguished from another, 
 and the personal ornaments by which the differ- 
 ent ranks of the same people are indicated, have 
 been more perishable still ; even the weapons that 
 were forged for the violence of mortal hatred, and 
 the endurance of hereditary feuds, have become 
 so dimmed and deformed by the rust of ages that 
 their original uses ai-e sometimes matter of ques- 
 tion. But, even in the relics of a barbarous 
 people, this utter decay seldom extends to the 
 shrines of their devotion and the dwellings of 
 the dead. The tomb and the temple — the sacred 
 repose of death, and the cheering promise of im- 
 mcrlality — excite a stronger solicitude than even 
 that which suffices for the erection of raratiartsand 
 
 jialaces, and are manifested in gi-ander and more 
 enduring memorials. And hence it is that in every 
 country they have survived the monuments of 
 active every-day life, and still remain, not only in 
 all their original solemn silence, but with much 
 of their primitive entireness. It is in these mau- 
 soleums of bui-ied ages that we are often left to 
 read the history of a people who have passed away ; 
 and it is in this manner that we are obliged to 
 study the modes of life and condition of character 
 that prevailed among the early Britons. Their 
 own legends, fis we have already seen, are of little 
 avail to guide us; the more consistent accounts 
 that were reduced to writing, and embodied in 
 classical history, were the testimonies of their 
 enemies, and therefore to be received with sus- 
 picion, and only in part. But in the cii-cle of 
 stones and its crumbling altars — in the barrow and 
 its fimeral urns — we learn, as from safe though 
 very limited resources, how our earliest ancestors 
 may have lived, and worshipped, and warred, 
 and died, before the destroying enemy had ar- 
 rived among them, or the doom of extinction been 
 carried into eflect.
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD.— 504 YEARS. 
 
 FROM B.C. 55 TO A.D. 449. 
 
 CHAPTER I.— CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. 
 
 INVASION BY JULIUS CESAR. B.C. 55— A.D. 43. 
 
 Early iuhabitanfcs of Britain — Motives of Julius Cojsar for invailiiig it — Gallaut resistance of the natives — (Jresnr's 
 second invasion — His successes and progress — Submission of the Britons, and its terms — Means of resistance 
 possessed by the Britons — Their war-chariots, cavalry and infantry, weapons — Superior discipline and appoint- 
 ments of the Koman legions. 
 
 II E conqucsta of Julius Ciesnr 
 in Gaul brought him withiu 
 sight of the coast of Britain ; 
 aufl, having established the Ro- 
 m.au authority in the nearest 
 countries on the Continent, 
 which are now called France and 
 Belgium, it was almost as natural 
 for him to aim at the possession of 
 our island, as for the masters of Italy to 
 vade Sicily, or the conquerors of India the 
 contiguous island of Ceylon. The disjunction of 
 Britain from the rest of the world, and the stormy 
 but naiTOw sea that flows between it and the main, 
 were circumstances just sufficient to give a bold 
 and I'omantic character to the enterprise, without 
 being real barriers to a skilful and oom-ageous 
 general. But there were other motives to impel 
 Cfesar. Britain, or the far greater part of it, was 
 inhabited by a people of the same race, language, 
 and religion as the Gauls ; and during his recent 
 and most arduous campaigns, the islanders had as- 
 sisted their neighbours and kindred of the Conti- 
 nent, sending important aid more particularly to 
 the Veneti, who occupied Vannes in Bretagne, 
 and to other people of Western Gaul who lived 
 near the sea-coast. Coesar, indeed, says himself 
 that in all his wars with the Gauls the enemies 
 of tlie Republic had always received assistance 
 ti'om Britain, and that this fact made him resolve 
 to pass over into the island. This island, more- 
 over, seems to have liad the cliaracter of a sort of 
 Holy Land among tlie Celtic nations, and to have 
 been considered the great centre and stronghold 
 of the Druids, the revered priesthood of an iron 
 superstition, that bound men, and tribes, and na- 
 tions together, and inflamed them far more than 
 Vol. I. 
 
 patriotism against the Roman conquerors. With 
 I'espect to Druidism, Britain perhaps stood in the 
 same relation to Gaul that the Island of Blona or 
 Anglesey bore to Britain; and when the Romans 
 had established themselves iu Gaul, the\' had the 
 same motives for attacking our island that they 
 had, a century later, when they had fixed tliem- 
 selves in Britain, for falling upon Anglesey, as 
 the centre of the Druids .and of British union, 
 and the source of the reamining national resist- 
 aace. 
 
 It is to be remembered, also, that, whatever 
 may have been the views of personal ambition 
 from which Coesar principally acted, the Romans 
 really had the best of all pleas for their wars 
 with the Gauls, who had been their constant 
 enemies for centuries, and originally their assail- 
 ants. Tlieir possession of Italy, indeed, could not 
 be considered as secure until they had subdued, 
 or at least impressed with a sufficient dread of 
 their arms, the fierce and restless nations both 
 of Gaul and Germany, some of whom— down al- 
 most to the age of Csesar — had not ceased occa- 
 sionally to break through the barrier of the Alps, 
 and to cany fire and sword into the home ter- 
 ritories of the Republic. These, and the other 
 Northern barbarians, as they were called, had had 
 their eye upon the cultivated fields of the Italic 
 peninsula ever since tlie irruption of Bellovesus, 
 in the time of the elder Tarquin ; and the war 
 the Gauls were now cari'yiug on with Caesar was 
 ouly a part of the long contest, which did not ter- 
 minate till the Empire was overpowered at Last 
 by its natural enemies, nearly five centuries after- 
 wards. In the meantime, it was the turn of the 
 Gauls to find the Roman valour, in its highest 
 condition of discipline and efficiency, irresistible; 
 3
 
 18 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militaut, 
 
 aud the Britons, as the active allies of the Gauls, 
 could not expect to escape sharing iu their chas- 
 tisement. 
 
 According to a curious passage in Suetonius, it 
 was reported that Cicsar w.os tempted to invade 
 Britain by the hopes of finding pearls.' Such an 
 inducement seems scarcely of sufficient import- 
 ance, although we know that pearls were veiy 
 highly esteemed by the ancients; and Pliny, the 
 naturalist, tells us that Csesai- offered or dedi 
 c.ated a breastplate to Venus, ornamented with 
 pearls, which he pretended to have found in Bri- 
 tain. But Cresar might be tempted by other real 
 and more valuable productions, and he could not 
 be ignorant of the e.xistence of the British lead and 
 tin which the Phceuicians h.ad imported into the 
 Mediterranean ages before his time, and iu which 
 the Phocajan colony of Massilia or Marseilles was 
 actually carrying on a trade. Coesar himself, in- 
 deed, says nothing of this ; but within a few miles 
 of our coasts, and among a people with whom the 
 British had constant intercourse, he must have 
 acquired more information than appears respect- 
 ing the nataral fertility of the soil, and the mine- 
 ral and other productions of the island. From 
 
 Jlt-ius C/Esar. — From a marble in the British Museiuii. 
 
 evident reasons, indeed, the Gauls in general 
 might not be very communicative on these sub- 
 jects; but among that people Cassar had allies and 
 some steady friends, who must have been able 
 and ready to satisfy all his inquiries. His sub- 
 servient instrument, Comius, who will pi-esently 
 appear upon the scene, must have possessed much 
 of the information required. His love of conquest 
 and glory alone might have been sufficient incen- 
 tive to Ca;sar, but a recent and philosophic writer 
 assigns other probable motives for his expeditions 
 into Britain — such as his desire of dazzling his 
 countrymen, and of seeming to be absorbed by 
 objects remote from internal ambition, by expedi- 
 
 I Vit. JuL Cics. c. xlvii. 
 
 tions against a new world, or of furnisliiug him- 
 self with a pretence for prolonging his provincial 
 command, and keeping up an army devoted to 
 him, till the time should an-ive for the execution 
 of his projects against liberty at Eome.' 
 
 Whatever were his motives, iu the year B.C. 
 55, Cajsar resolveii to cross the British Chan- 
 nel, not, as he has himself told us, to make then 
 a conquest, for which the season was too far 
 advanced, but iu order mei-ely to take a view of 
 the island, learn the nature of the inhabitants, 
 and survey the coasts, harbours, and landiug- 
 jilaces. He says that the Gauls were ignorant of 
 all these things; that few of them, except mer- 
 chants, ever visited the island ; and that the 
 merchants themselves only knew the sea-coasts 
 ojiposite to Gaul. Having called together the 
 merchants from all parts of Gaul, he ques- 
 tioned them concerning the size of the island, 
 the power and customs of its inhabitants, their 
 mode of warfare, and the harbours they had ca- 
 pable of receiving large ships. He adds, that on 
 none of these points could they give liiin informa- 
 tion; but, on this public occasion, the silence of 
 the traders probably proceeded rather from un- 
 willingness and caution than ignorance, while it 
 is equally ]u-obable that the conqueror received 
 a little more information than he avows. He 
 says, however, that for these reasons he thought 
 it expedient, before he embarked himself, to 
 despatch C. Volusenus, with a single galley, to 
 obtain some knowledge of these things, com- 
 raandiug him, as soon as he had obtained this 
 necessary knowledge, to return to head-quarters 
 with all haste. He then himself marched with 
 his whole army into the territory of the Morini, 
 a nation or tribe of the Gauls, who inhabited the 
 sea-coast between Calais and Boulogne — " because 
 thence was the shortest passage into Britain." 
 Here he collected many ships from the neigh- 
 bouring ports. 
 
 Meanwhile many of the British states, having 
 been warned of Coesar's premeditated expedition, 
 by the merchants that resorted to their island, 
 sent over ambassadors to him, with an ofler of 
 hostages and submission to the Koman authority. 
 He received these ambassadors most kiudly, aud, 
 exhorting them to continue iu the same jDacific 
 intentions, sent them back to their own country, 
 despatching with them Comius, a Gaul whom he 
 had made King of the Atrebatians, a Belgic nation 
 then settled in Artois. Csesai-'s choice of this en- 
 voy was well directed. The Belgce, at a compara- 
 tively recent period, had colonized, and they still 
 occupied all the south-eastern coasts of Britain ; 
 and these colonists, much more civilized than the 
 rest of the islanders, no doubt held frequent com- 
 
 2 Sii- James Mackintosh, fJist, Eng.
 
 B.C. 55 — A.D. 43.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 19 
 
 tnercial and friendly intercourse witli the Atre- 
 batiaus in Artois, and the rest of the Belgic stock 
 settled in other places.' C«sar himself says, not 
 only that Comius was a man in whose virtue, 
 ■wisdom, and fidelity he placed great confidence, 
 but one " whose authority in the island of Britain 
 was very considerable." He therefore charged 
 Comius to visit as many of the British states as 
 he could, and persuade thorn to enter into an al- 
 liance with the Romans, informing them, at the 
 same time, that C;i;sar intended to visit the island 
 in person as soon as possible. 
 
 C. Volusenus appears to have done little ser- 
 vice with his galley. He took a view of the Bri- 
 
 Ulo Straits of Dover, 
 GAUL & BR,ITAIX. 
 
 'Entihiltyiyii2fs. 
 
 tish coast, as far as was possible for one who had 
 resolved not to quit his vessel or trust himself 
 into the hands of the natives, and on the fifth day 
 of his expedition returned to head-quarters. With 
 such information as he had, Cassar embarked the 
 
 ^ " It is almost impossible, at this distance of time, to ascertain 
 how far the Belgian settlements extended inland in Britain ; 
 though there are strong reasons for supposing that they covered 
 a largo portion of the south of England. Tlie narr.ative of 
 Ctesar woxild lead us to infer that the Britons with whom he 
 came iu contact were not of two distinct racee. He must, there- 
 fore, aa is evident from his own account, have fonglit against the 
 Belgian settlers, and have had nothmg to do with the more an- 
 cient Celtic population. The Belga3 were at that time, as they 
 are at present, a busy, commercial people ; and had spread, even 
 in the time of Caisar, as far as the Seine, towards the west of 
 France. If this view of the extent of the Belgian settlements in 
 Britain be correct, it removes a great deal of the difiiculty which 
 surrounds the story of the Britons having been extelTninated in 
 after ages by the Saxons. It is not likely that military invaders 
 liJte the Saxons, would either slay all the pcx-^ants of the coun- 
 tiy, nr drive them into Wales; and it is morally certain that so 
 poor a country as Wales would sufler fi-oni famine, botli then 
 and now, from the sudden influx of 100,000 foreiguei-s. The 
 
 infantry of two legions, making about 1 2,000 men, 
 on board eighty transports, and sot sail from Poi-- 
 tusltius, or Witsand, between Calais and Boulogne. 
 The cavalry, embarked iu eighteen other trans- 
 ports, were detained by contrary winds at a port 
 about eight miles off, but Ca;sar left orders for 
 them to follow as soon as the weiitlier permitted. 
 This force, however, as will be seen, could never 
 make itself available ; and hence, mainly, arose 
 the revei-ses of the campaign. 
 
 At ten o'clock on a moi-uing in autumn (Hal- 
 ley the astronomer, in a paper in the Philosophi- 
 cal Transactions, has almost demonstrated that 
 it must have been on the 2Gth of August), Caesar 
 reached the British coast, near Dover, at about 
 the worst possible point to effect a landing iu 
 face of an enemy ; and the Britons were not dis- 
 posed to be friends. The submission they had 
 offered through their ambassadors was intended 
 only to prevent or retard invasion ; and seeing it 
 fail of either of these effects, on the return of 
 their ambassadors with Comius, as Cresar's en- 
 voy, they made that prince a prisoner, loaded 
 him with chains, prepared for their defence as 
 well as the shortness of time would permit ; and 
 when the Romans looked from their ships to the 
 steep white cliffs above them, they saw them 
 covered all over by the armed Britons. Finding 
 that this was not a convenient landing-place, 
 Cresar resolved to lie by till the third hour after 
 noon, in order, he says, to wait the arrival of the 
 rest of his fleet. Some laggard vessels appear to 
 have come up, but the eighteen transports bear- 
 ing the cavalry were nowhere seen. Caesar, how- 
 ever, favoured by both wind and tide, proceeded 
 at the appointed hour, and sailing about seven 
 miles further along the coast, prepared to land 
 his forces on an open, flat shore, which presents 
 itself between Walmer Castle and Sandwich." 
 The Britons on the cliffs, perceiving his design, 
 followed his motions, and sending their cavalry 
 and war-chariots before, marched rapidly on with 
 their main force, to oppose his landing anywhere. 
 Ctesar confesses that the opposition of the natives 
 
 Saxons would be more likely to retain the original British poim- 
 latiou as servants to till their grounds; and if tli.at population 
 were of Belgian or German descent, as were the Saxons them- 
 selves, their amalgamation with a kindred race would be sjieedy 
 and comideto. But it is, as yet, uncei-t.oin how far the Celts 
 themselves were originally of German descent also." — Giles* //i»- 
 (ory of the Anciait Bi-itons, vol.i.p..*17. It is remarkable that the 
 isl.ands of North-Westem Europe shoiUd liave presented in 
 Cxsar's time what we find in thos'e of Eastern Asia at this day — 
 many tribes divided generally into two different races, the one 
 inhabiting the interior .and mountainous parts, short in stature, 
 averse to the sea, and addicted to hunting; the other rangetl along 
 the shores, tall, and addicted to navigation, commerce, and 
 .agii culture. — Ed. 
 
 * Horsley (lii-if. Rom.'' shows that C.t'sar must have proceeded 
 to the north of the South Foreland, iu which case the landing 
 must have been effected between Walmer Castle and Sandwich. 
 Others, with less reason, think he sailed southwanl from the 
 South Forehand, and landed on the flats of Romney JIaivh.
 
 20 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militart'. 
 
 was a hold one, and that the difliculties he had 
 to encounter were very great, on many accounts; 
 but superior skill and discipline, and the employ- 
 ment of some military engines on board the war- 
 galleys, to which the British were unaccustomed, 
 and which projected missiles of various kinds, at 
 last triumphed over them, and ho disembarked 
 his two legions. We must not omit the act of 
 the standard-bearer of the teuth legion, wliich 
 has been thought deserving of particular com- 
 memoration by his general. While the Koman 
 soldiei's were hesitating to leave the ships — chiefly 
 deterred, according to Cajsar's account, by the 
 depth of the water — this officer, having first 
 solemnly besought the gods that what he was 
 about to do might prove fortunate for the legion, 
 and then exclaiming, with a loud voice, " Follow 
 me, my fellow-soldiers, unless you will give up 
 your eagle to the enemj' ! — I, at least, will do my 
 
 .^- 
 
 Dover Cliffs.— From Tiimei-'s England aud Wales. 
 
 duty to the Republic aud to our general ! " leaped 
 iuto the sea as he spoke, and dashed with his 
 ensign among the enemy's ranks. The men in- 
 stantly followed their heroic leader ; and the sol- 
 diers in the other ships, excited by the example, 
 also crowded forward along with them. The two 
 armies were for some time mixed in combat ; but 
 at length the Britons withdrew in disorder from 
 the well-contested beach. As their cavalry, how- 
 ever, was not yet arrived, the Romans could not 
 pursue them, or advance iuto the island, and thus 
 render the victory complete. 
 
 The native maritime tribes, thus defeated, 
 sought the advantages of a hollow peace. They 
 despatched ambassadors to Caesar, offering hos- 
 tages, and an entire submission. They liberated 
 Comius, and restored him to his employer, throw- 
 
 ing the blame of the harsh treatment his envoy 
 had met with upon the multitude or common 
 people, and entreating Caisar to excuse a fault 
 which proceeded solely from the popular igno- 
 rance. The conqueror, after reproaching them 
 for sending of their own accord ambassadors into 
 Gaul to sue for peace, and then making war 
 upon him, without any reason, forgave them their 
 oU'euces, and ordered them to send in a certain 
 number of hostages, as security for their good 
 behaviour in future. Some of these hostages 
 were presented immediately, and the Britons pro- 
 mised to deliver the rest, who lived at a distance, 
 in the course of a few days. The native forces 
 then seemed entirely disbanded, and the several 
 chiefs came to Csesar's camp to offer allegiance, 
 and negotiate or intrigue for their own separate 
 interests. 
 
 On the day that this peace was concluded, 
 aud not before, the 
 unlucky transports 
 with the Roman ca- 
 valry were enabled 
 to quit their port on 
 the coast of Gaul. 
 They stood across the 
 channel with a gentle 
 gale; but when they 
 neared the British 
 coast, and were even 
 within view of Cte- 
 sar's camp, they were 
 dispersed by a tem- 
 pest, and were finally 
 obliged to return to 
 the port where they 
 had been so long de- 
 tained. That very 
 night, Ctesar says, it 
 happened to be full 
 moon, when the tides 
 always rise highest 
 — "a fact at that time wholly unknown to the 
 Romans'' — and the galleys which he had with 
 him, aud which were hauled up on the beach, 
 wei-e filled with the rising waters, while his 
 heavier transports, that lay at anchor in the road- 
 stead, were either dashed to pieces, or rendered 
 altogether unfit for sailing. This disaster spread 
 a general consternation through the camp; for, as 
 every legionary knew, there were no other vessels 
 to carry back the troops, nor any materials with 
 the army to reijair the ships that were disabled ; 
 
 i 1,1 : 
 
 llH! Ill 
 
 ^ The operations of the Roman troops had hitherto been almost 
 confined to the Mediterranean, wliere there is no perceptible 
 tide. Tet during their stay on tlie coast of Gaxil, on the oppo- 
 site side of the Channel, they ought to have become acqnainted 
 with these phenomena. Probably they had never attended to 
 the irrej^iilanties of a spring-tide.
 
 B.C. 53 — A.D. 43.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 21 
 
 ami, as it had been from the bcsiuuiug C:csar'.s 
 design not to winter in Britain, but in Gaul, lie 
 was wholly unprovided with corn and provisions 
 to feed bis troops. Suetonius says, that during 
 the nine years Coesar held the military command 
 in Gaul, amidst a most brilliant series of succes- 
 ses, he experienced only three signal disasters; 
 and he counts the almost entire destruotiou of his 
 fleet by a storm in Britain, as one of the three. 
 
 Nor were the invaded people slow in perceiv- 
 ing the extent of Ca3sar'.s calamity, and devising 
 means to profit by it. They plainly saw he was 
 in want of cavalry, provisions, and ships; a close 
 inspection showed that his troops were not so 
 numerous as they had fancied, and probably fa- 
 miliarized them in some measure to their warlike 
 weapons and demeanour; and they confidently 
 hoped that, by defeating this force, or surround- 
 ing and cutting off their retreat, and starving 
 them, they should pi-event all future invasions. 
 The chiefs in the camp having previously held 
 secret consultations among themselves, retired. 
 by degrees, from the Romaus, and began to di-aw 
 the islanders together. Cresar says, that though 
 he was not fully apprised of their designs, he 
 partly guessed them, from their delay in sending 
 in the hostages promised from a distance, and 
 from other circumstances; and instantly took 
 measures to provide for the worst. He sot part 
 of his army to repair his shattered fleet, using 
 the materials of the vessels most injured to patch 
 up the rest; and as the soldiers wrought with 
 an indefatigability suiting the dangerous urgency 
 of the ease, he had soon a number of vessels fit 
 for sea. He then sent to G.a\d for other mate- 
 rials wanting, and probably for some provisions 
 also. Another portion of his troops he employed 
 in foraging parties, to bring into tlie camp what 
 corn they could collect in the adjacent country. 
 This supply could not have been great, for the 
 natives had everywhere gathered in their har- 
 vest, except in one field ; and there, by lying in 
 ambush, the Britons made a bold and bloody at- 
 tack, which had well nigh proved fatal to the in- 
 vaders. As one of the two legions that formed 
 the expedition were cutting down the corn in 
 that field, Caesar, who was in his fortified camp^ 
 suddenly saw a gre.^t cloud of dust in that direc- 
 tion. He rushed to the spot with two cohorts, 
 leaving orders for all the other soldiers of the 
 legion to follow as soon as possible. His arrival 
 was very opportune, for he found the legion, 
 which had been surjirised in the corn-field, and 
 which had suil'ered considerable loss, now sur- 
 rounded and pressed on all sides by the cavalry 
 and war-chariots of the British, who had been 
 concealed in the neighbouring woods. Ho suc- 
 ceeded in bringing otf the engaged legion, Avith 
 which he withdrew to his intrenched camp, de- 
 
 clining a general engagement for the present. 
 Heavy rains that followed confined the lloraaus 
 for some days within their intrenchments. l\tcaii- 
 while the British force of horse and foot wiu? in- 
 creased from all sides, and they gradually drew 
 round the intrenchments. Cresar, anticipating 
 their attack, marshalled his legions outside of the 
 camp, and, at the proper moment, fell upon the 
 islanders, who, he says, not being able to sustain 
 the shock, were soon put to flight. In this vic- 
 tory he attaches great importance to a body of 
 thirty horse, which Oomius, the Atrebatian, had 
 brought over from Gaul. The Romaus pursued 
 the fugitives as far as their strength would per- 
 mit ; they slaughtered many of them, set fire to 
 some houses and villages, and then returned 
 again to the protection of their camp. On the 
 same day the Britons again sued for peace, and 
 C;esar, being anxious to return to Gaul as quickly 
 .as possible, " because the equinox was apjiroach- 
 ing, and his ships were leaky," granted it to them, 
 on no harder condition than that of doubling the 
 number of hostages they had ])romised .after their 
 first defeat. He did not even w^it for the hos- 
 tages, but a fair wind springing up, he set sail 
 at midnight, and arrived safely in Gaul. Even- 
 tually only two of the British states sent their 
 hostages ; and this breach of treaty gave the Ro- 
 m.an commander a ground of complaint by which 
 to justify his second invasion. 
 
 In the spring of the following year (b.c. 54) 
 Ctusar again embarked at the same Portus Itius 
 for Britain. This time peculiar attention had 
 been paid to the build and equipment of his fleet : 
 he had 800 vessels of all classes, and these carried 
 five legions and 2000 cavalry — an invading force 
 in all not short of 32,000 men.' At the appro.ach 
 of this formidable armament the natives retired 
 in dismay from the coast, and Ciesar disembarked, 
 without opposition, at "that part of the island 
 which he had marked out the preceding summer 
 as being the most convenient landing-place." 
 This was probably somewhere on the same flat, 
 between Walmer Castle and Sandwich, where he 
 had landed the year before. Having received 
 intelligence as to the direction in which the 
 Britons had retired, he set out about miilnight 
 in quest of them, leaving ten cohorts, with 300 
 horse, behind him on the coast, to guai-d his camp 
 and fleet. After a hurried night-march, he came 
 in sight of the islanders, wlio were well posted 
 on some rising grounds behind a river — probablj' 
 the Stour, near Canterbury. The confederate 
 army gallantly disiiuted the p.assage of the river 
 with their cavalry and chariots; but being re- 
 pulsed by the Roman horse, they retreated to- 
 
 ' lu tliis calculation .an allowance of 500 ia made for sicknosfl, 
 casualties, and deficiencies. At this period the iiifuntr)* of a 
 legion, when complete, amounted to 0100 men.
 
 22 
 
 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. 
 / 
 
 [Civil akd Military. 
 
 wfii'ds the woods, to a place strongly fortified 
 botli by nature and art, and whicli C'Msar judged 
 had been stieugthened before, on occasion of 
 some internal native war ; "for all the avenues 
 ■were secured by strong barricades of felled trees 
 laid upon one another." This stronghold is sup- 
 posed to have been at or near to the spot where 
 the city of Canterbury now stands. Strong as 
 it was, the soldiers of the seventh legion (the 
 force that had suffered so much the preceding 
 campaign in tlie corn-field) carried it, by means 
 of a mound of earth they cast up in front of it ; 
 and then they drove the British from the cover 
 of the wood. The evening closed on their retreat, 
 in which they must have suffered little loss ; for 
 Cresar, fearful of following them through a coim- 
 try with which he was unacquainted, strictly 
 forbade all pursuit, and employed his men in 
 fortifying theu' camp for the night. The Roman 
 eagles were scarcely displayed the following 
 morning, and the trumpets had hardly sounded 
 the advance, when a party of horse brought in- 
 telligence from the coast that nearly all the fleet 
 had been driven on shore and wrecked during 
 the night. Cresar flew to the sea-shore, whither, 
 
 RoM^x Galley, from the model presented by Lord Anson to Green 
 wicli Hospital. — 1, Side Elevation; 2. Plan; 3, Midship Section 
 i. Elevation of Stem ; 5, Elevation of Stern. 
 
 lie was followed by the legions in full retreat. 
 The misfortune had not been exaggerated : forty 
 of his shijjs were irretrievably lost, and the rest 
 so damaged that they seemed scarcely capable of 
 repair. With his characteristic activity, he set 
 all the carpenters of the army to work, wrote for 
 more artisans from Gaul, and ordered the legions 
 stationed on that coast to build as many new 
 ships as they could. Apprehensive alike of tiie 
 storms of the ocean and of the fierce attack of 
 the natives, Ctesar ordered that all his ships 
 should be drawn ujj on dry land, and inclosed 
 
 within his fortified camp. Although the ancient 
 galleys were small and light compared to our 
 modern men-of-war, and the transports and ten- 
 ders of his fleet in all probability little more than 
 sloops and barges, this was a laborious operation, 
 and occupied the soldiers ten days and nights. 
 Having thus secured his fleet, he set ofl' in pur- 
 suit of the enemy, who had made a good use of 
 his absence, by increasing their army, and ap- 
 pointing one chief to the supreme command of it. 
 The choice of the confederated states fell upon 
 Cassivellaunus (his Celtic name was perhaps Cas- 
 wallon), whose territories were divided from the 
 maritime states of the river Thames, at a point 
 which was between seventy and eighty miles 
 from Caesar's camp on the Kentish coast. This 
 prince had hitherto been engaged in almost con- 
 stant wars with his neighbours, whose afi'ection 
 to him must have therefore been of recent date, 
 and of somewhat doubtful continuance ; but he 
 had a reputation for skill and bravery, and the 
 dread of the Romans made the Britons forget 
 their quarrels for a time, unite themselves under 
 his command, and intrust him with the whole eon- 
 duct of the war. Ciesar found him well posted at or 
 near to the scene of the last battle. Cassi- 
 vellaunus did not wait to be attacked, 
 but charged the Roman cavalry with his 
 horse, supported by his chariots. Cassar 
 says that he constantly repelled these 
 charges, and drove the Britons to their 
 woods and hills ; but that, after making 
 great slaughter, venturing to continue the 
 pursuit too far, he lost some men. It 
 does not appear that the British retreated 
 far; and some time after these skirmishes 
 they gave the Romans a serious check. 
 Sallying unexpectedly from the wood, 
 they fell upon the soldiers, who were era. 
 ployed, as usual, in fortifying the ctanp or 
 station for the night, and cut up the ad- 
 vanced guard. Ctesar sent two cohorts to 
 their aid, but the Britons charged these 
 in separate parties, broke through them 
 routed them, and then retired without 
 loss. A military tribune was slain ; and, 
 but for the timely ai-rival of some fresh 
 cohorts, the conflict would have been very dis- 
 astrous. Even as it was, and though Coesar 
 covers the fact by a somewhat confused narra- 
 tive, it should appear that a good part of his army 
 was beaten on this occasion. He says that from 
 this action, of which the whole Roman army 
 were spectators, it was evident that his heavy- 
 armed legions were not a fit match for the active 
 and light-armed Britons, who always fought in 
 detachments, with a body of reserve in their rear, 
 which advanced fresh supplies when needed, and 
 covered and protected the forces when in retreat;
 
 ac, 55 — A.D. 43.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 23 
 
 tliat even his cavalry could uot engage without 
 great ilauger, it being the custom of the Britons 
 to counterfeit a retreat, until they had drawn 
 the Roman horse a considerable way from the 
 legions, when, suddenly leaping from their cha- 
 riots, they charged them on foot, and, by this un- 
 equal manner of fighting, rendered it equally 
 dangerous to pursue or retire. 
 
 The next day the Britons only showed small 
 bodies on the hills at some distance from the Ro- 
 man camp. This made Caesar believe they were 
 less willing to skirmish with his cavalry; but no 
 sooner had he sent out all his caealrij to forage, 
 supported by tlirec legions (between horse and foot 
 this foraging party comprised considerably more 
 than half the forces he had with him), than the 
 Britons fell upon them on all sides, and even 
 charged up to the solid and impene- 
 trable legions. The latter bold step 
 was the cause of their ruin: tlie supe- 
 rior arms, the defensive armour, and 
 the perfect discipline of those masses, 
 rendered tlie contest too unequal ; 
 the British warriors were repulsed — 
 thrown off like waves from a mighty 
 rock — confusion ensued, and CiBsar's 
 cavalry and infantry, charging toge- 
 ther, uttex-ly broke the confederate 
 ai-my. The conqueror informs us that 
 after this defeat the auxiliary troops, 
 which had repaired from all parts to 
 Cassivellauuus' standard, returned se- 
 verally to their own homes ; and that 
 duriug the rest of the campaign the 
 enemy never again appeared against 
 tlie Romans with their whole force. ifPil] 
 
 These severe contests had not brough t 
 Caesar far into the interior of the island ; 
 but now he followed up Cassivellaunus, 
 wdio retired, for the defence of his own 
 kingdom, beyond the Thames. March- 
 ing through Kent and a part of Surrey, 
 or the beautiful country which now 
 bears those names, the Romans reached 
 the riglit bank of the Thames, at Co- 
 way Stakes, near Chertsey,' in Surrey, st.vrk.- 
 wherethe river was considered fordable. 
 The passage, however, was not undisputed. Cas- 
 sivellaunus had drawn up his troops in great 
 numbers on tlie opposite bank ; he had likewise 
 fortified that bank witli sharp stakes, and driven 
 similar stakes into the bed of the river, yet so as 
 
 * This point, like most of the other localities mentioned liy 
 Ccesar, h.T3 been the subject of dispvite. Wo venture to tix it 
 where we do on the autliority of Camden, and 3Ir. Gale, a writer 
 in the Archn^ologia^ vol. i. p. 1S3. 
 
 2 Stako tlrawn from the bed of the Thames at Coway Stakes, 
 presumed to be one of those planted by Cassivellauinis ; now in 
 tho British Mtlseum. A number of similar stakes still reniala 
 in the bed of the river. 
 
 to be concealed or covered liy the water. Of these 
 things Coc.'iar says he w!is informed by prisoners 
 and deserters. It should ajijiear that he over- 
 came the obstacles raised at the ford with great 
 ease ; he sent tlie horse into the river before, or- 
 dering the foot to follow close behind them, which 
 they did with such rapidity that, though nothing 
 but tlieir heads appeared above water, they were 
 ]ireseutly on the opposite bank, where the enemy 
 could not stand tlieir charge, but fled. 
 
 The rest of liis army having disbanded, Cassi- 
 vellaunus now retained no other force than 4000 
 war-chariots, with which he harassed tho Romans, 
 always keeping at a distance from their main 
 body, and retiring, wlien attacked, to woods and 
 inaccessible places ; whither also he caused such 
 of the inhabitants as lay on Ctesar's line of march 
 to withdraw with their cattle and provisions. 
 Being perfectly acquainted with the country, and 
 all tlie roads and defiles, lie continued to fall upon 
 detached parties; and the Romans were never 
 safe, or masters of any ground, except in tho 
 space covered by their intrenched camii or their 
 legions. On account of these frequent surprises, 
 Cresar would not permit his horse to forage at 
 any distance from the legions, or to ]jillage and 
 destroy the country, unless where the foot was 
 close at hand to support them. 
 
 The fatal want of union among the petty states 
 into which the island was frittered, and the hatred 
 some of them entertained against tlieir former 
 enemy, Cassivellaunus, now began to appear, and 
 to disconcert all that chief's measures for resist- 
 ance. The Trinobantes, who dwelt in Esse.x and 
 iMiddlesex, and who formed one of the most 
 powerful states in those parts, sent ambassadors 
 to Ciesai-, Of this state was Mandubratius, who 
 had tied into Gaul to Caisar, in order to avoid the 
 fate of his father, Imanuentius, who had held the 
 sovereignty of the state, and wliom Cassivellauuus 
 had defeated and put to death. The ambassadors 
 entreated Ci"esar to restore their prince, who was 
 then a guest in the Roman camp, to defend him 
 and them against the fiii-y of Cassivellaunus, 
 promising, on these conditions, obedience and 
 entire submission in the name of .all the Trino- 
 bantes. Csesar demanded forty hostages, and a. 
 supply of corn for his army. The general does uot 
 confess it, but it is very probable that, thi-ough 
 the wise measures of Cassivellaunus, the Romans 
 were at tliis time sorely distressed by want or 
 provisions. The Trinobantes delivered both tho 
 corn and the hostages, and Ctesar restored to them 
 their prince. Immediately upon this, other tribes, 
 whom Csesar designates the Cenimagni, Segon- 
 tiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, and Ca.ssi, also .sent in 
 their submission. Some of these people informed 
 Ca;sar that he was not far from the capital of 
 Cassivellauuus, which was situated amidst woods
 
 24- 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 rClVIL AND SrrUTART, 
 
 and marshes, and whither multitudes of tlie Bri- 
 tisli had retired with tlieir cattle, as to a place of 
 safety.' Tliis town is supposed to have been 
 near to the site of St. Alban'.i, and on the spot 
 where the flourishing Roman colony of Verula- 
 mium arose many years after. Though called a 
 town and a capital, it appears from Ctesar to have 
 been nothing but a thick wood or labyrinth, with 
 clusters of houses or villages scattered about it; 
 the whole being surrounded by a ditcli and a 
 rampart, the latter made of iniul or felled trees, 
 or probably of both materials mised. 
 
 Ca3sar soon appeared with his legions before 
 the capital of Cassivellaunus ; and he says, that 
 though the place seemed very strong both by art 
 and nature, he resolved to attack it in two seve- 
 ral points. He was once more successful; the Bri- 
 tons fled to another wood, after a short stand, and 
 the Romans took many prisoners and vast num- 
 bers of cattle. Though thus defeated in the in- 
 land districts, Cassivellaunus still hoped to redeem 
 the fortunes of his country by a bold and well- 
 conceived blow, to Vje struck on the sea-coast. 
 While the events related were passing beyond 
 the Thames, he despatched messengers to the four 
 princes or kings of Cautium (Kent), to instruct 
 them to draw all their forces together, and attack 
 the camp and ships of the Romans by surprise. 
 The Kentish Britons obeyed their instructions ; 
 but, according to Csesar, the Romans, sallying 
 from their intreuchraents, made a great slaughter 
 of their troops, took one of the princes jsrisoner, 
 and returned in safety to the camp. At the news 
 of this reverse, the brave Cassivellaunus lost 
 heart ; he sent ambassadors to sue for peace, and 
 availed himself of the mediation of Comius, the 
 King of the Atrebatians, with whom, at one time 
 or other, he appears to have had friendly rela- 
 tions. The Roman general, as we have noticed, 
 states that the authority or influence of Comius 
 in the island was very considerable. It would be 
 curious to see how he exercised it in favour of his 
 Roman patron ; but here we are left in the dark. 
 
 * " If we may implicitly tnist the report of Citsar, a British 
 city in his time dilFered widely from wliat we undei-stand by 
 tliat term. A spot difficidt of access, from the trees that filled 
 it, siuTouiideJ with a rampart and ditch, and which offered a 
 refuge from the sudden incursions of an enemy, could be digni- 
 fied by the name of an oppidum, and form the metropolis of 
 CassiveUaunus. Such, also, among the Sclavonians, were the 
 vici, encircled by an ahbulU of timber, or .at most a paling, 
 proper to repel not only an unexpected attack, but even capalle 
 of resisting for a time the onset of practised forces : such in our 
 own time have been fomid the stockades of the Burmese, and 
 the pah of the New Zealander ; and if our skilful engineers h.ave 
 experienced no contemptible resistance, and the lives of many 
 brave and disciplined men have been sacrificed in their reduc- 
 tion, we m.ay admit that even the oppida of Cassivellaunus, or 
 Caratac, or Galgacus, might, as fortresses, have serious claims to 
 the attention ofa Roman commander." *'lt is, however, scarcely 
 possible tluat Caisar and Strabo can be strictly accurate in their 
 i-eports, or tliat tliere wore from the firet only such towns in Bri. 
 
 C;ics.ar turned a ready ear to the overtures of Cas- 
 sivellaunus, and granted him peace on such easy 
 conditions, that some writers have been induced 
 to believe he was heartily tired of the harassing 
 war. For himself, he only says that he was iu a 
 hurry to return to Gaul, on account of the fre- 
 quent insurrections in that country. He merely 
 demanded hostages, appointed a yearly tribute 
 (the amount of which is nowhere named, and 
 which was probably never paid), and charged 
 Cassivellaunus to respect Mandubratius and the 
 Trinobantes. Having received the hostages, he 
 led his troops back to the Kentish coast, and, 
 crowding them into his ships as closely and 
 quickly as he could, he set sail by night for Gaul, 
 fearing, he says, the equinoctial storms, which 
 were now at hand. He tells us he had many pri- 
 soners ; but he certainly did not erect a fort, or 
 le.ave a single cohort behind him, to secure the 
 grounil he had gained iu the island.- 
 
 Tacitus, writing 150 years later, says distiuelh', 
 that even Julius Coesar, the fii-st who entered 
 Britain with an army, although he struck terror 
 into the islanders by a successful battle, could 
 only maintain himself on the sea-coast — that he 
 was a discoverer rather than a conqueror. 
 
 We have dwelt more particularly on these 
 campaigns, as we have the accomplished general's 
 own account to guide us ; and as many of his de- 
 tails may be applied to explain the other Roman 
 wars which followed, when there was no Ciiesar 
 to describe in the closet his exploits in the field. 
 The sequel, indeed, when we must follow profes- 
 sional historians, who were never even iu Britain, 
 is comparatively uninteresting and monotonous. 
 We shall, therefore, set down the great results, 
 without embarrassing the reader with unneces- 
 sary details ; but at this point it will be well to 
 pause, in order to offer a few general remarks, 
 which will equally elucidate the past and future 
 campaigns of the Romans iu our island. 
 
 The contest which had thus taken place between 
 the British bands and the famed Roman lesions, 
 
 tain as these authora have described. It is not consonant to ex- 
 perience that a thickly-peopled and peaceful country should long 
 be without cities. A commercial people always have some settled 
 stations for the collection and interchange of commodities, -and 
 fixed establishments for tlie regulation of trade, Caesar himself 
 tells us that the buildings of the Britons were veiy nmuerous, 
 and th.at they bore a resemblance to those of the Gaxils, whose 
 cities were assuredly considerable. Moreover, a race so conver- 
 sant with the man.agement of horses as to use aimed ch.*vi"iot3 
 for artillery, are not likely to have been witliout an extensive 
 system of roads, aud where there are ro<ads towns wiU not long 
 be wanting. Hence when, less than eighty years after the re- 
 turn of tiio Romans to Britain, and scarcely forty after the 
 complete subjugation of the island by Agricola, Ptolemy tells us 
 of at least fifty-six cities in existence here, we m.ay reasonably 
 conclude that they were not all duo to the eiforts of Roman 
 civiliz.ation." — Kembles Saxons in England, vol. i. pp. 264-5. 
 
 " For the preceiling part of our naiTative, see Cwsar de Bdlo 
 Galileo, from book iv. ch. xviii. to book v. ch. sis. (inclusive).
 
 B.C. 55 — a.D. 43.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 at .1 period when the disoipliue of those corps 
 was most perfect, and when they were commauded 
 by the greatest of their generals, was certainly 
 very unequal ; but less so (even without taking 
 into account the superiority of numbers and other 
 advantages, all on the side of the invaded) than 
 is geuei'ally imagined and represented. A brief 
 examination of the arts and jiracticjs of war of 
 the two contending parties may serve to e.Kjjlaiu, 
 in a great measure, what is past, and render more 
 intelligible the events which are to ensue. The 
 fii'st striking result of such an examination is a 
 suspicion, and, indeed, a proof, tkit the Brituus 
 were much farther advanced in civilization than 
 the savage tribes to which it has been the fashion 
 to compare them. Were this not the case, the 
 somewhat unsuccessful employment against them 
 of so large .an anny as that of C;i;sar, would be dis- 
 graceful to the Eom.an name. Their war-chariots, 
 which sevei-al times produced tremendous eti'ects 
 on the Komaus, and the use of which seems at 
 that time to have been peculiar to the Britons, 
 would of themselves pi'ove .a high degree of mecha- 
 nical skill, and an acquaintance with several arts. 
 These cars were of various forms and sizes, some 
 being rude, and others of curious and even ele- 
 gant workmanship. Those most commonly in 
 use, and called esseda or essedce by the Romans, 
 were made to contain each a charioteer for driv- 
 ing, and one, two, or more warrioi-s for fighting. 
 They were at once strong and light ; the extre- 
 mity of their axles and other salient points were 
 armed with scythes and hooks, for cutting and 
 tearing whatever fell in their way, as they were 
 driven rapidly along. The horses attached to 
 them were perfect in training, and so well in hand 
 fciiat they could be driven at speed over the rough- 
 est countrv, and even through the woods, which 
 then abounded in all directions. The Romans 
 were no less astonished at the dexterity o." the 
 charioteers than at the numl-er of the chariots. 
 The way in which the Britons brought the cha- 
 riots into action w;xs this: at the beginning of a 
 battle they drove about the flanks of the enemy, 
 throwing darts from the cai-s ; and, according to 
 Caesar, the very dread of the horses, and the noise 
 of the rapid wheels, often broke the ranks of his 
 legions. Wlien they had succeeded in making an 
 impression, and iiad winded in among the Roman 
 cavalry, the warriors leaped from the chariots, 
 .and fought on foot. In the meantime the drivers 
 retired with the chariots a little from the combat, 
 taking up such a position as to favour the retreat 
 of the warriors in case of their being overmatched. 
 "In this manner," says Cajs.ar, '• they perform the 
 part both of rapid cavalry and of steady infantry; 
 and, by constant exercise and use, they have ar- 
 rived at such expertuess, th.at they can stop their 
 horses when .at full speed, in the most steep and 
 V'OL. I. 
 
 dillicult places, tui-u them which way they pleiwe, 
 run .'dong the carriage-pole, rest ou the liarness, 
 and throw themselves back into their chariots 
 with incredible dexterity." 
 
 For a long time the veteran legions of Rome 
 could not look on the clouds of dust that an- 
 nounced the a]iproach of these war-chariots, with- 
 out trepidation. The Gauls had once the samo 
 mode of figlitiug, and equ.ally distres.se<l the Ro- 
 mans with their war-ch.ariots. Nearly 300 years 
 before the invasion of Britain, when the (jauls 
 were establi.slu'd in parts of Italy, and in close 
 .alliance with the Sanmites, a successful charge of 
 the Rom.au cavalry was repulsed, and the whole 
 army thi-own into dism.ay, by a mode of fighting 
 to which they were utter strangers. " A number 
 of the enemy," says Livy, "mounted on chariots 
 and cars, made towards them with sucli a terrible 
 noise, from the trampling of the horses and the 
 rolling of the wheels, as affrighted the horses of 
 the Romans, unaccustomed to such oi)eratious. 
 By tills means the victorious cavalry were dis- 
 persed, and men and horses, in their headlong 
 flight, were thrown in heaps to the ground. The 
 same cause produced disorder even in the r.xnks 
 of the legions : through the impetuosity of the 
 horses, and the carriages they dragged through 
 the ranks, many of the Roman soldiers in the ^•an 
 were trodden or bruised to death ; and the Gauls, 
 as soon .as they saw the enemy in confusion, fol- 
 lowed up the .advantage, nor allowed them breath- 
 ing-time." ' The use of war-chariots, however, 
 seems to have fallen out of fashion among the 
 Gauls during the long period that bad intervened; 
 for Ctosar never makes mention of them in de- 
 scribing his many battles with that people on the 
 Continent. 
 
 The existence of the accessories — the hooks and 
 scythes .attached to the wheels or axles— h:is been 
 questioned, as neither Caesar, nor Tacitus, nor any 
 early writer, with the exception of the geographer 
 Pomponius Mela (who wrote, however, in the first 
 century), expressly mentions them in describing 
 the war-chariots. Weapons answering to tlie 
 description have, however, been found on the field 
 of some of the most ancient b.attles. Between the 
 Roman invasion under Caesar, and that ordered 
 by tjie Emperor Claudius, the cars or chariots ot 
 the British attracted notice, and were exhibited 
 in Italy. They were seen in the splendid p.age- 
 .antry with which Caligula passed over the sea 
 from Puteoli to Bai;f, on his mole of m.asoury and 
 bridge of bo.ats. The emperor, Suetonius tells us, 
 rode in a chariot drawn by two famous horses, 
 and a party of his friends followed, mounted in 
 British chariots. Probably Cipsar had cai-ried 
 some of the native war-oai-s to Rome as curiosities. 
 
 ' Tit. Liv. lib X. c. xxviii. 
 
 4
 
 26 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil, AND Military. 
 
 just as our navigators brought the canoes of the Tliis, indeeti. was so much tlie ease iu the ensuing 
 Indians and Soutli Sea IsUmders to England. At wars, that the turn of a battle w.as often left to 
 subsequent periods, the war-chariots of the Bri- depend, not on the legions, but on their barbarian 
 
 auxiliaries, some of whom 
 were as lightly equii)ped as 
 the Britons themselves. In 
 coining to their offensive 
 arms, we reach a point 
 where they were decidedly 
 inferior to the Romans; and 
 a cause, perhaps, as prin- 
 
 Bronzg Wkapons, answering to the description of hooks or scythes appendeJ to the .isle of cinal as auv other of their 
 British war-ch.ariots. — Drawn by J. W. Ai^her, fi-om specimeus iu the British Musemu. 1 * ' / ' 
 
 in variable defeat when they 
 
 tons were frequently alluded to by the poets as 
 well as historians of Rome. 
 
 The ancient Britons were well provided with 
 horses, of a small breed, but hardy, spirited, and 
 yet docile. Their cavalry were ai-med with shields, 
 broad-swords, and lances. Thej' were accustomed, 
 like the Gauls, aud their own chariot-men, to dis- 
 mount, at fitting seasons, aud fight on foot ; and 
 their horses are said to have been so well trained, 
 as to stand firm at the places where they were 
 left, till their masters returned to them. Another 
 common practice among them was, to mix an 
 equal number of their swiftest foot with their 
 cavalry, each of these foot-soldiers liolding by a 
 horse's mane, and keeping pace with him in all 
 his motions. Some remains of this last custom 
 were observed among the Highland clans iu the 
 last century, in the civil wars for the Pretender; 
 and in more modern, and regular, and scientific 
 w.arfare, an advantage has often been found in 
 mounting infantry behind cavalry, and in teach- 
 ing cavah'y to dismount, and do the duty of foot- 
 soldiers. A great fondness for horses, and a skill 
 in riding them, aud breaking them iu for cars 
 and chariots, were observable in all the nations 
 of the Celtic race. The scythe-armed cars of the 
 Britons may be assumed as one of the many links 
 in that chain which seems to connect them with 
 Persia and the East, where similar vehicles were 
 in use in very remote ages. 
 
 The infantry of the Britons was the most nu- 
 merous body, and, according to Tacitus, the main 
 strength of their armies. They were very swift 
 of foot, and expert in swimmiug over rivers and 
 crossing fens and marshes, by which means they 
 were enabled to make sudden attacks and safe 
 retreats. They were slightly clad ; throwing off 
 in battle the whole, or at least the greater part, 
 of whatever clothing they usually wore, according 
 to a custom which appears to have been common 
 to all the Celtic nations. They were not encum- 
 bered with defensive armour, caiTying nothing of 
 that sort but a small light shield ; and this, added 
 to their swiftness, gave them, in some respects, a 
 great advantage over the heavily armed Romans, 
 whose foot could never keep pace with them 
 
 came to close combat. Their swords were un- 
 wieldy, awkward, and oflenceless weapons, com- 
 pared to the compact, manageable, cut-and- 
 thrust swords of their enemies, which could be 
 used in the closed melee. But an important 
 circumstance, which throws the advantage still 
 more on the side of the Romans, is, that while 
 their weapons were made of well-tempered steel, 
 the swords aud dirks of the Britons were, in all 
 probability, only made of copjier, or of copper 
 mixed with a little tin. We are told that the 
 swords of their neighbours, the Gauls, were made 
 of copper, and bent after the first blow, which 
 gave the Romans a great advantage over them. 
 In addition to their clumsy sword, the British 
 
 British Swokds, Daooer, Spear Heads, and Javklin IIeads, 
 of bronze.— Drawn by J. W. Archer, from ex^ples in the 
 Britisli Mui^enm. 
 
 infantry carried a short dirk and a spear. The 
 spear was sometimes used as a missile weapon, 
 having a leather thong fixed to it, and retained 
 in the hand when thrown, in order that it might 
 be recovered again : at the butt-end of this spear
 
 B.C. 55— A.D. 43.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 w.is sometimes a round h()!lf)W b.iU of coppei', or 
 mixed copper aud tiu, with pieces of metal inside; 
 and, shaking this, tliey made a noise, to frijjliten 
 the horses when they engaged with cavalry. 
 
 "With the exception of the Druids, all the young 
 men among the Britons aud other (.ycltic uationa 
 were trained to the use of arms. Frequent hosti- 
 lities among themselves kept them in practice ; 
 aud liunting and martial sports were among their 
 principal occupations in their brief periods of 
 ))eace. Even in tactics and strategics, the more 
 difficult parts of war, they displayed very consi- 
 derable talent aud skill. They drew up their 
 troops in regular order ; and if the form of a wedge 
 was not the very best for infantry, it has been 
 found, by the Turks and other Eastern nations, 
 most eU'ective for cavab-y appointed to charge. 
 They knew the importance of keeping a body in 
 reserve; and in several of tlieir Ijattles they showed 
 skill aud promptitude in outflanking the enemy, 
 and turuing him by tlie wings. Their infantry 
 generally occupied the centre, being disposed in 
 several lines, and in distinct bodies. These corjis 
 consisted of the warriors of one clan, commanded 
 each by its own chieftain; they were commonl}' 
 formed in the shape of a wedge, presenting its 
 sharp point to the enemy; and they were so dis- 
 posed, that they could readily support aud relieve 
 each other. The cavalry and chariots were placed 
 on the wings, but small flj'ing parties of both 
 manoeuvred along the front. In the rear and on 
 their flanks they fixed their travelling-cliariots 
 and their waggons, with tlieir respective families 
 in them, in order that those vehicles might serve 
 as barriers to prevent attack in those directions, 
 and that their courage might be inflamed by the 
 presence of all who were most dear to them. 
 
 Some of the n.ative princes displayed eminent 
 abilities in the conduct of war. According to the 
 Roman writers, Cassivellauuus, Caractacus, and 
 Galgacns, all formed combined movements and 
 enlarged plans of operation, and contrived strata- 
 gems aud surprises which would have done honour 
 to the greatest captains of Greece aud Rome. 
 Their choice of gi'ound for fighting upon was al- 
 most invariably judicious, and they availed them- 
 selves of their superior knowledge of the country 
 on all occasions. In the laborious arts of fortify- 
 ing, defending, or attacking camps, castles, aud 
 towns, they were, however, deficient. Their 
 strongest places were surrounded only by a shal- 
 low ditch aud a mud wall, while some of their 
 towns li.ad uotliing but a parapet of felleil trees 
 placed lengthwise. While the Roman camps, 
 though made to be occupied only for a niglit, were 
 sti-ougly fortified, the British camps were merely 
 surrounded by their cars aud waggons — a mode 
 of defence still common among the Tartar and 
 other nomadic tribes in Asia. But, as the Roman 
 
 war proceeded, we frequently find them giving 
 more attention to the defence of their night camps: 
 
 Britisu Foi!T!Fii:D C'amp,' in Sfcmtlimoro, cfilled White Cather- 
 'riiiiii.— Fi-om Roy's Militiny Antiquities. 
 
 and some of the more permanent positions they 
 took up were strengthened with deep ditches and 
 stone walls. 
 
 The armies of the ancient Britons were not 
 divided into bodies, mixed, but distinct as a whole, 
 consisting eacli of a determinate number of men, 
 recruited from different families and in diifei-ent 
 places, aud commanded by appointed officers of 
 various rauks, like the Roman legions and our 
 modern regiments ; but all the fighting-men of 
 each particular clan or great family formed a 
 separate band, commanded by the chieftain or 
 liead of that family. By this system, which had 
 other disadvantages, the command was frittered 
 away into minute fractions. All the several clans 
 wliich composed one state or kingdom were com- 
 manded in chief by the sovereign of that state ; 
 and when two or more states formed an alliance, 
 and made war in conjunction, the king of one of 
 these states was chosen to be generalissimo of the 
 whole. These elections gave rise to jealousies 
 and dissensions ; and all through the system 
 there were too many divisions of command and 
 power, and too great a disposition in the warrioi-s 
 to look up only to the head of their own clan, or at 
 furthest to the kiug of their own limited state. 
 
 Ear different fi'om these were the thoroughly 
 organized and iuter-dependent masses of the Ro- 
 man army, where the commauds were nicely de- 
 fined and graduated, and the legions (each a small 
 but perfect army in itself) acted at the voice of 
 the consul, or its one supreme chief, like a com- 
 plicated engine set in motion by its main-wheel. 
 As long as Rome maintained lier military glory, 
 the legions were composed only of free Roman 
 citizens, no allies or subjects of conquered uatious 
 being deemed worthy of the honour of fighting in 
 their ranks. Each legion Wivs divideii iuto horse 
 and ioot, the cavalry bearing what is considered,, 
 by modern scientific writei-s, a just i)roportion, 
 aud not more, to the infantry. Under the old 
 
 ' 'J'liis camp is 14S0 ft. long, nnd S;i0 ft. iviao.
 
 28 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militaui'. 
 
 Idngs a legiou consisted of 3000 foot, and 300 
 •horse; under the consuls, of 4200 foot, and 400 
 horse; but uuder Coesar and the emperors it 
 amounted to 6100 foot, and 726 horse. Like our 
 regiments, the legions were distinguished from 
 eacli other by their number; being called the 
 tirst, the second, the third, &c. In the early ages 
 of the Eepublic they had no more than four or five 
 legions kept on foot, but these were increased 
 with iucrease of conquest and territory, and under 
 tlie Empire they had as many as twenty-five or 
 thirty legions, even in time of peace. The in- 
 fantry of each legion was divided into ten cohorts. 
 The first cohort, whicli had tlie custody of the 
 eagle and the post of honour, was 1105 strong; 
 the remaining nine cohorts had 555 men each. 
 
 Instead of a long, awkward sword of copper, 
 every soldier had a short, manageable, well-tem- 
 pered Spanish blade of steel, sharp at both edges 
 as at tlie point; and he was always instructed to 
 thrust rather than cut, in order to inflict the 
 more fatal wounds, and expose his own body the 
 less. In addition to a lighter spear, the legion- 
 ary carried the formidable pilum, a heavy javelin, 
 six feet long, terminating in a strong triangular 
 point of steel, eighteen inches long. For delensive 
 armour they wore an open helmet with a lofty 
 crest, a breastplate or coat of mail, greaves on 
 their legs, and a large strong shield on their left 
 arms. This shield or buckler, altogether unlike 
 the small, round, basket-looking thing used by 
 the Britons, was four feet high, and two aud a 
 half broad; it was framed of a light but firm 
 wood, covered with bull's hide, and strongly 
 guarded with bosses or plates of iron or bronze. 
 
 The cavalry of a legion was divided into ten 
 troops or squadrons ; the first squadron, as des- 
 tined to act with the strong first cohort, consist- 
 ing of 132 men, while the nine remaining squad- 
 rons had only sixty-six men each. Their princi- 
 pal weapons were a sabre and a javelin; but at a 
 later period they borrowed the use of the lance 
 and iron mace or liammer from foreigners. For 
 defensive armour they had a helmet, " coat of 
 mail, and an oblong shield. 
 
 The legions serving abroad were generally at- 
 tended by auxiliaries raised among the provinces 
 aud conquests of the Empire, who for the most 
 ])art retained their national arms and loose modes 
 of fighting, and did all the duties of light troops. 
 Their number varied according to circumstances, 
 being seldom much inferior to that of the legions; 
 
 ^ " The slow progi'eas of tlie Romans in the reduction of Bri- 
 tain, is a fact which has not been sufficiently considered by his- 
 torians. It forms a remarkable deviation fi'om the ancient 
 policy, and, indeed, a striking contrast to the conquest of Gaul, 
 though that country was the last great acquisition in the West, 
 and defended by a people as brave as the Britons, more im- 
 proved, and far more numerous. It is an instance of the sud- 
 den change produced in their foreign policy by a revolution in 
 
 but in Britain, where mention of the barbarian 
 auxiliaries constantly occurs, and where, as we 
 have intimated, they performeil services for which 
 the legions were not calculated, they seem to have 
 been at least as numerous as the Roman soldiers. 
 Three legions, say the historians, were competent 
 to the occupation of Britain ; but to this force of 
 20,478 we must add the auxiliaries, which will 
 swell the number to 40,956. Gauls, Belgians, 
 Batavians, and Germans were the hordes that ac- 
 companied the legions in our island. 
 
 Such were the main features and appointments 
 of the Eimian legions in their prime, and such 
 they continued during their conflict with the 
 Britons, and long after all the southern parts of 
 our island were subjugated by their might. They 
 were afterwards sadly diminished in numbers and 
 in consideration. They lost their discipline; the 
 men threw ofi' their defensive armour as too heavy 
 for them to wear ; changes were made in theii 
 weajoons ; aud, not to notice many iutermediate 
 variations, a legion, at the final departure of the 
 Romans from Britain, consisted only of from 2500 
 to 3000 indilTereutly armed men. 
 
 After Cossar's departure, Britain was left un- 
 disturbed by foreign arms for nearly 100 yeara.' 
 But few of the events that happened, during that 
 long interval, have been transmitted to us. We 
 can, however, make out in that dim obscurity that 
 the country, and more particularlj' those maritime 
 parts of it occupied by the Belgse, aud facing the 
 coast of Gaul, made considerable advances in civi- 
 lization, borrowing from the Gauls, with whom 
 they were in close communication, some of those 
 useful and elegant arts which that jieople had 
 learned from the Roman conquerors, no w peaceably 
 settled among them. Besides their journeys into 
 Gaul, which are well proved, it is supposed that 
 during this long interval not a few of the superior 
 class of Britons, from time to time, crossed the 
 Alps, and found their way to Rome, where the 
 civilization and arts of the world then centred. 
 
 This progress, however, does not appear to have 
 been accompanied by any improvement in the po- 
 litical system of the country, or by any union and 
 amalgamation of the disjointed parts or states. 
 Internal wars continued to be waged ; and this 
 disunion of the Britons, their constant civil dis- 
 sensions, and the absence of any steady system 
 of defence, laid them open to the Romans when- 
 ever those conquerors should think fit to revisit 
 
 their internal government. The patriciate steadily advanced to 
 universal dominion, by adlierence to the traditional policy of 
 their body. The measures of each emperor fluctuated with his 
 temper and his personal circumstances. . . . Wise and good 
 emperors, desirous of securing a civil and legal government, 
 reasonably avoided conquests which might once more tempt vic- 
 torious commanders to overthrow their worlj." — Sir J. Mackin- 
 tosh, vol. i. p. 20.
 
 A.D. 43 -440.] 
 
 BraTISlI AXD ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 20 
 
 CnAPTER II.— CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. 
 
 THE INVASION UNDER CLArDIUS TO THE ARUIVAL OF THE SAXONS. — AD. 43—119. 
 
 lloiiian invasion of Britain in tlie reign of tne Emperor Claudius— Progress of tlio Roman gei:ir.ila Plautiu.'i, Ves- 
 pasian, Ostorius— Brave resistance and defeat of Caractaons— Cajiture of Mona by Suetonius — Kevolt of the 
 Britons under Boadicea — Her defeat and deatli— Agricola appointed governor of Britain— His successful and 
 wise administration — His nortliern campaigns and (lieir progress — His victory at l\fij}is Ommpiiis over the 
 Caledonians — Operations of his fleet, aud its voyage round tlie island — Inconclusive result of liia victories over 
 tbe Caledonians — The Caledonians, after a long peace, attack tlie province of South Britain — Graham's Dyljc 
 built to repress tliem — Unsuccessful northern campaign of Severns — Builds a new wall of stone to protect the 
 province— Carausius governor of Britain — Decay of the Roman power in Britain — Invasions of the Scits and 
 i'icts — Weakness of the .South Britons and its causes — Their feeble resistance to the Scots and Picts — Their 
 religious controversies — Their appeal to Rome in vain for military assistance — They invite the Saxons to their 
 aid — Arrival of Heugist and Horsa. 
 
 N the uiuety-seveiith year after Cas- 
 sar's second e.xpeJitiou (a.d. 43), the 
 Emperor Claudius' resolved to seize 
 the island of Britain, aud Aulus Plau- 
 tius, a skilful commander, landed with 
 four complete legions, which, with the 
 cavalry and auxiliaries, must have made above 
 50,000 men. The Britons, who had made no pre- 
 paratious, at fii'st offered no resistance; aud wheu 
 they took tlie field under Caractacus and Togo- 
 dumuus, sons of the deceased Cunobeliuus, who is 
 supposed to have been King of the Trinobantes, 
 they were thorouglily defeated in the inland 
 country by the Komans. Some states or tribes 
 detaching themselves from the confederacy, then 
 submitted ; and Aulus Plautius, leaving a garri- 
 son in those parts which included Gloucester- 
 shire and portions of the contiguous counties, fol- 
 lowed up his victories beyond the river Severn, 
 and made considerable progress in subduing the 
 inhabitants. After sustaining a great defeat on 
 the right bank of the Severn, the Britons re- 
 treated eastward to some marshes on the Thames, 
 where, availing themselves of tlie nature of the 
 ground, they made a desperate stand, aud caused 
 the Romans great loss. In these campaigns 
 Plautius made great use of his light-armed bar- 
 barian auxiliaries (chiefly Germans), many of 
 whom, ou this particular occasion, were lost in 
 the deep bogs and swamps. Though Togodura- 
 ims was slain, it does not appear that the na- 
 tives were defeated in this battle; and Plautius, 
 seeing their determined spirit, witlidrew his army 
 to the south of the Thames, to await the arrival 
 of the Emperor Claudius, whose presence and 
 fresh forces lie earnestly solicited. Claudius em- 
 barked with reinforcements at Ostiaut the mouth 
 
 ' Pompoiiius Mela, who wrote in the time of Claudius, ex- 
 prrsscs a hupu that tlio success of ilie Itonian arms will soon 
 make tli.^ island aud its savage inhabit.uits better known. 
 
 of the Tiber, lauded at Massilia (Marseilles), and 
 proceeded through Gaul to Britain. It is said 
 that some elephants were included iu the force he 
 brouglit, but we hear uothiug of those animals 
 after his arrival in the island. There is some 
 confusion .as to the immediate etfect of the em- 
 peror's arrival, the two brief historians- of the 
 events contradicting each other; but we believe 
 that, witliout fighting any battles, the pusilla- 
 nimous Claudius accompanied his army on its 
 fresh advance to the north of the Thames, was 
 jn-esent at the taking of Caraaloduuum, tlie capital 
 of the Trinobautes, and that then he received the 
 proffered submission of some of the states, and 
 returned to enjoy an easily-earned triumph at 
 Rome, whence he had been absent altogether 
 somewhat less than six months. 
 
 While Vespasian, his second in command, who 
 was afterwards emperor under the same name, 
 employed himself iu subduing Vectis (the Isle of 
 Wight), and the maritime states on the southern 
 aud eastern coasts, Aulus Plautius prosecuted a 
 long and, in great part, an indecisive warfare with 
 the inland Britons, who were still commanded 
 by Caractacus. Between them both, Plautius and 
 Vespasian thoroughly reduced no more of the is- 
 land than what lies to the south of the Th.ames, 
 with a narrow strip on the left bank of that river; 
 aud when Plautius was recalled to Rome, even 
 these territories were overrun aud thrown into 
 confusion by the Britons. Ostorius Scapvda, 
 the new jiroprsetor, ou his arrival in the island 
 (a.d. 50), found tlie affairs of the Romans in an 
 all but hopeless state ; their allies, attacked aud 
 plunilered on all .sides, were falling from them, 
 the boldness of the unsubdued slates w;us rapidly 
 increasing, and the people they held in subjection 
 were ripe for revolt. But Ostorius, who had pro- 
 
 ' Dio Cos), (in tlio abridgraelit by Xiphilinus), lib. li; Sueto- 
 nius in C. Claud, c. xvii.
 
 ^0 
 
 ITISTOUY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Miutaiit 
 
 baV>ly brought reinforcetnents into the iHlaml. 
 was equal to this emergency: l^novving how mucli 
 depends on the beginning of a campaign, he put 
 himself at the head of the light troops, and ad- 
 vanced against the marauding enemy by rapid 
 marches. The Britons, who did not expect he 
 would open a campaign iu the winter, were taken 
 by surprise, and defeated with great loss. It 
 should appear from Tacitus that Ostoriusat once 
 recovered all the country, as far as the Severn, 
 that had been conquered, or rather temporarily 
 occupied, by his predecessor Plaulius ; for the 
 gi-eat historian tells us, immediately after, that he 
 erected a line of forts on the Sabrina (Severn) and 
 the Antona (Nene); but it is more probable that 
 this advance was made by a series of battles 
 rather than by one hasty blow struck in the win- 
 ter by the light division of his army. Ostorius 
 was the first to cover and protect the conquered 
 territory by forts and lines; the line he now drew 
 cut off from the rest of the island nearly all the 
 southern and south-eastern parts, which included 
 the more civilized states, who had either submitted 
 or become willing allies, or been conquered by 
 Plautius and Vespasian. It was by the gradual 
 advance of lines like these that the Romans 
 brought the whole of England south of the Tyne 
 under subjection. Ostorius also adopted the cau- 
 tious policy of disarming all such of the Britons 
 within the line of forts as he suspected. This 
 measure, always odious, and never to be earned 
 into effect without shameful abuses of power, par- 
 ticularlv exasperated those Britons within the 
 Hue who, like the Iceni, had not been conquered, 
 but, of their own good and free will, had become 
 the allies of the Romans. Enemies could not treat 
 them worse than such friends — t]ie surrender of 
 arms was the worst consequence that could result 
 from defeat in a war which they had not yet 
 essayed. It would also naturally occur to them, 
 that if the Romans were permitted to coop them 
 up within military posts, and sever them from 
 the rest of the island, their independence, whether 
 unarmed or armed, w;is completely sacrificed. 
 
 The Iceni, a brave tribe, who are supposed to 
 have dwelt in Norfolk and Suffolk, took up arms, 
 formed a league with their neighbours, and chose 
 their ground for a decisive battle. They were 
 beaten by Ostoriu.?, after having fought obsti- 
 nately to the last, and giving signal proofs of cou- 
 rage. After the defeat of the Iceni and their allies 
 the Romans marched beyond their line of demar- 
 cation against a people called the Cangi; and, 
 Tacitus says, they got within a short march of 
 that sea that lies between Britain and Ireland. 
 From the pur.suit of this timid enemy, Ostorius 
 was recalled by a rising of the Brigantes, who 
 occu])ied Yorkshire, with pnrts of Lancashire and 
 the ailjoining counties. Having subdued these 
 
 in their tiu'n, and drawn a camp and fixed a co- 
 lony of veterans among them, Ostorius marched 
 rapidly .against the Sikires — the inhabitants of 
 South Wales — the fiercest and most olistinate 
 enemies the Romans ever encountered in South 
 Britain. To their natural ferocity, s.ays Tacitus, 
 these people added the courage which they now 
 derived from the presence of Cai-actacus. His 
 
 Larbaeian Prisoner.^ — i>iuwn by -T, W. Archer, from a 
 marble iu the BrltiBh Mu^seuia. 
 
 valour, and the various turns of his fortune, had 
 spread the fame of this heroic chief throughout 
 the island. His knowledge of the country, and 
 his admirable skill in the stratagems of war, were 
 great advantages; but he could not hope, with 
 inferior forces, to beat a well-disci]5lined Roman 
 army. He therefore retired to the territory of 
 the Ordovices, which seems to have included 
 within it nearly all North "Wales. Having drawn 
 thither to his standard all who considered peace 
 with the Romans as another word for slavery, he 
 resolved to wait firmly the issue of a battle. Ac- 
 cording to the great historian, he chose his field 
 with admirable art. It was rendered safe by steep 
 and craggy hills. In parts where the mountains 
 opened, and the easy acclivity afforded an ascent, 
 he raised a rampart of massy stones. A river 
 which offei'cd no safe ford flowed between him 
 and the enemy, and a part of his forces showed 
 themselves in front of his ramparts. 
 
 As the Romans approached, the chieftains of 
 the confederated British clans rushed along the 
 ranks, exhorting their men, and Caractacus ani- 
 mated the whole. There is a lofty hill in Shrop- 
 shire, near to the confluence of the rivers Colne 
 and Teme, which is generally believed to be the 
 
 ' Tills fiiie head, remavk.ible from its expression of heroic me- 
 lancholy, is conjectured to represent the imago of Caractacus, 
 and is figured, accordingly, in the DUettanti Society's publica- 
 tion of Antique Marbles and Bronzes, with a description by 
 n. P. Kniaht.
 
 i.D. 43—449.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 31 
 
 scene of the liero's last .action. Its ridges are 
 furroweJ by trendies, .and still retain fr.agnients 
 of a loose stone rampart, and the hill for many 
 ceutnries h.oa been called by the pooiile Caer-Ca- 
 radoc, or the castle or fortitied place of Caradoc, 
 supposed to be the British name of Caractacns. 
 Ostorins was .astouished at the eseellent arrange- 
 
 Plan of BruTlsu Cajit on C'ox.il Knoll.'— From Roy s Milit.ary 
 Antiquities. 
 
 ment and spirit he saw, but bis numbers, disci- 
 pline, and superior arms, once more gained him 
 a victory. Tacitus says that the Britons, having 
 neither breast]ilates uor helmets, could not main- 
 tain the conflict — that the better Roman swords 
 and spears made dreadful liavock — that the vic- 
 tory was complete. Caractacns escaped from the 
 carnage ; but his wife and daughter were taken 
 prisoners, and his brothers surrendered soon after 
 the battle. The hero himself did not, however, 
 escapo long, for having taken refuge with his steji- 
 mother, Cartismandua, Queen of the Brigantcs, 
 that heartless woman caused him to bo put in 
 chains, and delivered up to the Romans. From 
 the camp of Ostorius he was carried, w'ith his 
 wife and all his family, to the foot of the emperor's 
 throne. All Rome — all Italy were impatient to 
 gaze on the indomitable Briton, who for nine 
 years had bidden defiauce to the masters of the 
 world. His name was everywhere known, and 
 he was everywhere received with marked respect. 
 In the presence of Claudius his friends and family 
 quailed and begged for mercy; he alone was su- 
 perior to misfortune: his speech was manly with- 
 out being insolent — his countenance still unaltered, 
 not a symptom of fear appearing — no sorrow, no 
 mean condescension; he was great and dignified 
 even in ruin. This magnanimous behaviour no 
 
 * Caer-Caradoc was supposed by Camden to be the scone of the 
 final struggle between CaractAcus and Ostorius ; but, fi'om vari- 
 ous circumstances mentioned by Tacitus refemng clearly to the 
 geography of the spot, and with which the site of Coxal KnoU 
 alone corresponds, Uoy, supported by other good authorities, 
 believes that locality to liavo been the true scene of the action, 
 and Caer-Caradoc to have been merely the castle of Caractacns. 
 Cosal Knoll is situated on the river Teme, between Knighton 
 and Lentw.anlijie, some miles distant from Caer-Caradoc. Here 
 the remains of a British camp still exist, measuring 1700 ft. in 
 length; with a breadth, where widest, of 720 ft., and, where uar- 
 toweat, of 000 ft. 
 
 ' doubt contributed toprocurehim milder treatment 
 than the Roman comiuerors usually bestowed on 
 captive princes; his cliains and tlio.soof his family 
 were instantly struck off. At this crisis T.acitus 
 leaves him, and his subsequent history is altoge- 
 ther unknown. 
 
 Their sanguinary defeat and the loss of Carac- 
 tacns did not break the spirit of the Silure.s. 
 They fell upon the Romans soon after, broke* up 
 their fortified camp, and prevented them from 
 erecting a line of forts across their country. The 
 prefect of the camp, with eight centurions and 
 the bravest of his soldiers, \va.s slain; ami, but 
 for the arrival of reinforcements, the whole de- 
 tachment would have been sacrificed. A for.ag- 
 iug party, and the strong detachments sent to 
 its support, were routed; this forced Ostorius to 
 bring his legions into action, but, even with his 
 whole force, his success was doubtful. Continual 
 and most hai'assing attacks and surprises fol- 
 lowed, till at length Ostorius, the victor of Carac- 
 tacns, sunk under the fatigue and vexation, and 
 expired, to the joy of the Britons, who boasted 
 that though he had not fallen in battle, it was 
 still their war which had brought him to the 
 grave. The country of the Silures, intersected 
 by numerous and rapid rivers, heaped into moun- 
 tains, with winding and narrow defiles, and co- 
 vered with forests, became the grave of many 
 other Rom;ins; and it was not till the reign of 
 Vespasian, and more than twenty years after the 
 death of Ostorius, that it was conquered by Julius 
 Froutinus. 
 
 For some time the Roman power in Britain 
 was stationary, or, at most, it made very little 
 l)rogress under Aulus Didius and Veranius, the 
 immediate successors of Ostorius. Indeed, under 
 these governors, the Emperor Nero, who had suc- 
 ceeded his father Claudius, is said to have seri- 
 ously entertained the thought of withdrawing the 
 troops, and abandoning the island altogether^so 
 profitless and uncertain seemed the Roman pos- 
 session of Britain. 
 
 But the next governor, Paulinus Suetonius, an 
 officer of distinguished merit (.\.D. 59- Gl), revived 
 the spirit of the conquerors. Being well aware 
 that the Island of jNIona, now Anglesey, was the 
 chief seat of the Druids, the refuge-place of the 
 defeated British warriors, and of the disalfectcd 
 generally, he resolved to subdue it. In order to 
 facilitate his approach, he ordered the construc- 
 tion of a number of flat-bottomed boats ; in 
 these he transported his infantry over the strait 
 which divides the island from the main (the 
 Menai), while the cavalry were to find tlieir way 
 across, partly by fording and partly by swimming. 
 The Britons added the terroi-s of their supersti- 
 tion to the force of their arms for the defence of 
 this sacred island. " On the opposite shore," says
 
 52 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militart. 
 
 Tacitus, " there stood a widely diversified host : 
 there were armed men in dense array, and women 
 running among them, wlio in dismal dresses, and 
 with dishevelled hair, like furies, carried flaming 
 torches. Around were Druids, pouring forth 
 curses, lifting up their hands to heaven, and 
 striking terror, by the novelty of their appear- 
 ance, into the hearts of the Roman soldiers, who, 
 as if their limbs were pai-alyzed, exposed them- 
 selves motionless to the blows of the enemy. At 
 last, aroused by the exhortations of their leader, 
 and stimulating one another to despise a frantic 
 band of women and priests, they make their on- 
 set, overthrow their foes, and burn them in the 
 fires which they themselves had kindled for others. 
 A garrison was afterwards placed there among 
 the conquered, and the groves sacred to their 
 cruel superstition were cut down." 
 
 But while Suetonius was engaged in secui-ing 
 the sacred island, events took place in his rear 
 which went far to commit the safety of the entire 
 empire of the Romans in Britain. His attack 
 on the Druids and the grove of Mona could not 
 fail to exasperate all the British tribes that clung 
 to their ancient worship : other and recent cau.ses 
 of provocation were particular to certain of the 
 states. The Romans, in the colonies they had 
 planted in the island, indulged too freely in what 
 are called the rights of conquest: they treated the 
 Britons with cruelty and oppression ; they drove 
 them from their houses, and, adding insult to 
 wrong, called them by the opprobrious name of 
 slaves. In these acts the veterans or superiors 
 were actively seconded by the common soldiery 
 — a class of men who, in the words of Tacitus, 
 are by their habits of life trained to licentious- 
 ness. The conquerors, too, had introduced priests 
 of their own creed ; and these, " with a pretended 
 zeal for religion, devoured the substance of the 
 land." Boadicea, widow of King Prasutagus, and 
 now Queen of the Iceni, probably because she 
 remonstrated against the forcible seizure of the 
 territory her husband bequeathed her, or possibly 
 because she attempted to resist the Romans in 
 their plunder, was treated with the utmost bar- 
 barity: Catus, the procurator, caused her to be 
 scourged, her daugliters to be violated in her 
 presence, and the relations of her deceased hus- 
 Ijand to be reduced to slavery. Her unheard-of 
 Avrongs, the dignity of her birth, the energy of 
 her character, made Boadicea the proper rallying 
 point; and immediately an extensive ai-nied le.igue 
 intrusted her with the supreme command. Boa- 
 dicea's own subjects were joined by the Trino- 
 bantes; and the neighbouring states, not as yet 
 broken into a slavish submission, engaged in 
 secret councils to stand forward in the cause of 
 national liberty. They were all encouraged by 
 the absence of Suetonius, and thought it no diffi- 
 
 cult enterprise to overrun a colony undefended 
 by a single fortification. Tacitus says (and the 
 statement is curious, considering their recent and 
 uncertain tenure) that the Roman governors had 
 attended to improvements of taste and elegance, 
 but neglected the useful — that they hail embel- 
 lished the province, but taken no pains to put it 
 in a state of defence. The storm first burst on 
 the colony of C'amalodunum, which was laid waste 
 with fire and sword, a legion which marched to 
 its relief being cut to pieces. Catus, the procu- 
 rator, terrified at the fury his own enormities had 
 mainly excited, fled, and effected his escape into 
 Gaul. On receiving the news of these disasters, 
 Suetonius hurried across the Meuai Strait, and, 
 marching through the heart of the country, came 
 to London, which city, though not yet dignified 
 with the name of a Roman colony, was a popu- 
 lous, trading, and prosperous place. He soon 
 found he could not maintain that important town, 
 and therefore determined to evacuate it. The in- 
 habitants, who foresaw the fate of the fair town, 
 implored him with tears to change his plan, but 
 in vain. The signal for the march was given, the 
 legions defiled through the gates, but all the citi- 
 zens who chose to follow their eagles were taken 
 under their protection. They had scarcely cleared 
 out from London when the Britons entered: of 
 all those who, from age, or weakness, or the attrac- 
 tions of the spot, had thought proper to remain 
 behind, scarcely one escaped. Tlie inhabitants of 
 Verulamium were in like manner utterly annihi- 
 lated, and, the carnage still spreading, no fewer 
 than 70,000 Romans and their confederates fell 
 in the course of a few days. The infuriated in- 
 surgents made no prisoners, gave no quarter, but 
 employed the gibbet, the fire, and the cross, with- 
 out distinction of age or sex. 
 
 Suetonius, having received reinforcements which 
 made his army amount to about 10,000 men, all 
 highly disciplined, chose an advantageous field, 
 and waited the battle. The Britons were also 
 reinforced, and from all quarters : Tacitus says 
 they were an incredible multitude, but their 
 ranks were swelled and weakened by women 
 and children. They were the assailants, and at- 
 tacked the Romans in the front of their strong 
 position. 
 
 Previously to the first charge, Boadicea,mounted 
 in a war-chariot, with her long yellow hair stream- 
 ing to her feet, with her two injured daughteis 
 beside her, drove tlu-ough the ranks, and harangued 
 the tribes or nations, each in its turn.' She re- 
 minded them that she was not the first woman 
 that had led the Britons to battle ; she spoke of 
 her own irreparable wrongs, of the wrongs of her 
 
 1 Dio has described her coetxune as being a plaited tunic nf 
 .arious colours, a chain of gold round her waist, and a long 
 luantle over all. — Dio Ntc, apud XiphiL
 
 AD. 43—419] 
 
 BRITISH AND E051AN PERIOD. 
 
 3-i 
 
 people and all their neighbours, ami said wliatever 
 was most calculated to spirit them against their 
 j)roud and licentious op]5re.ssoi-s. The Drilons, 
 however, were defeated witli treiueiidous loss, and 
 the wretched Boadicea put an end to her exist- 
 ence by taking poison. As if not to be beliiud 
 tl»e barbarity of those they emphatically styled 
 barbarians, the Romans committed an indiscrimi- 
 nate massacre, visiting with fire aud sword not 
 only the lands of those who had joined the revolt, 
 but of those who were only suspected of having 
 wavered in their allegiance to the emperor. Taci- 
 tus estimates the number of the Britons who were 
 thus destroj-ed at 80,000 ; and in the train of war 
 and devastation followed famine and disease. But 
 the despondence of sickness aud the pangs of 
 hunger could not induce them to submit ; and 
 though Suetonius received important reinforce- 
 ments from the Continent (according to Tacitus, by 
 the directions of the Emperor Nero, 2000 legion- 
 ary soldiers, eight auxiliai-y cohorts, aud 1000 horee, 
 were sent to him from Germany), aud retained 
 the command some time longer, he left the island 
 without finishing this war ; and, notwithstandiug 
 Ids victories over the Druids and Boadicea, his 
 iaimediate successors were obliged to relapse into 
 inactivity, or merely to stand ou the defensive, 
 ■without attemjiting the extension of their do- 
 minions. 
 
 Some fifteen or sixteen years after the de- 
 parture of Suetouius, the Romans recommenced 
 their former movements (a.d. 75-78), and Ju- 
 lius Froutinus at last subdued the Silui-es. Tins 
 general was succeeded by Cua;us Julius Agri- 
 cola, who was fortunate, as far as his fame is 
 regarded, in having for his son-in-law the great 
 Tacitus, the partial and eloquent recorder of his 
 deeds. Exaggeration and favour apart, however, 
 Agricola appeai-s to have had skill in the arts 
 both of peace and war. He bad served uuder 
 Suetonius dm-iug the Boadicean conflicts, he was 
 beloved by his army and well acquainted with the 
 country, and now, before he left the supreme com- 
 mand, he completed the conquest of South Biitain, 
 and showed tlie victorious eagles of Rome as far 
 north as tlie Grampian Hills. One of his first 
 operations, which ju-oves with what tenacity the 
 Britons held to their own, was the reconquest of 
 Mona ; for scarcely had Suetonius turned his 
 back, when they repossessed themselves of that 
 most holy island Having made this successful 
 beginning, and also chastised the Ordovices, who 
 liad cut a division of cavalry to pieces, he endea- 
 voured, by mild measures, to endear himself to 
 the acknowledged ])rovincials of Rome, aud to 
 conciliate the British tribes generally by acts of 
 kindness. " For," says Tacitus, '■ the Britons 
 willingly supply our armies with recruits, pay 
 their taxes without a murmur, and perform all 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 the services of government with alacrity, pro- 
 vided they have no re:ison to complain of oppres- 
 sion. When injured, their resentment is quick, 
 sudden, and impatient : they are couquercil, not 
 spirit-broken : they may be reduced to obedience, 
 not to slavery." 
 
 At the same time, Agricola endeavoured to sub- 
 due their fierceness and change their erratic habits, 
 by teaching them some of the useful arts, aud ac- 
 customing them to some of the luxuries of civilized 
 life. He persuade;! them to settle in towns, to 
 build comfortable dwelling-houses, to raise halU 
 aud temples. It was a capital part of his policy 
 to establish a system of education, and give to the 
 sons of the leading British chiefs a tincture of 
 polite letters. He praised the talents of the pti- 
 l>ils, aud already saw them, by the force of theii- 
 natural genius, outstripping the Gauls, who were 
 distinguished for their aptitude and abilities. 
 Thus, by degrees, the Britons began to cultivate 
 the beauties of the Roman language, which they 
 had before disdained — to wear the Roman toga as 
 a fashionable part of dress — and to indulge in the 
 luxuries of baths, porticoes, and elegant banquets. 
 
 In the second year of his government (a.d. 79), 
 Agricola advanced into the uorth-westeru parts 
 of BriUiin, and partly by force, and more by cle- 
 menc3', brought several tribes to submission. 
 These are not named by Tacitus, but they pro- 
 bably dwelt in the heart of the country, to the 
 oast of the Ordovices and the Silures. AVhere- 
 ever he gained a district he erected fortifications, 
 composed of castles and ramparts. 
 
 In his third campaign (a.d. 80) Agricola led 
 his army still farther north; but the line of 
 march, and the degree of jjrogress made in it, 
 are not easily ascertained. The out lines jjre- 
 sented to us by Tacitus are vague and indistinct, 
 which may be ascribed both to the generality of 
 that writer's language, and to the limits of his 
 information. 
 
 It is the opinion of a late writer,' however, that 
 Agricola, setting out from Maucuuium, the Man- 
 chester of present times, led his army towards the 
 north-western coasts, and uot towards the noi'tli- 
 eastern, as is commonly stated ; and that, after 
 traversing parts of Lancashire, Westmoreland, 
 and Cumberland, he came to the 7'ati, which this 
 writer contends was not the river Tay, but the 
 Solway Frith. The Tau, he says (the Taus of 
 Tacitus), was a British word, signifying an estu- 
 ary, or any extending water; it might equally 
 imjily the Solway, the Tay, or any otlu'r cdtuar\'. 
 Besides, it was the plan of this cautions general, it 
 is argued, to advance by degrees, and fortify the 
 country as he advanced; and we accordingly find 
 him spending the remainder of this season in 
 
 ' Clialmers, CakUunia. 
 
 s
 
 31. 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militait. 
 
 buUJing a line of forts, in the most convenient 
 situations for lieepiug possession of tlio territory 
 he hail gaiueil. The raising of a part, if not of 
 tlie wluile of that rampart Jrawu right across the 
 island, from the Solway near to the mouth of the 
 Tyue, and called Agricola's Wall, is supposed to 
 have taken place in this year. It must be con- 
 fessed, however, that the tenor of Tacitus' nar- 
 rative, and some of his expressions in particular, 
 require considerable straining before we can I'e- 
 concile them with this account. In the first place, 
 it is to be observed, that he speaks of Agi'icola's 
 march to the Taus in his third summer as merely 
 an inroad, the etfects of which were to discover the 
 country, to lay it waste, and to strike terror into 
 the inhabitants. It appears to be clear that the 
 occupation of it was not at that time attempted 
 or thought of. Then, when the liistorian pro- 
 ceeds to relate the operations of the next cam- 
 paign, he expressly informs us that the country 
 which Agricola employed this fourth summer in 
 taking possession of and fortifying, was that whicli 
 he had thus in the preceding summer overrun. 
 No words are used which can imply that he pene- 
 trated into any new country iu his fourth cam- 
 paign ; the statement distinctly is, that he only 
 occupied and secured what he had already sur- 
 veyed and laid waste. 
 
 According to the view, however, which sup- 
 poses him not till now to have ever been be- 
 yond the Solway, his fourth summer (a.d. 81) 
 was employed iu exploring and overrunning the 
 country extending from that arm of the sea 
 to the Friths of Clyde and Forth, and in secui-- 
 ing, as usual, the advance he had thus made. 
 Tacitus describes the place where the waters of 
 the Glottaand Bodotria (the Friths of Clyde and 
 Forth) are prevented from joining only by a nar- 
 row neck of land, and tells us that Agricola di-ew 
 a chain of forts across that isthmus. These forts 
 are supposed to have stood iu the same line where 
 Lollius Urbieus afterwards erected his more com- 
 pact rampart, and not far from the modern canal 
 which connects the two estuaries. 
 
 But in making this advance Agricola seems to 
 have neglected the great promontory of Galloway, 
 which lay between the Solway and the Clyde, and 
 was then occupied by the Novantce, and, in part, 
 by the Selgovoe and Damnii; we mean more pai-- 
 ticulai-ly the country now included in Wigton, 
 Kirkcudbright, Dumfries, and Ayrshire. In his 
 fifth campaign (a.d. 82), therefore, he thought it 
 prudent to subdue these tribes, wlio, in the ad- 
 vance he contemplated for the next year beyond 
 the Frith of Forth, would, from their westeiu 
 position, have been iu his rear. He accordingly 
 invaded " that part of Britain," s.ays Tacitus, 
 " which is opposite to Ireland," being the whole 
 extent of Galloway; and to do this, he is sup- 
 
 posed to liave sailed from Kilbride Loch, in Cum- 
 berlanil, and on the Solway, and to have lamled 
 on the estuary of Locher ' From the Galloway 
 coast lie saw the distant hills of Ireland, and tlie 
 sight is said to have suggested the idea of a fresh 
 invasion, to which, moreover, he was incited by 
 an Irish chieftain, who, being expelled from his 
 native country, had taken refuge with the Roman 
 commander, llaving, after various engagenjents, 
 cleared the south-west of Scotland as far as his 
 fortified works on the Frith of Clyde, he seems to 
 have put the mass of his army into winter quar- 
 ters, along the line he had drawn from that estu- 
 ary to the Frith of Forth, so as to have them 
 ready for next year's campaign. 
 
 In his sixth year (a.d. 83) Agricola resolved 
 to extend his conquests to the north-east, be- 
 yond the Frith of Forth. His fleet had already 
 surveyed the coasts and harbours, and his naval 
 officers showed him the most commodious pas- 
 sage — at Inchgarvey, as it is supposed — where 
 he seems to have been met by a part of his 
 fleet, and to have been wafted over to the ad- 
 vancing point ill Fife, now called Northferry." 
 Other writei-s, however, supjiose that he marched 
 along the southern side of the Forth, to a point 
 where the river was narrow and fordable, and 
 crossed it somewhere near Stirling. It is possible 
 that both courses may have been adopted by dif- 
 ferent divisions of the troops. On the north side 
 of the Forth the troops were attemled and suii- 
 ported by the ships, so that their march must have 
 been along the east coast. The fleet kept so near 
 the shore that the mariners frequently landed 
 and encamped with the land forces; each of these 
 bodies entertaining the other with marvellous 
 tales of what they had seen and done in these 
 unknown seas and regions.^ 
 
 Having crosseil the Frith of Forth, Agricola 
 found himself, for the first time, fairly engaged 
 with the real Caledonians — a people at the least as 
 fierce and brave as any he had hitherto contended 
 witli. They were not taken by surprise, nor did 
 tliey wait to be attacked. Descending from the 
 upper country, as Agricola advanced into Fife, 
 strong bands of them fell upon the new Roman 
 forts on the isthmus between the Forth and 
 Clyde, which had been left behind without suffi- 
 cient defence. Soon after they made a night at- 
 tack on the ninth legion, one of the divisions of 
 the main army, and nearly succeeded in cutting 
 it to pieces, iu spite of the strong camp iu which 
 it was intrenched. This camp was probably situ- 
 ated at Loch Ore, about two miles to the south 
 of Loch Leveu, where ditches and other traces 
 of a camp are still seen. In a general battle, 
 however, to which this nocturnal attack led, 
 
 I Clialmers' Caledonia. - Fbid. ' Tacit. Vit. Agric. c. iit.
 
 A. D. 43-449.] 
 
 BRITISH AND KOMAN TERIOD. 
 
 oo 
 
 the Caledouiaus were beaten, and, witliout any 
 other succcssl'ul exploit, the Romans wintered 
 north of tlie Frith of Fortli, in Fife, where 
 their fleet supplied them with ]>rovisious, and 
 kept open their conimnnicatiou with the forts in 
 the south. The Caledonians, no way dispirited, 
 mustered all their clans for the next summer's 
 campaign, and submitted to the supreme com- 
 mand of Galgacus, wlio ranks with Cassivcllau- 
 niis and Caractacus as one of the heroes of the 
 British wars. 
 
 At the opening of his seventh and last cam- 
 paign (a.d. 84), when Agricola moved forward 
 lie found the euem_v, to the number of 30,000, 
 posted on the acclivities of J/ons Orampiiis, 
 determined to oppose his progress in a gene- 
 ral battle. The position of the Caledonians on 
 this occasion, and the field of the great battle, 
 althougli they have been much disputed, seem to 
 admit of being fixed on very probable grounds. 
 From the nature of the country, Agricola would 
 direct his line of march by the course of the De- 
 von, would turn to the right from Glen Devon, 
 through the opening of the Oehil Hills, along 
 the course of the rivulet which forms Glen-Eagles, 
 leaving the Braes of Ogilvie on his left. He would 
 then pass between Blackford and Auchterarder, 
 towards the Grampi.ans (or Gran-Pen of the Bri- 
 tish, meaning the head or chief ridge or summit), 
 which he would see before him as he defiled from 
 the Ochils. An easy march would then bring 
 him to the Moor of Ardoch, at the roots of the 
 Grampians, where there are very evident signs of 
 ancient conflicts. The lai'go ditch of a Roman 
 camp can still be traced for a considerable dis- 
 tance; weapons, both British and Roman, have 
 been dug up ; and on the hill above Ardoch INIoor 
 are two enormous heaps of stones, called Carn- 
 wochel and Carnlee, probably the sepulchral 
 cairns of the Caledonians who fell in the battle.' 
 
 The host of Galgacus fought with great ob- 
 stinacy and bravery, but they were no more able 
 to resist the disciplined legions of Rome in a 
 pitched battle than their brethren, the southern 
 Britons, had been. They were defeated, and ]iur- 
 sued with great loss, and the next day nothing 
 was seen in front of the Roman army but a silent 
 and deserted country, and houses involved in 
 smoke and flame. Tacitus relates that some of 
 the fleeing natives, after tears and tender em- 
 braces, killed their wives and children, in order to 
 save them from slavery and the Romans. In the 
 battle the Caledonians used war-chariots, like the 
 southern Britons, and the Roman writer mentions 
 their broad-swords and small targets, which re- 
 mained so long after the peculiar arms of the 
 Highlanders. The victory of Agricola, however 
 
 * Cbalniere" Cakdonia, book i. ch. iii.; "Roya MUUaii/ Antiqui- 
 ties, ijlate 10 ; Stobie's Map of Perth. 
 
 valueless in its results, was complete; and though 
 Tacitus does not reconl his death on the lichi,lie 
 s]ieaks no 7nore of the brave Galgacus. 
 
 In tlie course of these two camp.-iigns north of 
 the Forth, the Romans seem to have derived an 
 uuconimon degi'ee of assistance from their fleet, 
 which was probably much better ajipointed and 
 commanded than on any former occjision. After 
 defeating Galgacus, Agricola sent the ships from 
 the Frith of Tay to make a coasting voyage to the 
 north, which may very projicrly lie called a voyage 
 of discovery ; for though nearly a century and a half 
 had passeil since Cicsar's invasions, the Romans 
 were not yet quite certain that Britain w.as an 
 island, but thought it might have joined the Eu- 
 ropean continent either at the extreme north or 
 north-east, or at some other, to them unknown, 
 point. Agricola's fleet doubled the promontory 
 of Caithness and Cape Wrath, ran down the west- 
 ern coast fi'om the end of Scotland to the Land's 
 End in Cornwall, then turning to the east, arrived 
 safe at the Trutulensiau harbour (supposed to be 
 Sandwich), and sailing thence along the eastern 
 coast, returned with glory to the jioint from which 
 it had started, having tluis, according to Tacitus, 
 made the first certain discovery that Britain was 
 an island. 
 
 The fears and imagination of the mariners were 
 no doubt much excited during this peri])lus; and 
 Tacitus, who probably heard the recital from his 
 father-in-law, Agricola, and some of the oflicers 
 of the fleet, was not proof against exaggeration. 
 He tells us that the cluster of islands called the 
 Orcades, till then wholly unknown, was added to 
 the Roman empire (he omits all mention of the 
 Hebrides); that Thule, which had lain concealc^d 
 in gloom and eternal snows, was seen by the n.avi- 
 gators, and that the sea in those parts was a slue/- 
 gish mass of stagnated water, hardly yielding to 
 the stroke of the oar, and never agitated by winds 
 and storms' 
 
 Agricola did not keep his army this secom! 
 winter north of the friths, but withdrawing them 
 by easy marches, put his troops in canlonuu^nts 
 behind his works on the isthmus, if not behind 
 those on the Solway and Tyne. Soon after this 
 he was recalled from his command by the jealous, 
 tj'ranuical Domitian. There is no evidence that 
 Agricola left any garrison on the north of the 
 Frith of Forth, and it ajipears probable that most 
 of the forts thrown up in the p.asses of the Gram- 
 pians, to check the incursions of the Caledonians 
 (remains of which still exist at Cuj)ar-Angus, 
 Keithock, Harefaulds, Invergowrie, and other 
 places), were either temporary encampments made 
 on his march northward.s, or were erected at a 
 later pi'riod by the Enii)cror Severus, aud never 
 
 - I'it. Ayric. c. X. and xxxviii.
 
 5G 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil amj Military. 
 
 maintainoil by Hie Rom:ins for any leugth of tiniP. 
 The great dilUculty in these regions was not the 
 act of advancing, Ijut that of remaining; and the 
 poverty of the country was, no doubt, as good a 
 defence as the valour of its iuhabitauts. 
 
 It was under Agricola that the Roman do- 
 miuiou in Britain reached its utmost permanent 
 
 Hadrian, from a fiiie bronze found in the Thames, now in the 
 British Museum, — Drawn hy J. W. Archer. 
 
 extent ; fur a few hurried marches, made at a 
 later period, farther into the north of Caledonia, 
 are not to be counted as 
 conquests or .acquisitions ^^ 
 
 of territory. L)iu-iug the — II__ 
 
 long period of thirty years ~'^^; I5= 
 
 the island remained so .^^ ^^^^ 
 
 tranquil that scarcely a 
 single mention of its affairs 
 occurs in the Roman an- 
 nals ; and we need scarcely 
 remark that, as history has 
 usually Vjeim written, the 
 silence of historians is one 
 of the best pi-ool's of a na- 
 tion's happiness. 
 
 But in the i-eign of Ila- 
 dri.an' the Romans were 
 attacked all along their 
 northern frontiers by the 
 
 Caledonians, and the whole state of the island 
 was so disturbed as to demand the presence of 
 that energetic emperor (a.d. 120). The conquests 
 of Agricola north of the Tyne and Sol way were 
 lost ; his advanced line of forts between the Forth 
 and the Clyde swept away; and Hadrian contented 
 iumself, without either resigning or reconquering 
 
 ' In a general description of the Roman empire under Trajan, 
 the immediate predecessor of Hadrian, Appian says that the em- 
 peror possessed more than one-h.alf of Britain, tliat he ne^jlected 
 the rest of the island as useless, and derived no profit from the 
 jiart he possessed. 
 
 all that territory, with raising a new r.anipart 
 (much stronger than that drawn by Agricola) be- 
 tween the Solw.-iy Fritli and the German Ocean. 
 Perhaps it would have been wise in the Romans 
 to have kept to this latter line, but in the fol- 
 lowing reign of Antoninus Pius (a.d. 1.38), the 
 governor of Britain, Lollius Urbicus, advanced 
 from it, drove the b.arbarians before him, and 
 again fixed the Roman frontier at the isthmus 
 between the Clyde and Forth, where he erected 
 a strong ramj)art on the line of Agricola's forts. 
 The pra;tentui'a, or rampart of Lollius Urbicus, 
 consisted of a deep ditch, and an earthen wall 
 raised on a stone foundation. There were twenty- 
 one forts at intervals along the line, which, from 
 one extremity to the other, measured about 
 thirty-one miles. A military road, as a neces- 
 sary appemlage, i-an within the rampart, afford- 
 ing an easy communication from station to station. 
 The opposite points are fixed at Caerridden on 
 the Forth, and Dnnglas on the Clyde. The 
 works appear to have been finished about A.n. 
 140; and, notwithstanding the perishable m.ite- 
 ri.als, the mound can be traced after the Lapse of 
 seventeen centuries. Among the people, whose 
 traditions have always retained some notion of 
 its original destination, it is called Grteme's or 
 Graham's Dyke. Inscribed stones have been dis- 
 covered there, recording that the second legion, 
 
 ^Sjimi 
 
 
 Remaiss of Hadhian's Vallum,' near H.altwhistl6.— Drawn from nature and CQ 
 wood, by J. W. Archer. 
 
 and detachments from the sixth and the twenti- 
 eth legions, with some auxiliaries, were employed 
 ujion the works.' 
 
 It had been the boast of the Romans, even from 
 
 - Thise.-irthwork, originally constructed by Agricola, consisted 
 of an earthen mound, with a ditch, on tlie bordei-s of winch he 
 built, at unefiual distances, a range of forts or cistles. It was 
 repaired (about a.d. 121) by Hadrian, who dug an additional 
 and much larger ditch, .and l-aised a higher rampart of earth, 
 making llis new works run in lines nearly parallel with the ol«. 
 From these oper-ations the association of the name of Agricola 
 with the work mei-ged into that of Hadrian.— //uKon. 
 3 Roy's Military AntiquUks.
 
 A.D. 43—440.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 37 
 
 the time of Agrieola, that this I'ortitied line was 
 to cover aud protect all the fertile territories of 
 the south, aud to drive the enemy, as it were, 
 into another island, barren anil Vmrbarous like 
 themselves. But the northern tribes would not 
 so understand it. In the reign of Commodtis 
 (a.d. 183) they again broke through this barrier, 
 and swept over the country which lay between it 
 .and the wall of Hadrian, and which became the 
 scene of several sanguinary battles with the Ro- 
 mans. About the same time a mutinous spirit 
 declared itself among the legions in Britain, and 
 symptoms were everywhere seen of that decline 
 in discipline and military virtue which led on ra- 
 
 I )iidly to the entire dissolution of the Roman em- 
 I pire. Shortly after, the succession to tlie empire 
 I was disj)ated with Scverus by Clodius Albiuus, 
 tlie governor of Britain. The unequal contest 
 w;is liccided by ;i great battle in the south of 
 France ; but as the pretender Albiuus had drained 
 the island of its best troojis, the northern tribes 
 took that favourable ojiportunity of breaking 
 into and desolating the settled Roman provinces. 
 These destructive ravages continued for years, 
 and cost the lives of thousands of the civilized 
 British subjects of Rome. 
 
 The Emperor Severus, in his olil age (a.d. 207), 
 and though oppressed by the gout and other 
 
 maladies, resolved to le.ad an army in person 
 against the northern barbarians. Having made 
 great preparations, he landed in South Bi'itain, 
 and almost immediately began his march to the 
 northern frontier, which was once more marked 
 by the walls of Agricola and Hadrian, between 
 the Sohvay Frith and the mouth of the Tyne. 
 The tremendous difficulties he encountered as 
 soon as he crossed that line, sufficiently show 
 that the country beyond it had never been 
 thoroughly conquered and settled by the Ro- 
 mans, who invariably attended to the ccmstruc- 
 tiou of roads aud bridge.?. Even so near to the 
 
 walls as the present county of Durham, the 
 country was an impassable wilderness. Brobably 
 there are some exaggerations in the number, and 
 a part of the victims may have fallen under the 
 spears and javelins of the natives, but it is stateil 
 that Severus, in his march northward, lost .'JO,00O 
 men, who were worn out by the incessant labour 
 of draining morasses, throwing raised roads or 
 causeways across them, cutting down foi-ests, 
 levelling mountains, and building bridges. By 
 these means he at length penetrated farther into 
 the heart of Caledonia than any of his predeces- 
 sors, and struck such terror into the native clans 
 
 
 or tribes, who, however, had most prudently 
 avoided any general action, that they supplicated 
 for peace. He went so far to the north, that 
 the Roman soldiers were much struck with the 
 length of the summer days and the shortness of 
 the nights; Init the Ane Finium Imperii Ro- 
 iiiaiii, and the exti-eme point to v.'hich Severus 
 
 attained in tliis arduous campaign, seems to have 
 been the end of the narrow jiromontory that 
 separates the Moray and Croniai-ty Friths, the 
 conqueror or explorer still leaving Ross, Sulher- 
 l.and, and Caithiies.s, or all the most northern 
 parts of Scotland, untouched. The uses of this 
 most expensive military jiromenade (for, with tho
 
 38 
 
 niSTOEY OF ICNGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militauv. 
 
 
 i>^iKf<^ 
 
 exception of the road-iiiakiiig, it was uolliiii!; 
 better) are not very obvious; no Roman army 
 ever followed liis footsteps, and he liiinself could 
 not maintain tlie old debatable gi-ouud between 
 the Tyue and the Forth. Indeed, after his return 
 from tlie north, his first care was to erect a new 
 frontier barrier, in the same line as tliose of Agri- 
 cola and Hadrian, but stronger than either of 
 them; thus acknowledging, as 
 it were, the uncertain tenure 
 the Romans had on the coun- 
 try beyond the Solway and 
 the Tyne. For two years the 
 Romans and their auxiliaries 
 were employed in building a 
 wall, which they vainly hoped 
 would for ever check the in- "^ 
 
 cursious of the northern clans. 
 The wall of Agricola, which 
 has been so frequeuti}' alluded 
 to, was in reality a long bank 
 or mound of earth, with a 
 ditch, on the borders of which 
 he built, at unequal distances, 
 a range efforts or castles. This 
 work very nearly extended 
 from sea to sea, being about 
 seventy-four miles long; be- 
 ginning three miles and a 
 h:df cast of Newcastle, and ending twelve miles 
 west of Carlisle. After existing thirty-seven 
 years, this work, which had been much injured, 
 was repaired (about a.d. 121) by Hadrian, who 
 added works of his own to strengthen it. He dug 
 an additional and much larger ditch, and raised 
 a higher rampart of earth, making his new works 
 run in nearly parallel lines with the old. From 
 (he date of these operations and rejiairs, the name 
 of Agricola was lost ; and the whole, to this day, 
 has retained the name of Hadrian's Wall. Dur- 
 ing the ninety years that interveued between the 
 labours of Hadrian and those of Severus, the 
 rampart, not well calculated to withstand the 
 frosts and rains of a cold and wet climate, had, 
 no doubt, suffered extensively, and the barbari- 
 ans had probably broken through the earthen 
 
 1 This fortification, says Bruce [On. tlie Itonuin Wall), consists 
 of thi-ea parts : — 
 
 1. A stone wall, strengthened by a ditch on its northern side. 
 
 2. An eai-tli wall, or vallum, to the south of the stone wall. 
 
 3. Stations, c'lstles, watch-towers, .and roads for the accommo- 
 dation of the soldiery who mamied the barrier, and for the 
 transmission of military stores. These lie, for the most part, 
 between the stone wall and the eaithen rampart. 
 
 The Mile-castle at Cawfield (the name of tlie fai-ra-house to the 
 north', isthemost peifect mile-castle remaining on the line. The 
 building is a paraUelogiam, but the coi-uers at its lower side are 
 rounded uS. It mcTsures inside 03 ft. east to west, and 40 ft, 
 north to south. The stones used are of the same character as 
 those employed in the wall. The side w;dls of the castle have not 
 baen tied to the great wall, but have been brought close up to it, 
 and the jmiction cemented with mortar. It is proviiled with a 
 
 mound in more places than one. Severus - in this 
 surpassing his predecessors — determined to build 
 with stone: the wall lie raised was about eight 
 feet thick, and twelve feet high to the base of the 
 battlements. To the wall were added, at equ.-d dis- 
 tances, a number of stations or towns, eighty-one 
 castles, and 3.30 castelots or turrets. At the out- 
 aide of the wall (to the north) was dug a ditch, 
 
 ^«^ ^«#{ ^^>^A 
 
 CounsE OF THR WALL OF SEVERUS,' with Mile-Castle at Cawfield, near Haltwhistle.- 
 Drawn by H. G. Hine, from liis sketch on the spot in 1S54. 
 
 .about thirty-six feet wide, and from twelve totif- 
 toen feet deep. Severus' works run nearly parallel 
 with the other two (those of Agricola and Had- 
 rian), lie on the north of them, and are never far 
 distant, but may be said always to keep them in 
 view ; the greatest distance between them is less 
 than a mile, the nearest distance about twenty 
 yards, the medium distance forty or fifty yards. 
 Exclusive of his wall and ditch, these st.ations, 
 castles, and turrets, Severus constructed a variety 
 of roads — yet called Roman roads — twenty-four 
 feet wide, and eighteen iuches high in the centre, 
 which led from turret to turret, from one castle 
 to another; and still larger and more distant roads 
 from the wall, wdiich led from one station or town 
 to another; besides the grand military way (now 
 our main road from Newcastle to Carlisle), which 
 
 gateway of 10 ft. opening, both on its northern and southern 
 side, and formed of large sLabs of rustic masonry, the walls 
 being thicker here than in other parts. Two folding doors have 
 closed the entrance, wliich, when tlirown Kick, have fallen into 
 recesses. Some of the pivot-holes of the door-s remain tinged 
 with oxide of iron. ... In clearing out the interior, no 
 traces of par-ty w.alls, of a substantifil chamcter at least, n-ere 
 found. Some fragments of gray slate, pierced for rooling, were 
 found .among the rubbish. It is, therefore, not improbable that 
 a shed was laid .against the southei-n wall for the protection of 
 the soldiers. At about the elevation which the raised floor 
 would reach, the wall is in one place eaten aw.ay by the action ut 
 fire, and here the hear-th probably stood. I'lots of chives, sup- 
 posed to be surviving relics of the common sahrd accomp.animent 
 to the black bread of the Roman soldier, planted there dmiiig 
 their occupation, still grow near those castles.
 
 A.D. 43-440.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 30 
 
 covered all tlie works, and no doubt was first 
 formed by Agrioola, improved by Hadrian, and, 
 after lying neglected for IJUO years, was made 
 complete iu IToi' 
 
 As long as the Roman power lasted, this barrier 
 
 f ttnet II'. 
 
 No. 2. 
 
 .<h rt. 
 
 Ko. 1, Fei-tinii of the Roman Wall luut y\v 
 of the Wall and Ditch of Sevom- —l i 
 
 niith Agjtor Port 
 III Hodgson's Nor 
 
 Gat« ; No. 2. .Sectioi 
 tliumberland. 
 
 was constantly garrisoned by armed men. The 
 stations wei'e so near to each other, that if a tire 
 was lighted on any one of the bulwarks, it was 
 seen at the next, and so repeated from bulwark 
 to bulwai'k, all along the line, iu a very short 
 time. 
 
 Severns had not finished his works of defence 
 when the Caledonian tribes resumed the ofleusive. 
 The iron-hearted and iron-framed old emperor 
 marched northward with a dreadful vow of exter- 
 mination; but death overtook him at Eboracum 
 (York), in the early part of the year 211. Cara- 
 calla, his son and successor, who had been serving 
 with him in Britain, tireil of a warfare in which 
 he could gain comparatively little, hopeless, per- 
 haps, of ever succeeding in the so-frequently- 
 foiled attempt of subjecting the country north of 
 the walls, and certainly anxious to reach Rome, 
 in order the better to dispose of his brother Geta, 
 whom his father had named co-heir to the Empire, 
 made a hasty peace with the- Caledonians, form- 
 ally ceding to them the debatable ground between 
 the Solway and Tyne, and the Friths of Clyde 
 and Forth, and then left the island for ever. 
 
 After the departure of Caracalla, tliere occurs 
 another long blank — supposed to have been a 
 tranquil interval — for during nearly seventy 
 
 * Hutton's Hist, of the Roman Wall. 
 
 2 Palgi'ave's RUe and Progress of tlte English Connnoawealth, 
 chap. X. 
 
 ^ "The Roman influence in Britain must have been very great, 
 if P.ancirolus be right in his calculations. There were tlu'ee 
 great military commands — one for the interior parts of the is- 
 land, another for the defence of the coast against the Saxons, 
 and a third for guarding the fl'ontiers ag.ainst the barbarians in 
 Britain itself; and tlie wliole force must have amoiuited to 
 99,000 foot .and 1700 horse. In order to feed these, the Roman 
 agriculture nmst have been introduced ; and when the Uomans 
 left Britain, there must have been great fulness of corn. But 
 the Roman arts also must have been introduced, and were pro- 
 
 ycars, history scarcely devotes a single page to 
 Britain and its allair.s. The formidable stone ram- 
 part of Severus h;id, no doubt, its part in pre- 
 serving the tranquillity of the southern division 
 of the island, but it was not the sole cause of 
 this ha]ipy eficct. The territory 
 ceded by Caracalla, extending 
 eighty miles to the north of Se- 
 verus' wall, and averaging in 
 breadth, from sea to sea, not less 
 than seventy miles, was, in good 
 part, a fertile country, including 
 what are now some of the best 
 lands in Scotland. The clans left 
 in possession of this valuable set- 
 tlement would naturally acquire 
 some taste for the quiet habits 
 of life — would imbibe some civi- 
 lization from the Roman provin- 
 cials on the south side of the 
 wall — and then their instinctive 
 love of property and quiet would make them 
 restrain, with arms in their hands, the still bar- 
 barous mountaineers to the north of tlieir own 
 territory, whilst their own civilization, such as 
 it might be, would make some little progress 
 .•uiiong the clans in that direction. And it cer- 
 tainly did happen that, even when the Roman 
 power had long been in a state of decrepitude, no 
 great or decisive invasions took place from the 
 north to the south, until the Scots, a new enemy, 
 pouring in from Ireland with an overwhelming 
 force, drove clan upon clan, and advanced beyond 
 the wall of Severus. This latter event ought 
 always to be taken in connection with the growing 
 weakness of Rome, in order to account f(.)r the 
 catastrophe Vvdiich followed. 
 
 Though it has been generally overlooked, there 
 is another, and a gi-eat cause too, which will help 
 to account for the tranquillity enjoyed in the 
 south, or in all Roman Britain. Caracalla im- 
 parted the freedom of Rome, and the rights and 
 privileges of the Roman citizen, to all the pro- 
 vinces of the Empire ; and thus the Briton, 
 exempted from arbitrary spoliation and oppres- 
 sion, enjoyed liis patrimony without fear or chal- 
 lenge.- Such a boon merited seventy years of n 
 grateful quiet.' 
 
 bably perpetuated. For, besides the three military comman- 
 dera-iu-ihiof, there was a i}rociirator gi/iutcii, president of the 
 wardrobe iu Brit.ain, iu which the enipeyor's and soldiers' clothes 
 were woven. Thus the Roman system, by leaving nothing to 
 be done by the native Britons for their o^vn defence, and stimu- 
 lating, .at the same time, agriculture and manufactures, mu^t 
 have left them, on the withdraw.al of the legions, a tempting 
 object of contxuest to the Saxons, who would have found a very 
 ditferent reception in the island h.ad the Romans, by foiiuing 
 the native Britons into a militia, trained them to the mili- 
 tary as well as the agricidtiiral and textile arts." — (See Giles' 
 History of the Ancient Jlritans, vol. i. p. 299.) The great ful- 
 ness of corn in Uiitain during the Roman period m.ay p.artly
 
 40 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military 
 
 When Britaiu re-appears in the auuils of liis- 
 tory, we fiml her beset by fresh foes, aud becom- 
 ing the scene of a new enterprise, wliich was fre- 
 quently repeated in the course of a few following 
 yeare. In the reign of Diocletian and ^faxiniian 
 (a.d. 288), the Scandinavian and Saxon pirates 
 began to i-avage the coasts of Gaul and Britain. 
 To repress these marauders, the emperors a])- 
 pointed Carausius, a Menapiau, to the commaud 
 of a strong fleet, the head-quarters of wliioh was 
 iu the British Channel. The Menapians had 
 divided into several colonies; one was settled in 
 Belgium, one in Hibernia, one iu the islands of 
 the Rliiue, one at Meuevia (now St. David's) iu 
 Britaiu — and Carausius was by birth either a 
 lielgian or a Brit(m — it is not verj' certain which. 
 Wherever he was born, he appears to have been 
 a bold and skilful naval commander. He beat 
 the pirates of the Baltic, and enriched himself 
 and his mariners with their plunder. It is sus- 
 pected that he had himself been originally a 
 pirate. He was soon accused of collusion with 
 the enemy, and anticipating, from his great 
 wealth and power, that he would throw off his 
 allegiance, the emperors sent orders from Rome 
 to put him to death. The wary and ambitious 
 sailor fled, iu time, with his fleet to Britaiu, where 
 the legions and auxiliaries rallied round his vic- 
 torious standard, and bestowed upon him the 
 imperial diadem. The joint emperors of Rome, 
 after seeing their attempts to reduce him repelled, 
 with disgrace to their own arms, were fain to 
 purchase peace by conceding to him the govern- 
 ment of Britaiu, of Boulogne, and the adjoining 
 coast of Gaul, together with the proud title of 
 Emperor. Under his reign we see, for the first 
 time, Britain figuring as a great naval power. 
 Carausius built ships of war, manned them iu 
 part with the intrepid Scandinavian and Saxon 
 pirates, against whom he had fought ; and, re- 
 maining absolute master of the Channel, his fleet 
 swept the seas from the mouths of the Rhine to 
 the Straits of Gibraltar. He struck numerous 
 medals, witli inscriptious and devices, " which 
 
 be accounted for by the invaders finding, like the fii-st Eu- 
 ropean 86ttler3 in North America, a vii-gin soil, covered with 
 a rich layer of vegetable mould, the exhaustion of which 
 goes fai* to account for the famines and deartlis of subsequent 
 times. 
 
 1 Palgrave's flist. England, ch. j. 
 
 2 This coin is in the collection of C. Reach Smith, Esq. It is 
 believed to be unique, and is considered to represent a veritable 
 likeness of Carausius. 
 
 3 '• Tlie first half of the fomth century is chiefly remarkable, 
 as regards Britain, on account of the harmony vdth wliich the 
 natives and Romans, as well as other settlers, brought together 
 in no small nimiber by their- common faith, united in the arts 
 of peace. The cultivation of grain had been carried to such a 
 height, tliat Britain became the granary of the northern pro- 
 vinces of the Empire ; and, by yearly exports, supplied other 
 cjuntries with food, while it enriched itself. Civic establisli- 
 ments were so floui-islujig, tliat buildei-s and other artificers 
 
 show the pnnip and state he assumed in his island 
 em]iiro." The impressive names he borrowed 
 were, "Marcus Aurelius Valerius Carausius." ' 
 
 Gold Coin of Carausius.^ 
 
 He had escaped the daggers of pirates and cni- 
 peroi's, but a surer executioner rose up iu the 
 lierson of a friend aud confidential minister. Ue 
 was murdered, in the year 297, at Eboracum 
 (York), by AUectus, a Briton, who succeeded to 
 his insular empire, aud reigned about three 
 years, when he was defeated aud slain by an 
 officer of Constantius Chlorus, to whom Britain 
 fell in succession on the resignation of Diocletian 
 and Maximian (a.d. 296). In this short war we 
 hear of a strong body of Fi-auks and Saxons, who 
 formed the main strength of Allectus' army, and 
 who attempted to plunder London after his defeat. 
 Thus, under Carausius and Allectus, the Saxons 
 must have become acquainted even with the in- 
 terior of England. Constantius Chlorus died iu 
 the summer of a.d. 306, at Eboracum, or York. 
 Constautine, afterwards called the Great, then 
 began his reign at York, where he was present 
 at liis father's death. After a very doubtful cam- 
 paign north of the wall of Severus, the details of 
 whicli are very meagre and confused, this prince 
 left the island, taking with him a vast number of 
 Britisli youths, as recruits for his army. From 
 this time to the death of Constantine, iu 337, 
 Britain seems again to have enjoyed tranquillity.^ 
 
 The Roman power was, however, decaying; the 
 removal of the capital of the Empire from Rome 
 to Constantinople had its effects on the remote 
 provinces of Britain; and, under the immediate 
 successors of Constantine, while the Frank and 
 
 were demanded from Britain for the restoration of the desolated 
 provinces. — The country was crossed by higlu'oads iu vai'ious 
 dii-ections, many of wliich have served the later settlers in their 
 marclies, as well as their commercial operations. It is probable 
 that the Romans themselves found some of these great liighways 
 already in existence, wliich were afterwards known by the name 
 of Watling -street, leading fi-om the southern shore of Kent, from 
 Rhutupiie and Loudon, through St. Alban's and Stony-Stratford, 
 to Carnarvon {Segontium) ; Ikenild or Rikenild-stroet, from Tyne- 
 mouth, tlu-ough I'ork, Derby, and Birmingham, to St. David's ; 
 the Irinin {Ermin) Street, wliich led from the latter place to 
 Southampton ; the Foss, fi-om Cornwall to Caitlmess, or, perhaps 
 more correctly, only to Lincoln. These roads, which, if not 
 formed, were at least greatly improved by Roman labour, prove, 
 by their direction, a lively internal traffic, as well as a commer- 
 cial connection with countries lying east and west of Britain." — 
 Lappenberg's Ilistori/o/ Eivjland under the Anijlo-Saxon Kint/s, 
 vol. i. p. 51.
 
 A.D. 43—440.] 
 
 BPJTISII AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 41 
 
 Saxon pirates ravaged the ill-defended coasts of i tioneil for the first time by historians in tlie ear- 
 Ihe south, the Picts, Scots, and Attacots — all men- | licr part of the fourth century — began to pi-ess 
 
 
 <-. 
 
 
 
 u 
 
 
 j5^ -^ 
 
 
 REiiAnrs of the Waxxs of London.^ — J. W. Archer, from liis original drawing. 
 
 npon the northern provinces, and defy Severus' 
 deep ditches and wall of stone. As the Scots 
 came over from Ireland in boats, and frequently 
 made their attacks on the coast-line, it seems not 
 improbable that in some instances their depreda- 
 tions "svere mistaken for, or mixed up with those 
 of the Saxons. According to our insuthcient 
 guide,^ however, it was the Picts and Scots alone 
 that, after breaking through the wall of Severus, 
 and killing a Eoman general, and Nectaridius, 
 the ** Count of the Saxon Shore," in the reign of 
 Julian the Apostate, were found, about three 
 years after (a.d. 307), in the time of the Emperor 
 Valentinian, pillaging the city of London (Au- 
 
 ' ITie exact period when London was first walled about, is 
 not clearly ascertained. Simeon of Dxirham ascribes the foun- 
 dation of the wall to the Emperor Constantine the Great, and 
 it appears probable that it was either built or repaired in his 
 time, from the discovery of coins of his mother Helena under 
 its site. But it is probable that the effective fortification of 
 London was completed during the reijjn of Valentinian I., and 
 after the rescue of the city by Theodosius, as related in the text, 
 when it is said he restored the defences throughout the country, 
 Tlie city having been ravaged and burned by Danish pirates 
 about the year S39, it remained utterly waste for nearly half a 
 centuiy, when it was again rendered habitable by Alfred, Iving 
 of the West Saxons, who restored its defences so effectually, that 
 about the end of the tenth century, the citizens were able to 
 assert their independence. Fitzstephen says, concerning the 
 walls of London as they appeared in the reign of Henry IL, 
 when he compiled his account of London : — "The wall is high 
 and great, well towered on the north side, with due distance 
 between the towere. On the south side also the city was walled 
 and towered, but the fishful river of Thames, by his ebbing and 
 flowing, has long since subverted them," The towera were 
 fifteen in number, and their remains were still visible down to 
 the middle of the last century. The above view represents a 
 large frafrmcnt of London wail, wluuh abutted on the Tower 
 
 Vol I, 
 
 gusta), and carrying off its inhabitants as slaves. 
 Theodosius, the distinguished general, and father 
 of the emperor of that name, repelled these in- 
 vaders, and rejxiired the wall and the ruined 
 forts in differents parts of the south ; but the 
 northern districts were never afterwards reduced 
 to order or tranquillity, and even for the partial 
 and temporary advantage they obtained, the Ro- 
 mans were compelled to follow the host of pirates 
 to the extremity of the British island.s, " when," 
 as it is expressed in the verses of the poet Clau- 
 dian upon this achievement, "the distant Orcades 
 were di'enched with Saxon gore." 
 
 By watching these occurrences, with others 
 
 poitem, still in existence, but concealed by the recent erection 
 of some livery stables. Here the wall is upwards of 25 ft. high, 
 the masonrj' at the base is regularly laid, and the stones are 
 well squared. Over the fii-st course of stones is a double laj'er 
 of the large tile found in Roman masonry, of wliich the dimen- 
 sions are as follows:— 17 in. long, 11 in. broad, and nearly \\ in. 
 in thickness, the depth of tlie course, inchuling the mortar, 
 being 45 in. Tlds course, wliich is evidently of Roman construc- 
 tion, and the basement of the original wall, is succeeded by 
 another layer of squared stones, repaired in many parts vnih 
 nibble and bits of tile. The stones are hero five deep, and 
 they occupy a space of 4 G in. between the first layer of tiles and 
 another which lies upon it, and above this there are vestiges of 
 a third course of regular masonry, greatly mingled with the 
 material of coarse and unartificial repair. Here probably we 
 see the work of the Saxon rebuilding of the wall, consisting of 
 large masses of stone, roughly composed with rubble, bits of Ro- 
 man tile, and flints. The upper portion of tliis mural monument 
 of the ancient strength of London m.-iy, in its diversity of mason- 
 ry, contain a stratification of the successive repairs it had under- 
 gone, from the period of its first erection to the time when tho 
 brick made from the clay of Mooi-fields. with tho Kentiwh chalk, 
 were combined with its structure in the reign of Edward IV. 
 - Ammianus MarccUivtis, lib. xxvU. and xxviii. 
 6
 
 42 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 Iliat wore cf|ii:\lly fatal, step by step, as tht>v 
 liappcu, we shall be the better able to ninlei-staiul 
 how Britain, when abandoned by the Roman le- 
 gions, was in so reduced and helpless a state as 
 to fall a prey to the barbai-iaus. If that fact is 
 presented to ns in an isolated manner, it almost 
 passes our comprehension; but taken in conuec- 
 liou with great causes, and the events of the two 
 centuries that preceded the Saxon conquest, it 
 becomes perfectly intelligible. 
 
 Following .in example which h.ail become very 
 prevalent in dilTerent jiarts of the disorganized 
 Empire, and which had been fir.st set in Britain 
 by Carausius, several oiRcers, relying on the de- 
 votion of the legions and auxiliaries under their 
 command, and supported sometimes by the affec- 
 tion of the people, cast off their allegiance to the 
 emperor, and declared themselves independent 
 sovereigns. It wjis the fa.shion of the servile his- 
 torians to call these provincial emperors " ty- 
 rants," or usurpers, and to describe Britain espe- 
 cially as being " insula tyrannorum fertilis," an 
 island fertile in usurpers. But, in sober truth. 
 
 SCALE CF one; MILE 
 
 Plan of the Walls of London • 
 
 these provincial monarchs had as pure and legi- 
 timate a b.osis for their authority as any of the 
 
 * In this plan tl*e black portions represent the existing re- 
 mains. The g.ates and posterns were twelve in number, namely: 
 — 1. Tower postern; 2, Ludgate; 3, Newgate; 4, Grej-friais pos- 
 tern; 5, Aldcrsgate; 6, Cripplegate postern; 7, AJdermanbury 
 postern; S, Basinghall postern ; 9, iloorgate; 10, Moorgate pos- 
 tern; 11, Bishopsgate ; 12, Aldg<ate. No. 13 shows the position 
 of St. r.anl's Cathedral. 14 the supposed line of original Roman 
 wall, and 15 the site of the Tower. The four principal gates of 
 the city are understood to have been Aldgate on the eastern 
 aide, Newgate on the west, Aldersgate on the nortli, and the 
 gate wliich stood on the north end of London Bridge, on the 
 south. Fitzstephen states that there were seven double gates in 
 the wall of London, but fails to specify them ; it is to be con- 
 jectured, howe%'er, that the others were the Tower postern, 
 Ludgate, and Aldersgate or Cripplegate. The gates eastward 
 of Cripplegate, on the northern side of the city, were opened in 
 times comparatively late. Tlic gioimd on which St. Paul's 
 Cathedral (No. 13) is sitiuated, was a cemetery, in which the 
 V.?stige3 of British and Roman interments were found by Wren, 
 ill digging for thefouiidationsof the present edifice; and, accord- 
 
 later emperors of Rome, in whose succession 
 hereditary right .and the will of the governed 
 were alike disregarded, and \vho.se election de- 
 pended on the chances of war and the caprices of 
 a barbarian soldiery; for the right of nomination 
 to the vacant Empire, so long assumed by the 
 Praetorian band, and which right, questionable 
 as it was, was still certain and ascertainable — 
 still something like a settled rule— was soon over- 
 set, and disallowed by the men of all nations in 
 arms on the frontiers in the pay of Rome. If a 
 pretension had been set up for purity of Roman 
 blooil, or a principle established that the sove- 
 reign should be at least a Roman born, there 
 would have been a line of exclusion drawn 
 against the provincial ofBcers ; but so far from 
 this being the case, we find that the large majo- 
 rity of the so-called legitimate Roman emperoi-s 
 were barbarians by race and blood — natives of 
 lUyria and other more remote provinces — while 
 several of the most distinguished of their number 
 sprung from the very lowest orders of society. 
 The most noted of the provincial emperoi-s or 
 pretendei-s that raised their standard 
 in Britain was Maximus (a.d. 382); cer- 
 tainly a man of rank, and probably 
 connected with the imperial family of 
 Constantine the Great. If not bom in 
 Britain, he was of British descent, and 
 had long resided in the island, where 
 he had repelled the Picts and Scots. 
 Brave, skilful, and exceedingly popular 
 in Britain, Jlaximus might easily have 
 retained the island, but his ambition 
 induced him to aim at the possession 
 of all that portion of the Western Ro- 
 man empire which remained to Gra- 
 tiau; and this eventually not only led 
 to his ruin, but inflicted another dread- 
 ful blow on British prosperity. He 
 withdrew nearly all the troops ; and so many of 
 the Britons followed him to Gaul that the island 
 
 ing to the law .and practice of the Rom.aus, the dead were for- 
 bidden to be interred within the walls of their cities, it is there- 
 fore to be presumed that the walls of Loudon were so planned as 
 to exclude this site. It has consequently been conjectured that 
 the original west waU h.id run from Cripplegate to the Thames 
 bank, and it is indicated accordingly on the plan, No. 14; but the 
 evidence of a Roman causeway, discovered on the rebuilding of 
 Newgate — which, however, stood to the east of the prison so 
 called — goes to prove that the road presumed to have been the 
 PiTetoi-ian way entered the city at this angle, how much foi-ther 
 to the east cannot be determined. The further projection on 
 the south-west, at No. 2, was cairied out at the beginning of 
 the thirteenth centxrry, to inclose the precincts of the monastery 
 of the Blackfriara, erected in the year 1215. It is conjectured 
 that a Roman p.ilatiiiate tower stood upon the site of the pre- 
 sent Tower, No. 15, and that a corresponding stronghold was situ- 
 ated at the opposite extremity of the wall on the west. Outside 
 the wall was a ditch 200 ft. broad, which was completed in the 
 fifteenth year of the reign of King John (l:;i3;. — Vestiga of Old 
 London.
 
 A.D. 43- -449.1 
 
 BRITISn AND ROMAN PEIUOI). 
 
 43 
 
 ■was left almost dt'feucdess, auil utterly ilepi'ive<l 
 of the flower of its youth and nobility. Many 
 of these were swept off on the field of battle, 
 many prevented by other causes from ever re- 
 tuniiiig home. Gaul and Germnny also g.ave 
 willinc; recruits to the army of ^faximus, who 
 was left, by the defeat and death of Gratian, 
 the undisputed master of Brilaiu, Gaul, Spain, 
 ami Italy. He established the seat of his go- 
 vernment for some time at Treves, and is said 
 to have declared Victor, his son by a British 
 wife, his partner in the empire of the West — a 
 proceeding which could scarcely fiiil of gratifying 
 the host of Britons in his army. But Theodo- 
 sius, called the Great, the emperor of the East, 
 marched an overpowering army into the West; 
 and, after being defeated in two great battles, 
 Maximus retired to Aquileia, near the head of 
 the Ailriatic Gulf, on the confines of Italy and 
 Illyria, where he was betrayed to the conqueror, 
 who ordered him to be put to death in the sum- 
 mer of 3S8. 
 
 Theodosius the Great now reunited the Roman 
 empires of the East and West. While Maximus 
 was absent, conquering many lands, the Scots 
 and Picts renewed their depredations in Britain. 
 The moment of crisis is now at hand. Chrysan- 
 tus, an able general, and the lieutenant of Theo- 
 dosius in Britain, wholly or partially expelled the 
 invaders. Soon after this Theodosius the Great 
 died (.\.D. 365), and again divided, by his will, the 
 Empire which his good fortune had reunited. 
 Britain, with Gaul, Italy, and all the countries 
 forming the empire of the West, he bequeathed 
 to his son, Honorius, a boy only ten years of age, 
 whom he placed under the guardianship of the 
 famous Stilicho, who fought long and bravely, 
 but in vain, to prop the falling dignity of Rome. 
 Tlieodosius was scarcely cold in his grave, when 
 Picts, Scots, and Saxons again sought what they 
 co\dd devour. Stilicho claimed some temporary 
 advantages over them, but the inflated verses of 
 his panegyrist are probably as far from the truth 
 as Claudian is from being a poet equal to Virgil.' 
 
 While these events were passing in Britain 
 (a.d. 403), the withered majesty of Rome was 
 shrouded for ever : Africa was dismembered from 
 her empire ; Dacia, Pannonia, Thrace, and other 
 provinces were laid desolate; and Alaric the Goth 
 was ravaging Italy, and on liis wa}' to the Eternal 
 City. In this extremity, some Roman troops, 
 which had been lately sent into the island by 
 Stilicho, were hastily recalled for the defence of 
 Italy, and the Britons, again beset by the Picts 
 and Scots, were left to shift for themselves 
 
 The islanders seem to have felt the natural 
 love of independence, but there was no uuaui- 
 
 ' Claud, de ScUo Gallico. 
 
 mity, no political wisdom, and probably but little 
 good principle among them. Seeing the neces- 
 sity of a common leader to fight their battles, 
 they permitted their soldiery to elect one Marcus 
 emperor of Britain (a.d. 407) ; and, shortly after, 
 they permitted the same soldiery to dethrone 
 him, and put him to death. The troops then set 
 up one Gratian, whom, in less than four months, 
 they also deposed and murdered. Their third 
 choice fell \ipon Const.anline, an officer of low 
 rank, or, according to olhens, a common soldier. 
 They are said to have chosen him mei-ely on ac- 
 count of his bearing the imperial and auspicious 
 u.ame of Constantine; but lie soon showed he had 
 other properties more valuable than a name ; and 
 had he been contented with the sovereign pos- 
 session of Britain, he might possibly have foiled its 
 invaders, and reigned with peace and some glory. 
 But, like Maximiis, he aspired to the whole em- 
 pire of the West, and, like Maximus, he fell (.\.D. 
 411), after having caused the loss of vast num- 
 bers of British youths, whom he discijilined and 
 took with him to his wars on the Continent. At 
 one part of his short career, Constantine made 
 himself master of nearly the whole of Gaid, and 
 put his son Constans, who had previously been a 
 monk at AVinehester, in possession of Spain. lu 
 the course of this Spanish campaign, it is curious 
 to remark tluat in Constautine's army there were 
 two bands of Scots or Attacotti." 
 
 Soon after the fall of Constantine we find Ge- 
 routius, a powerful chief, and a Briton by birth, 
 cultivating a close connection with the Teutonic 
 tribes ; and, at his instigation, the bai'barians 
 from beyond the Rhine, by whom we are to un- 
 derstand the Saxons, continued to invade the 
 unhappy island. Such underhand villainies are 
 always common in the downfall of nations (but 
 can the Romanized Britons fairly be called a na- 
 tion?); and we find other chiefs, woi'se than Ge- 
 rontius, in secret league with tlie more barbarous 
 Picts and Scots. 
 
 It appears that, after the death of C'oustantiue, 
 Honorius, during the short breathing-time al- 
 lowed him by his numerous enemies, twice sent 
 over a few troops for the recovery and protec- 
 tion of Britain, the sovereignty of which he still 
 claimed ; but his exigencies soon obliged him 
 to recal them ; and about the year 420, nearly 
 five centuries after Cresar's first invasion, and 
 after being masters of the best part of it during 
 nearly four centuries, the Roman emperors finally 
 abandoned the island. The Britons had already 
 deposed the magistrates a])poiuted by Rome, pro- 
 claimed their independence, and taken uj) arms 
 for that defence against their invaders, which the 
 emperor could no longer give ; but the final dis- 
 
 • Notitia Imperii, sect, xxxviii.
 
 44 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 severance was uot acconip.inieJ liy reproach or ap- 
 parent ill-will. Ou the contrary, a mutual frieml- 
 ship subsisted for some time after between the 
 islanders and the Komans ; and the Emperor IIo- 
 norhis, in a letter addressed to the states or cities 
 of Britain, seemed formally to release them from 
 their allegiance, and to acknowledge the national 
 iudejiendence. 
 
 For some years aftc^r the departure of the Ro- 
 m.ans, the historian has to grope his way in the 
 dark ; nor is it possible to determine the precise 
 condition of the country. It appears, however, 
 that the free municipal government of the cities 
 was presently overthrown by a multitude of mili- 
 tary chiefs, who were principally of British, but 
 jjartly of Roman origin. It was a period to ap- 
 l^reciate the warrior who could fight against the 
 Scots and Picts, rather than the peaceful magis- 
 trate; and the voice of civil liberty would be 
 rarely heard in the din of war and invasion. In 
 a very few years all traces of a popular govern- 
 ment disappeared, and a number of petty chiefs 
 reigned absolutely and tyi-annically, under the 
 pompous name of kings, though the kingdoms of 
 few of them could have been so large as a second- 
 rate modern county of England. Instead of unit- 
 ing for their genei-al safety, at least until the in- 
 vaders were repelled, these roitelets, or kiugliugs, 
 made wars upon each other in the presence of a 
 common danger ; and, unwiser even than their far 
 less civilized ancestors in the time of C;esar, they 
 never thought of forming any gi-eat defensive 
 league until it was too late. 
 
 It is chiefly in this mad disunion that we must 
 look for the cause of — what has created astonish- 
 ment in so many writers — the miserable weak- 
 ness of Britain ou the breaking up of the Roman 
 government.' Other causes of decline, however, 
 had long been at work. Almost from the fii'st 
 establishment of the Roman power, the British 
 troops raised as recruits were drafted off to the 
 Continent, where they were disciplined, and 
 whence few ever returned. It was contrary to 
 the policy of the Romans to teach the provincials 
 the arts of war, and establish them as troops in 
 their own country. The soldiei-s of Britain were 
 scattered from Gaul to the extremities of the 
 
 * M. Guizot, in Ms Es^ais sur I'Histoire de France, remarks, 
 that tlie resistance of the Romanized Britons to the bai'barians 
 was, in point of fact, far more obstinate than tliat of any other 
 Roman province. " It was cliiefly," he says, " in the provinces 
 that had been longest subject to Rome, and wliere civilization 
 was farthest advanced, that the people thus disappeared. . . . 
 The Britons, less civilized, less Roman than the other subjects 
 of Rome, resisted the Saxons, and their resistance has a histoi-y. 
 At the same epoch, in the s-ime situation, the Italians, the 
 Gauls, the Spaniards have none. The Empire retired from their 
 territories, and the barbarians occupied them, without the mass 
 of the inhabitants having acted the 8m.allest part, or marked 
 their place in any way, in the events that made tliem the vic- 
 tims of so many calamities." 
 
 Empire; the sedentary and unwarliko remained 
 at home. All this, we think, may account for 
 the absence of a well-disciplined force in the time 
 of need. Moreover, during nearly a contui-y and 
 a half, the drain upon the ])opulation for the pur- 
 poses of Roman war must have been prodigious. 
 In 308 Constantine took with him a vast num- 
 ber of Britons to the Continent; this example 
 was followed, as the enemies of the Empire in- 
 creased in numljer and audacity, or as one pre- 
 tender disputed the imperial crown with another ; 
 and we have shown, at periods so recent as a.d. 
 .38.3 and 411, how the pride and flower of the 
 youth were sacrificed in foreign warfare. The 
 exterminating inroads of the Scots and Picts, 
 which began early in the fourth century, and 
 lasted, almost without intermission, until long 
 after the departure of the Roman legions in the 
 fifth century, must have fearfully thinned the 
 population in the north, where arms were most 
 wanted. The curses that destroy mankind were 
 many, and there were none of the blessings that 
 tend to their increase. Gaul, and other pro- 
 vinces with which Britain traded, were in as bad 
 a condition as herself, and thus an end was put 
 to foreign commerce, while the internal trade of 
 the country was gradually destroyed by divisions 
 and wars, which made it unsafe for the inhabi- 
 tant of one district to transport his produce into 
 the next, although only at a few miles' distance. 
 Under such a state of things, moreover, agi-icul- 
 ture would be neglected, for men would not sow 
 in the sad uncertainty whether they or the enemj' 
 should reap. Famine and pestilence ensued ; and 
 Britain, in common with the greater part of Europe, 
 where the same causes had been in operation, was 
 still further depopulated by these two scourges. 
 
 We can scarcely credit Gildas, or the history 
 which hears his name, and which is supposed to 
 have been written about the middle of the sixth 
 century, when he or it asserts that, at the depar- 
 ture of the legions, the Britons were sunk in 
 such helplessness and ignorance, that they could 
 uot repair the stone wall of Severus without the 
 guidance and assistance of Roman workmen ; 
 but we can understand how they could not mus- 
 ter forces sufiicient to man that rampart, and also 
 how the Picts and Scots should render it of no 
 avail, by turning the wall on its flanks, and land- 
 ing in its rear, at such distances as best suited 
 their convenience. To maintain an adequate 
 garrison against a vigilant and restless enemy, 
 along a line upwards of seventy miles in length, 
 would demand a very large disposable force. 
 The northern barbarians would not hesitate to 
 launch their boats in the Solway Frith, or at the 
 mouth of the Tyne, north of the wall, and, by 
 sailing south, pass that rampart at one of its ex- 
 tremities, and land on the coast within the wall.
 
 A.D. 43-449.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 45 
 
 or .isceuJ river.'i, where that dot'iMice, left far in 
 tlieir rear, couUl present no ob.staele to their pro- 
 gress. Tlieir ruJe-st coracles might liave per- 
 formed this coasting service in fine weatlier; but 
 it is not improbable that during their occa.sional 
 connections witli tlie Teutonic or Saxon pirates, 
 who had made some progress in naval architec- 
 ture, the Scots came into possession of larger and 
 better vessels. An obvious fact is, that from 
 the arrival of the latter people from Ireland, the 
 X"am]iart of Severus began signally to fail in an- 
 swering the pui'po.'^es for which it was intended; 
 though, perhap.^, if, instead of taking the usual 
 expression of their breaking through the wall, 
 we read that they turned it at one or other of its 
 extremities, by means of their shoals of boats, we 
 shall generall)', in regard to their earlier inroads, 
 be nearer the truth. 
 
 Cut the time was now come when such strata- 
 gems, or circuitous courses, were unnecessary, 
 and the Scots and Picts leaped the ditches and 
 scaled the ill-defended walls at all points. The 
 fertile provinces of the south tempted them for- 
 ward, tiU they reached the very heai-t of the 
 country, wliich they racked with a most barba- 
 rous hand. It was not their object to occupy the 
 country and settle in it as conquerors (had such 
 been their plan, the Britons would have suffered 
 less); their expeditions were forays; they came 
 to plunder and destroy; and the booty they car- 
 ried off, season after season, was a less serious 
 loss than the slaughter and devastation that 
 marked their advance and retreat. 
 
 At this horrid crisis, the more southern and 
 least exposed parts of the island appear to have 
 been occupied by two great parties or factions, 
 which had absorbed all the rest, but could not 
 come to a rational understanding with each 
 other. One of these was a Roman party, includ- 
 ing, no doubt, thousands of Roman citizens, who 
 had remained on the estates they had acquired, 
 and the many native families that must have 
 been connected with them by marriage and the 
 various ties of civil life; the other was a British 
 party, composed, or pretending to be composed, 
 exclusively of Britons. As soon as such a line 
 of distinction was di'awn, dissension was inevi- 
 table. The Roman party was headed by Aure- 
 lius Ambrosius, a descendant of one of the em- 
 perors ; the British rallied round the notorious 
 Vortigern. It is not very clear whether, when 
 it was determined a third time to implore the 
 aid of the Romans, both these parties consented 
 to that measure, or whether Aurelius Ambrosius 
 did not take it upon himself, as his rival Vorti- 
 gern did the calling in of the Saxons only three 
 years after. 
 
 The abject prayer, however, entitled "The 
 Groans of the Britons," and addressed to ^Etius, 
 
 tlirice consul, was sent to the Continent (a.d. 441X 
 " The barbarians," said the petitionei-s, " chase 
 us into the sea; the sea throws us back upon 
 the barbarians; and we have only the hard 
 choice left us of perishing by the sword or by 
 the waves." But yEtius, though as great a war- 
 rior as Stilicho, was then contending with Attila, 
 a more terrible enemy even than Alaric, and 
 could not afford a single cohort to the supplicants, 
 whose last faint reliance on Rome thus fell to the 
 ground. 
 
 Religious controversy, and the mutual hatred 
 that inflames men when they fix the charge of 
 heresy on one another, completed the anarchy 
 of Britain. This is also a very common, though 
 a very strange concomitant with the fall and last 
 agonies of nations ; and the Britons, like the 
 Jews some centuries before, and like the Greeks 
 at Constantino])le, besieged by the Turks, ten 
 centuries after, consumed their time in theologi- 
 cal subtleties and disputations when the enemy 
 was at their gates, and their last defences were 
 falling above their heads. Had some of the dis- 
 putants been animated with the same martial 
 spirit as Germauus of Auxerre, a Gallic bishop, 
 who was sent over by the pope to decide the 
 controversy, their ruin might have been delayed; 
 but his was a solitary instance. Germanus, who 
 had been a soldier before he became a priest, 
 sallied out with a number of Britons, and to the 
 shouts of hallelujah (if we may believe the vene- 
 rable Bede), cut up a party of Picts that were 
 plundering the coast. But this hallelujah vic- 
 tory, as it was called, was far from being sufficient 
 to stay the mai'ch of the invaders, and at length 
 Vortigern took his memorable step, and called 
 the Saxons to his assistance. The people of 
 Armorica or Brittany had already set the ex- 
 ample, and, more fortunate than their neighbours 
 proved in the end, they had succeeded, by means 
 of some Saxon allies, in maintaining the inde- 
 pendence, and securing the tranquillity of their 
 country. 
 
 It may be suspected that, even at this extremity, 
 Vortigern applied for the aid of foreign arms, as 
 much for the purpose of destroying the Roman 
 party in the island as for the expulsion of its in- 
 vaders ; and this suspicion, though not proved, 
 gains some strength from their past and existing 
 disputes; from the reports of the deadly hatred 
 and bloody conllicts which ensued between Au- 
 relius Ambrosius, the head of the Roman jmrty, 
 and Vortigern; and from the circumstance that 
 Aurelius, from the first landing, m.ade head 
 against the Saxons, while his enemy lived in 
 peace and amity with them for some time. 
 
 But, whatever were his motives, Vortigern 
 (A.D. 449) called the hardy freebooters of the 
 Baltic and Northern Germany, and they came
 
 4(J 
 
 lIISTOliy OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Rblioion. 
 
 most readily at his call. Three ckiules (lieels), or 
 long slii]is, were cruising in the British Chan- 
 nel, under the command of two brothers, distin- 
 guished warriors or pirates among the Saxons, 
 who are called Ilengist aud Uorsa, tlioujjh it is 
 possible those may not have been really their 
 names, but designations merely derived from 
 the standanls they bore.' It appears to have 
 been on the deck of these marauding vessels 
 that the Saxons received the invitation which 
 
 eventually led to the conquest of a great kingdom. 
 Vortigeru appiiinted his ready guests to dwell in 
 the east part of the land, and gave them the Isle 
 of Thauet for their residence, an insulated and 
 secure tract to those who, like the Saxons, had 
 the command of the sea; for the narrow, and, at 
 times, almost invisible rill which now divides 
 Thanot from the rest of Kent, was then a chan- 
 nel of tlie sea, nearly a mile in width. From this 
 date begins the history of the Saxons in Britain.-' 
 
 CHAPTER III.— HISTORY OF RELIGION. 
 
 RELICIO.V OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS, AND INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY. B.C. 55— A.D. 440. 
 
 Dniidism— Cresar'3 account of the Druids— .Account of tliem by Ser.eca and Lucan — DruiJical groves and wells— 
 Tlie niisletoe— Classes of tl'.e Lruidical priesthood— Costume of the Druids— Their modes of divination — Tlieir 
 doctrines and religious observances— Their human sacrifices — Origin of Druidism — Warfare of the Romans 
 Rgainst it— Its influence after tlie suppression of the Druids — Entrance of Christianity into Britain— State of 
 the early Christian church there. 
 
 HAT very ancient aud far-ex- 
 tended faith known by the name 
 of Druidism, flourished among the 
 ancient Britons in all its vigour. 
 It appears, indeed, that Druidism 
 was considered by the Gauls to 
 have originated in Britain; but those, perhaps, 
 are nearer to the truth who give to the broad 
 principles of the religion an Eastern origin. Much 
 of the subject is concealed in a darkness very 
 favourable to conjecture and speculation; but we 
 possess very few materials whereupon to found a 
 positive account of the system. Julius Ctesar, 
 who was altogether only a short time in our is- 
 land, but who resided six or seven years in Gaul, 
 and made himself well acquainted with the insti- 
 tutions of that country, has left the fullest ancient 
 
 account we possess of the Gallic Druids. He 
 states generally that the same system existed in 
 Britain; but as his stay was so short, aud as he 
 saw so little of our island, he was scarcely com- 
 petent to judge whether Druidism prevailed in 
 all parts of the country, and whether it did not 
 vary in some of its rites and practices from the 
 Gallic establishment. He, however, says that 
 those of the Gauls who wished to obtain a per- 
 fect knowledge of the system, were wont to pass 
 over into Britain to study it. 
 
 Caesar's account of the Gallic Druids is this: — 
 " They are the ministers of sacred things ; they 
 have the charge of sacrifices, both public aud 
 private ; they give directions for the ordinauces 
 of religious worship {i-eligiones interpretanlur). 
 A great number of young men resort to them for 
 
 ' Uenfjst, or hmgist, signifies a stallion ; and /iorsa, or hross, 
 does not require any explanation. It may be remarked, how- 
 ever, that in Danish, hois signifies not a horse, but a mare. Tlie 
 snow-white steed still appeai-s as the ensign of Kent, in Eng- 
 land, as it anciently did in the sliield of the *' Old Saxons" in 
 Germany. Uence the white lioi-se is still borne on the royal 
 shield of Brunswick-Uanover. — Palgr.avo, Historif of EnyUmd, 
 cb. ii. 
 
 2 " We have considered the gener.al principles of Roman pro- 
 vincial govenimeut; aud we now ask, How were these aiiplied 
 in the case of Britain? The answer is much more diificult to 
 ^ivo than might be imagined. Wealthy as this country was, 
 nnd capable of conducing to the power and wellbeing of its 
 mastera, it seems never to have received a generous, or even fair 
 treatment fi-om them. The Bnton was to the last, as at the 
 first, pcnitits toto divisTS orbe Britann-us, and his laud, alw.iys 
 vXtima Thide, was made, indeed, to serve the avarice or ambition 
 of the iiUer, but derived little benefit to itself fiom the nile. 
 'Levies, corn, tribute, mortgages, slaves' — imder these heads 
 was Britain entered in the vast ledger of the Empu-e. The Ro- 
 man records do not tell us much of the details of government 
 here, and we may justly say that we are more familiar ^vith the 
 
 state of an eastern or an Iberian city, than we are with that of 
 a British one. A few teclmical words, perfectly significant to a 
 people who, above all others, symbohzed a long succession of 
 facts under one legal tei-m, are all that remain to us ; and un- 
 fortunately the jui-ists, and statesmen, and historians whose 
 works we painfully consult, in hopes of rescuing the minutest 
 details of our early condition, are satisfied with the use of gene- 
 r.al terms, which were perfectly intelligible to those for whom 
 they wrote, but teach us httlc. . . . Temples thei-e were; 
 food, poi-ticoes, baths, and luxurious fe-ists; Roman manners aud 
 Roman vices; and to support them, lo.ans, usurious mortgages, 
 and ruin. But we seek in vain for any evidence of the Roman- 
 ized Britons having been employed in any olEces of trust and 
 dignity, or pei-mitted to sh<are in the really v.aluable results of 
 civilization ; there is no one Briton recorded, of whom we can 
 confidently assert that he held any position of dignity and power 
 under the imperial rule ; the liistorians, the geographeis, nay, 
 even the novelists (who so often supply incidental notices of the 
 utmost interest), are here consulted in vain; nor in tlie many 
 hiscriptions which we possess relating to Britain can we point 
 out one single ' British name.' " — Kemble's The Saxoiis in ling- 
 land, book ii. ch. vii.
 
 n.c. 55— A.D. 419.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 47 
 
 the purpose of instruction in their system, and 
 they are held iu the highest reverenoe. For it 
 is they wlio determine most disputes, whether of 
 the affairs of the state or of indivichials ; and if 
 any crime has been committed, if a man has been 
 slain, if tliere is a contest concerning an inheri- 
 tance or the bouudaries of their lands, it is the 
 Druids who settle the matter : they fix rewards 
 and punishments; if any one, whether in an in- 
 dividual or public capacity, refuses to abide by 
 their sentence, they foi-bid him to come to the 
 sacrifices. This punishment is among them very 
 severe; those on whom this intei-dict is laid are 
 accounted among the unholy and accursed ; all 
 flee from them, and shun their approach and their 
 conversation, lest they should be injured by their 
 very touch ; they are placed out of the pale of the 
 law, and excluded from aU offices of honoui-. 
 
 " Over all these Druids one presides, to whom 
 they pay the highest regard of any among them. 
 Upon his death, if thei'e is auy of the other 
 Druids of superior worth, he succeeds ; if there 
 are more than one who have equal claims, a suc- 
 cessor is a]>pointed by the votes of the Druids ; 
 and the contest is sometimes decided by force of 
 arms These Druids hold a meeting at a certain 
 time of the year, in a consecrated S])ot in the 
 country of the Carnutes (people in the neighbour- 
 hood of Chartre.s), which country is considered to 
 be in the centre of all Gaul. Hither assemble all 
 from every part, who have a litigation, and sub- 
 mit themselves to their determination and sen- 
 tence. The system of Druidisra is thought to 
 have been formed in Britain, and from thence 
 cai-ried over into Gaul; and now those who wish 
 to be more accurately versed in it, lor the most 
 part go thither (i.e., to Britain), in order to be- 
 come acquainted with it. 
 
 " The Druids do not commonly engage in war, 
 neither do they pay taxes like the rest of the 
 community ; they enjoy an exemption from mili- 
 tary service, and freedom from all other public 
 burdens. Induced by these advantages, many 
 come of their own accord to be trained up among 
 them, and others are sent by their parents and 
 connections. They are said in this course of in- 
 struction to learn by heart a number of verses ; 
 and some accordingly remain twenty years under 
 tuition. Nor do the Druids think it right to 
 commit their instructions to writing, although in 
 most other things, in the accounts of the state 
 and of individuals, the Greek chai-acters are used. 
 They appear to me to have adopted this course 
 for two reasons ; because they do not wish either 
 that the knowledge of their system should be 
 diffused among the people at large, or that their 
 pupils, trusting to written characters, should be- 
 come less careful about cultivating the memory; 
 because iu most cases it happens that men, from 
 
 the security which written ch.iracters afford, be- 
 couie careless in acquiring and retaining know- 
 ledge. It is especially the object of the Druids 
 to inculcate this — that souls do not perish, but 
 after death pass into other boilies; and they con- 
 sider that by this belief, more than anything else, 
 men may be led to cast away the fear of death, 
 and to become courageous. They discuss, more- 
 over, many points concerning the heavenly bodies 
 and their motion, the e.'ctent of the universe and 
 the world, the nature of things, the influence and 
 ability of the immortal gods; aud they instruct 
 the youth in these things. 
 
 "The whole nation of the Gauls is much ad- 
 dicted to religious observances, and, on that ac- 
 count, those who are attacked by any of the more 
 serious diseases, and those who are involved in 
 the dangers of warfare, either offer human sacri- 
 fices, or make a vow that they will offer them, 
 and they employ the Druids to officiate at these 
 sacrifices : for they consider that the favour of the 
 immortal gods cannot be conciliated, unless the 
 life of one man be offered up for that of another; 
 they have also sacrifices of the same kind ap- 
 pointed on behalf of the state. Some have images 
 of enormous size, the limbs of which they make 
 of wicker-work, and fill with living men, and set- 
 ting them on fire, the men are destroyed by the 
 flames. They consider that the torture of those 
 who have been taken in the commission of theft 
 or open robbery, or in any crime, is more agree- 
 able to the immortal goils; but when there is not 
 a sufficient number of criminals, they scruple not 
 to inflict this torture on the innocent. 
 
 '•The chief deity whom they worship is Mer- 
 cury; of him they have njauy images, and they 
 consider him to be the inventor of all arts, their 
 guide iu all their journevs, and that he has the 
 greatest influence in the pui-suit of wealth and 
 the affairs of commerce. Next to liim they wor- 
 ship Apollo aud Mars, and Jupiter aud Minerva ; 
 and nearly resemble other nations in their views 
 i-especting these, as that Apollo wards off dis- 
 eases, that Minerva communicates the rudiments 
 of manufactures and manual arts, that Jupiter is 
 the ruler of the celestials, that Mars is the god of 
 war. To Mars, when they have determined to 
 engage in a pitched battle, they commonly devote 
 whatever spoil they may take in the war. After 
 the contest, they slay all living creatures that are 
 found among the spoil ; the otlier things they 
 gather into one spot. In many states, heaps 
 raised of these things in consecrated places may 
 be seen : nor does it often happen that any one 
 is so unscrupulous as to conceal at home any part 
 of the spoil, or to take it away when deposited; 
 a very heavy punishment, with torture, is de- 
 nounced against that crime. 
 
 " All the Gauls declai'e that they are descended
 
 48 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [IIeijqion- 
 
 from Father Dis (or Pluto), autl this they say has 
 been haiidetl down by the Druids ; for tliis rea- 
 son, they distinguisli all spaces of time, uot by the 
 number of days, but of uiglils : they so regulate 
 tlieir birthdays, and the begiuuing of the mouths 
 and years, that llie day shall come after the 
 night." ' 
 
 It is to be supposed that in speaking of the 
 divinities worshipped by the Druids, Ctesar de- 
 scribes the unknown by the known, or calls this 
 divinity Mercury, and this Apollo, or Mars, or 
 Jupiter, because the attributes of the said divini- 
 ties ri!sembled those of the gods of the Grecian 
 and Roman mythology ; and that, if we possessed 
 a more ample knowledge of the subject, we should 
 tind that the descent, pedigree, origiu, and con- 
 nection of the Druidical divinities had nothing- 
 whatever to do with those of the divinities in the 
 classical mythology. 
 
 Among the various derivations which have 
 been given of the name of the Druids, the most 
 probable seems to be that which brings it from 
 drui, the Celtic word for an oak, corrujitly writ- 
 ten in the modern Irish droi, or more corrujitly, 
 draoi, and making in the plural druidlie. Drui 
 is the same word with drus, which signifies an 
 oak in the Greek language ; and also, indued, witli 
 the English word tree, which in the old form was 
 written triu. We cannot name the Druids of 
 England without thinking of our woods and na- 
 tional oaks. The things are inseparable in our 
 imagination; yet it is remarkable that Coesar 
 nowhere has any mention of the sacred groves, 
 and the reverence paid to the oak, which make 
 so great a figure in the other accounts of Druid- 
 ism, and which indisputably formed very impor- 
 tant features in that religion. 
 
 " If you come," says the philosopher Seneca, 
 "to a grove thick planted with ancient trees, 
 which have outgrown the usual altitude, and 
 which shut out the view of the heaven with their 
 interwoven boughs, the vast height of the wood, 
 and the retired secrecy of the place, and the won- 
 der and awe inspired by so dense and unbroken 
 a gloom in the midst of the open day, impress 
 you with the conviction of a present deity." ■ 
 These natural feelings of the human mind were 
 turned to account by the Druids, even as they 
 were in the other most primitive and simple 
 forms of ancient superstition. Pliny informs us 
 that the oak was the tree which they principally 
 venerated, that they chose groves of oak for their 
 residence, and performed no sacred lites without 
 the leaf of the oak. The geographer Pomponius 
 Mela describes the Druids as teaching the youths 
 of noble families that thi-onged to them, in caves, 
 or in the depths of forests. We have seen, in the 
 
 1 Cmar de Bdl. GaU. Ijb. vi. 13, 14, 10, 17, 18, as translated 
 ill the Ptniii/ Ci/dopadia. ' M. 4. Seneca, EfiUl. 41. 
 
 preceding chajitor, that when (a.d. 61) Suetonius 
 Paulinus made himself master of the Isle of An- 
 glesey, he cut down the Druidical groves. These 
 groves, says Tacitus, were " hallowed with cruel 
 sujx'i-slitions ; for they held it right to st:iin their 
 altars with the blood of prisoners taken in war, 
 and to seek to know the mind of the gods from 
 the fibres of human victims."' The poet Lucaii, 
 in a celebrated passage on the Druids, has not 
 forgotten their sacred groves :— 
 
 " The Dniids now, while arms are heard uo more, 
 Old mysteries and barbaroiis rites reotore ; 
 A tribe, who siiij,iilar relision love, 
 And haunt the lonely coverts of the grove. 
 To these, and these of all mankind alone. 
 The gods are sure revealed, or sirre unknown. 
 If dying mortals' dooms tliey sing aright. 
 No ghosts descend to dweU in dreadful night ; 
 No parting souls to grisly Pluto go, 
 Nor seek the di'eaiy silent shades below ; 
 But forth they fly, immortal in their kind, 
 And other bodies in new worlds they find. 
 Thus life for ever runs its endless race. 
 And like a line De.ath but divides the space ; 
 A stop which can but for a moment last, 
 A iKiint between the future and the past. 
 Thrice happy they beneath their northern skies, 
 AMio that woi-st fear, the fear of death, despise ; 
 nence they no cares for this frail bemg feel, 
 But rush undaimted on the pointed steel ; 
 Provolre approaching fate, and bravely scorn 
 To sp.are that life which must so soon return."^ 
 
 No Druidical grove, it is believed, now remains 
 in any part of our isl.and ; but within little more 
 than a century, ancient oaks were still standing 
 around some of the circles of stones set upright 
 in the earth, which are supposed to have been 
 the terajjles of the old religion. These sacred 
 iuolosures seem, in their perfect state, to have ge- 
 nerally consisted of a circular row or double row 
 of great stones in the central open space (the 
 proper liicus or jilace of light), aud beyond these, 
 of a wood surrounded by a ditch and a mound of 
 earth. The sacred grove appears to have been 
 usually watered by a holy fountain. The rever- 
 ence for rivers or streams, springs or wells, is 
 another of the most prevalent of ancient super- 
 stitious ; and it is one which, having, along with 
 many other Pagan customs, been adopted, or at 
 least tolerated, by Christianity as first preached 
 by the Roman missionaries, and being, besides, 
 in some sort recommended to the reason by the 
 high utility of the object of regard, has not even 
 yet altogether passed away. The holy wells, to 
 which some of our early monks gave the names 
 ot their saints, had, in many instances, been ob- 
 jects of veneration many centmies before ; and 
 the cultivation of the country, or the decay from 
 lapse of time, which has almost everywhere swept 
 away the antique religious grove, has for the 
 most part spared the holy well. In the centre 
 
 ' Tacitus, An. xiv. 30. 
 
 * Lucau, PliarsaUa, i. 402 ; Rowe's translation.
 
 B.C. 55— A. D. 4 19.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 49 
 
 of the circle of upright stones is sometimes foiiinl 
 wh.at is still calleil a cromlech, a flat stoue su])- 
 ported iu a horizontal position upou others set 
 
 ■!^V~K: 
 
 Madron Holy \Yei,l,> Coi-nw.-ill.— J. S. Pruvit. fioni lus 
 drawing on the spot. 
 
 perpendicularly in the earth, being apparently 
 the altar on which the sacrifices were offered up, 
 and on which the sacred fire was kept burning. 
 Near to the temple frequently rises a carncdd, or 
 sacred mount, from which it is conjectured the 
 priests were wont to address the people. 
 
 The most remarkable of the Druidical supersti- 
 tions connected with the oak, was the reverence 
 ])aid to the parasitical jilaut called the misletoe, 
 when it was found growing on that tree. Pliny 
 has given us an accoimt of the ceremony of gather- 
 ing this plant, which, like all the other sacred 
 solemnities of the Druids, was performed on the 
 sixth day of the moon, probably because the 
 planet lias usually at that age become distinctly 
 visible. It is thought that the festival of gather- 
 ing the misletoe was kept always as near to the 
 10th of March, which was their New Year's Day, 
 as this rule would permit. Having told us that 
 the Diuids believed that God loved the oak above 
 all the other trees, and that everything growing 
 upon that tree came from heaven, he adds, that 
 there is uoUiing they held more sacred than the 
 misletoe of the oak. Whenever the plant was 
 found on that tree, which it very rarely was, a 
 procession was made to it on the sacred day, with 
 great form and pomp. First, two white bulls 
 were bound to the oak by their horns ; and tlaen 
 a Druid clothed in white mounted the tree, and 
 with a knife of gold cut the misletoe, which an- 
 other, standing on the ground, held out his white 
 robe to receive. The sacrifice of the victims and 
 festive rejoicings followed. The sacredness of 
 the misletoe is said to have been also a part of 
 the ancient religious creed of the Persians, and 
 
 * An ancient baptistery, one mile north of Madi-on church, 
 CornwaU. It was paitially destroyed by filjijor Ccely, one ol 
 Cromwell's officers. The altar, pierced with a hole to re- 
 ceive the foot of the cross or an image oi the s.aint, is still 
 entire 
 Vor.. I. 
 
 not to be yet forgotten in India ; and it is one of 
 the Druidical superstitions, of which traces still 
 survive among our popular customs. Virgil, a 
 diligent student of the poetry of old religions, 
 has been thought to intend an allusion to it by 
 the golden branch which /Eneas had to pluck to 
 be his passport to the infernal regions. Indeed, 
 the poet e.'jpressly likens the branch to the 
 misletoe: — 
 
 " Quale solet silvia bnim.'ili frigore viscum 
 Trondo vircro nova, quod non sua seminat arbos, 
 Et croceo fetu teretes cu'cumdare tnmcoa; 
 Talis erat species am-i frondentis opaca 
 Ilice; sic leni crepitabat bractea vento." * 
 
 — En. vi. 203. 
 
 As in the woods, bencalh mid-\vinter's snow, 
 Shoots from the oak the fresh-leaved misletoe, 
 Gii'ding the dark stem with its saffron glow ; 
 So spning the bright gold from the dusky rind, 
 So the leaf rustled in the fanning winn. 
 
 The entire body oi the Druidical priesthood 
 appears to have been divided into several orders 
 or classes ; but there is some 
 uncertainty and diflerence of 
 opinion as to the characters anil 
 
 Misletoe Plant.^ and Golden Hook 
 with which it was cut. 
 
 oflioes of each. Strabo and Ammi- 
 auus Marcelliuus are the ancient 
 authorities upon this head; and they 
 both make the orders to have been 
 three — the Druids, the Vates, and 
 the Bards. It is agreed that the 
 Bards were poets and musicians. Marcellinus 
 says that they sung the brave deeds of illustri- 
 ous meu, composed in heroic verses, with sweet 
 modulations of the lyre ; and Diodorus Siculus 
 
 2 The misletoe, Vucum album, is a common para-sito of apple- 
 trees and other's, but the sacred misletoe of the Druids, gi-owiog 
 on an oak, is mre. The goMen hook is from Hoare'a yi ncicftt 
 Wiltshire. n
 
 60 
 
 niSTOKy OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Rklioion. 
 
 nlso niciUious Uiem in nearly Uio snme terms. 
 The Vates, according to istrabo, were priests aiui 
 pliysiologists; but ^Lircellinus spems to assign to 
 
 l''.:ciDS; fi-oma bas-reliet found a\ Av.tuu. ' — Frum MoiiLf.tLicoii. 
 
 them only the latter office, saying that they iu- 
 qiured into nature, and endeavoured to discover 
 
 llarcelliuus is that the Druids, properly so called, 
 lived together in comniuuities or brotherhoods. 
 This, however, cannot have been the c.ise with 
 
 Nimbus of Gold, itre.siimed to liave been worn on the htia*J by 
 Diiuds. — From Vallancey, CoUet-t. de Reb. Hibeniicui. 
 
 the order of her processes, and lier sublimcst 
 secrets. The Druids Strabo speaks of as combin- 
 ing the study of jjhysiology with that of moral 
 science; Marcellinus describes them as persons of 
 a loftier genius than the others, who aildressed 
 themselves to the most occult and profound in- 
 quiries, and rising in their contemplations above 
 this human scene, declared the spirits of men to 
 be immortal.- A remarkable fact mentioned by 
 
 ' The figure crowned with a coronal of oak leaves (without 
 which, or some such symbol, no .let of their mysteries could be 
 performed!, and bearing a sceptre, is conjectiired to represent an 
 arch-Druid. The other figure holds in liis hand a crescent, equiva- 
 lent to the form of the moon on the sixth d.ay of tlie month, which 
 was the period ordained for the ceremony of cutting the misletoe. 
 
 2 StraljOt iv.; Animiaji. Marcdi. XV. 9 ; Diod. Sic. v. 31 ; To- 
 laml'a Hut. of thf. Braids, pp. 24-'2I1 ; Rowland's Mnmi AiUUjva, 
 
 Dlu'lDlCAl- I.vslQNl.^ of sold, found in Irel.uid. — From the 
 Arcluttologia. 
 
 all tlie members of the order ; for we have reason 
 to believe that the Druids frequently reckoned 
 among their number some of the sovereigns of 
 the Celtic states, whose civil duties, of course, 
 •would not permit tliera to indulge in this monas- 
 tic life. Divitiacus, the^duau prince, who per- 
 formed so remarkable a part, as related by Coesar, 
 in tlie ilrama of the subjugation of his country by 
 the Roman arms, is stated by Cicero to have been 
 a Druid. Strabo records it to have been a notion 
 
 1 1 .^-..-- 
 
 LiCTH MkssEaTH,-* or Plate of Judgment, found in Ireland. 
 From the Archaeologia. 
 
 among the Gauls, that the more Druids they had 
 among them, the more plentiful would be their 
 harvests, and the greater their abundance of all 
 good things; and we may therefore suppose that 
 the numl>ers of the Druids were very considerable'. 
 Toland, who, in what he calls his Specimen of 
 the Critical History of the Celtic Religion and 
 Learning, has collected many curious facts, has 
 given us the following account of the dress of the 
 
 p. 65 ; Borlase's Cornwall, p. 67 ; Macpherson's DUset'tations, 
 p. 203 : Bouche's Hutoire de Provciice, i. 6S ; Fosbroke's Enci/do- 
 padia of Antiquities, ii. 6G2. 
 
 ^ The Liuth Messeath is Ulideretood to have been woxii upon 
 the gii-dle of the Diuld, and it bears a rem.arkable resemblance 
 to the breastplate worn by the .Tewish high-priest. This relic 
 is composed of pure silver ; in the centre is a large crystal, and 
 smaller stones are inserted around it.
 
 B.C. 55— A.D. 440] 
 
 BllITISlI AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 51 
 
 Druids. Every DruiJ, lie inlorms us, cirrieil a 
 waud or stuff, sucli as magicians in all countries 
 have done, and had what was called a Druids' 
 
 Onrm Coll,vr ok Gorget of i^iilil,' found inlrolami.— From the 
 Arclia:olo;^ia. 
 
 egg (to w'hich we shall advert presently) hung 
 about his neck, inclosed in gold. All the Druids 
 wore the hair of their heads short, and their beards 
 long; while other people wore the hair of their 
 heads long, and shaved all their beards, with the 
 exception of the upper lip. " They like'-ise," he 
 continues, " all wore long habits, as did the Bards 
 and the Vaids (the Vates) ; but the Druids had 
 on a white surplice whenever they religiously 
 officiated. In Ireland they, with the graduate 
 Bards and Vaids, had the privilege of wearing 
 six colours in their breacans or robes (which were 
 the striped braccre of the Gauls, still worn by the 
 Highlanders); whereas the king and queen might 
 have in theirs but seven, lords and ladies five, 
 governors of fortresses four, officers and young 
 gentlemen of quality three, common soldiers two, 
 and common people one." These particulars ap- 
 pear to have been collected from the Irish tradi- 
 tions or Bardic manuscripts. 
 
 The art of divination was one of the favourite 
 pretensions of the Druidical, as it has been of most 
 other systems of superstition. The British Druids, 
 indeed, apjiear to have professed the practice of 
 magic in this and all its other departments. Pliny 
 observes that in his day this supernatural art 
 was cultivated with such astonishing ceremonies 
 in Britain, that the Persians themselves might 
 
 1 Tliis article, culled also Jodhan Moram, is supposed to have 
 been worn on the neck of the judge when on the bench, and it 
 va3 believed it would choke liira if ho gave unjust judgment. 
 Some authorities say that it was called Morain from a great judge 
 of ihat name, who fonnerly flourished in Ireland. "My surprise," 
 says Governor Pownall [Early Irish AntiquUks, Ardtaotor/ia, vol. 
 vii.), "was great when I found in Buxtorf, that Jodhan Morain 
 was the Childee name for Urim and Th umm im. Not satisfied 
 
 seem to have acquired the knowledge of it from 
 that island; and yElian tells us that the Druids of 
 Gaul were liberally paid by those who consulted 
 them for their revcialious of the future, and the 
 good fortune they promised. Among their chief 
 methods of divination was that from the entrails 
 of victims offered in sacrifice. One of their prac- 
 tices was remarkable for its strange and horrid 
 cruelty, if we may believe the account of Diodorus 
 Siculus. In sacrificing a man they would give 
 him the mortal blow by the stroke of a sword 
 above the diaphragm, and then, according to rules 
 which had descended to them from their fore- 
 fathers, they would draw their predictions from 
 inspection of the posture in which the dying 
 wretch fell, the convulsions of his quivering limbs, 
 and the direction in which the blood flowed from 
 his body. 
 
 There is reason to believe that the Druids, like 
 other ancient teachers of religion and philosophy, 
 had an esoteric or secret doctrine, in which the 
 members of the order were instructed, of a more 
 refined and spiritual character than that which 
 they preached to the multitude. Diogenes Laer- 
 tius acquaints us that the substance of their sy.s- 
 tem of iiiith and practice was comprised in three 
 precepts, namely, to worship the gods, to do no 
 evil, and to behave courageously. They were re- 
 poi'ted, however, he says, to teach their philoso- 
 phy in enigmatic apophthegms. Mela also ex- 
 presses himself as if he intended us to understand 
 that the greater part of their theology was re- 
 served for the initiated. One doctrine, he says, 
 that of the immortality of the soul, they published, 
 in order that the people might be thereby ani- 
 mated to bravery in war ; and he tells us that, 
 in consequence of their belief in this doctrine, 
 they were accustomed, when they buried their 
 dead, to burn and inter along with them things 
 useful for the living — a statement which is con- 
 firmed by the common contents of the barrows or 
 graves of the ancient Britons. He adds a still 
 better evidence of the strength of their faith. 
 They were wont, it seems, to put off the settlement 
 of accounts and the exaction of debts (I) till they 
 should meet again in the shades below. It also 
 sometimes happened, that persons not wishing to 
 be parted from their friends who had died, would 
 throw themselves into the funer.al piles of the 
 objects of their attachment, with the view of 
 thus accompanying them to their new scene of 
 life. In this belief, also, the ancient Britons, 
 
 with Buxtoi-f, I wrote to the learned Rabbi Heidecfc, now in Lon- 
 don : his answer w.13 satisfactory, and contained a dozen quot;i- 
 tions from various Talmud commentators. In short, my friend 
 the Rabbi will have it, that none but Jews or Clmldecs could 
 
 have brought the name and the thing to Ireland The 
 
 measiireraent of this relic was nearly 11 in. at tho caps or 
 circles, by much the some in depth ; and the weight was exactly 
 20 guineas."
 
 52 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Religiun. 
 
 when tliey burieil their dead, were wont to address l which arc still crmtinued bv the Roman Catholics 
 
 letters to their deceased friends and 
 which they threw into the funeral jjile, 
 as if the persona to whom they were 
 addressed would in this way receive and 
 read them. 
 
 It has been conjectured that the fun- 
 damental principle of the Druidical 
 esoteric doctrine was the belief in one 
 God. For popular effect, however, this 
 opinion, if it ever was really held, even 
 by the initiated, appears to have been 
 from the first wrapped up and dis- 
 guised in an investment of material- 
 ism, as it was presented by them to 
 the gross apprehension of tlie vulgar. 
 The simplest, purest, and most ancient 
 form of the public religion of the Druids 
 seems to have been the worship of the 
 celestial luminaries and of fire. The 
 sun appeai-s to have been adored under 
 the same name of Bel or Baal, by which 
 he was distinguished as a divinity in 
 the paganism of the East.' We have 
 already had occasion to notice their 
 observance of the moon in the regula- 
 tion of the times of their great religious 
 festivals. These appear to have been 
 four in number: tlie first was the 10th 
 of Marcli, or the sixth day of the moon 
 nearest to that, which, as already mentioned, was 
 their New-year's Day, and that on whicli the 
 ceremony of cutting the misletoe was performed ; 
 the others were the 1st of May, IMidsummer Eve, 
 and the last day of October. On all these occa- 
 sions the chief celebration was by fire. On the 
 eve of the festival of the 1st of May, the tradi- 
 tion is that all the domestic fires throughout the 
 country were extinguished, and lighted again the 
 next day from the sacred tire kept always burning 
 in the temples. ''The Celtic nations," observes 
 Toland, "kindled other fires on Midsummer Eve, 
 
 ' The author of Siitannia after the Romans, however, denies 
 that the Celtic Beli or Belinus has any connection with the 
 Oriental Baal or Bel. 
 
 2 This plan is taken from Stukeley's sui-vey in the year 1724. 
 Since that time this vast monument has become nearly obliter- 
 ated, through the pillage of the stones for a variety of im worthy 
 purposes. The site of the temple is a platform, bounded on the 
 east by undulating hills, and within a short distance of the source 
 of the Kennet, a tributary to the lliames. "This," Stukeley re- 
 marks, "might have been regarded as the grand national cathe- 
 dral, while the smaller circles in different parts of the island 
 might be compared to the palish or villago churches." Numbers 
 of detached stones, called grey weathers, lie in the neighbouring 
 parts, and from this somce the materials of the temple appear 
 to have been selected. The number of these masses employed 
 in the construction of the temple amounted to G50 stones. The 
 dimensions of these stones vai-y from 5 ft. to 20 ft. in elevation 
 above the sm-face of the ground, and from 3 ft. to 12 ft. in bulk. 
 One hundred vertical stones surrounded in a circle an area of 
 about 1400 ft. in diameter, and bounding these stones, the work 
 w,i3 completed by a deep ditch and a high bank, having two open- 
 ings corresponding with the original avenues, although other two 
 
 relations, | of Ireland, making them in all their grounds, and 
 
 ^mmmmmiim!, 
 
 FiiUeti 
 pinct of «Di« rcmorcJ 
 CiLvitvwhcrf uStene stood 
 
 Pl.\n 01- DRiriDiCAL CiPCLE AT AVEBUKY.-— From Hoare's Ancieut WUtshivo. 
 
 carryiug flaming brands about their coru-fielJa, 
 This they do likewise all over France, and in some 
 of the Scottish isles. These Midsummer fires and 
 sacrifices "were to obtain a blessing on the fruits 
 of the earth, now becoming ready for gathering; 
 as those of the 1st of May, that they might pros- 
 perously grow; and those of the last of October 
 were the thanksgiving for finishing their harvest." 
 In Ireland, and also in the north of Scotland, the 
 1st of May, and in some places the 21st of June, 
 is still called Beltein or Beltane, that is, the day 
 of Bel Fire; and imitations of the old superstiti- 
 
 openings have subsequently been broken in the mumid. Tho 
 inner slope of the muund measured 80 ft., and its whole extent 
 and cii'cuniference at the toj}, according to Sir R. Colt Hoaro, 
 4442 ft. The area within the mound is upward of 2S acres. About 
 midway upon the inner slope was a ten-ace, appaieutly meant as 
 a stand for spectators. Within the periphery of the gi-eat cuxlo 
 were two other small circles, one being a double cii'cle of up- 
 right stones, with a single stone raised near the centre, which 
 Stukeley calls the ambire or obelisk; this small temple consiste).! 
 of forty-three stones. Another circle of forty-five stone.'i, some 
 of which are still standing, and of great size, stood a littlo north 
 of the former, consisting also of two concentric circles, inclosing 
 a gioup of three tall stones, called the cove. These oomposed 
 the triple ch'cle or temple. This work was distingmshed from 
 other similar monuments, by avenues of approach, consisting 
 of double rows of upright stones, which branched off from tho 
 central work, each to the extent of upwards of a mile. One of 
 these branched southward, turning near its extremity to tho 
 south east, where it terminated in two elliptical ranges of up- 
 right stones. This avenue was formed by 200 upright stones, 
 being finished at its eastern extremity with fifty-eight stones. 
 The width of the avenue varied from 50 ft. to 35 ft. between tho
 
 B.C. 55— A.D. 419.] 
 
 BRITISH AND llOMAN PERIOD. 
 
 53 
 
 mis ceremouios wcro not lonj ago still generally 
 performed.' lu Scollaud a sort of sacrifice was 
 
 
 Ground Plan of CjTONKUfciNQE.'-' — From Sir R. Colt Iloares i 
 Wiltsliire. 
 
 offered up, antl one of the persons present, upon 
 whom the lot ft'll, leaped three times through the 
 flames of the fire. lu Ireland the cottagers all 
 drove their cattle through the fire. Even in 
 
 stones, which were on an average S6 ft. apart from each other 
 in their linear direction. Tlie outer oval of the tenninatmg 
 temple to the south-east, oa an oraineuce called Overton Hill, 
 or the Hackpen, measured about 146 ft. in diameter ; the hmer 
 oval was 45 ft. across. The western avenue extended about one 
 mile and a half, and consisted of 203 stones; its estremity ended 
 in a point with a single stone. Those avenues were foiined in 
 curved lines, and, according to Dr. Stuteley's theory, were in- 
 tended to represent or typify the figiue of the serpent. This 
 vast work is sun-ounded by numerous tumuli, cromleclis, and 
 ancient trackways, over which rises the lofty cone of Silbury 
 Hill. Tlie great earthen mound of Avebury now contains a 
 village, with its fields and appurtenances, and its original figtire 
 is not to be made out by the present vestiges. Axibrey (a.d. 
 1663} makes out fcixty-three stones as remaining within the in- 
 trenched inclosure in his time ; these were reduced to twenty- 
 nine, when Stukeley made his survey; and in 1S12, when Sir R. 
 Colt Hoare described it, only seventeen stones remained. Two 
 upright stonea of the western avenue remain, and a'jout sis- 
 teen of those of the southern avenue. 
 
 ' "Tlie needflre, nydfyr, New Gennan noihfmer, was called, 
 from the mode of its production, confrictione de Ugnis; and 
 though probably common to the Kelts as well as Teutons, was 
 long and weU known to all tlie Germanic r;ices at a certain 
 period. All the fires in the viUage were to be relighted from 
 the virgin flame produced by the rubbing together of wood ; 
 and in the Higlilands of Scotland and Ireland, it was usiuil 
 to drive the cattle through it, by way of lustration, and as a 
 preservative agaiust disease." — Kemble's SaxoM in England, 
 vol. ii. p. 360, where a curious illustration of the subject is 
 given, fi-om an ancient English MS. Perthshire seems to have 
 ratained most pertinaciously the old superstitions connected 
 
 eouie par^s of England the practice still prevails 
 o;*lightiig fires in parishes on Midsumuier Eve.'' 
 Another of the most remarkable 
 l>riiiei])Ie3 of primitive Druidism ap- 
 jiears to have been the worship of the 
 serpent; a superstition so widely ex- 
 tended, as to evince its derivation from 
 the most ancient traditions of the 
 liuraan race. Pliny has given \is a curi- 
 tius account of the auguinum, or ser- 
 pent's ^^g^ ■which he tells us was worn 
 fis their distinguishiug badge by tlie 
 Druids. He had himself seen it, he 
 enys, and it was about the bigness of an 
 apple, its shell beiug a cartilaginous in- 
 crustation, full of little cavities, like 
 those ou the legs of the polypus. Mar- 
 \'els of all kinds were told of this pro- 
 duction. It was said to be formed, at 
 first, by a great number of serpents 
 twined together, whose hissing at last 
 laised it into the air, when it was to be 
 caught, ere it fell to the ground, in a 
 clean white cloth, by a person mounted 
 ou a swift hor.je, who had immediately 
 to ride off at full speed, the enraged 
 serpents pursuing him until they were 
 stopped (^as witches still are supposed to 
 :icicnt be, in the popular faith) by a running 
 water. If it were genuine it would^ 
 when enchased in gold, and thrown into a river, 
 swim against the stream. All the virtues also of 
 a charm were ascribed to it. In jiarticular, the 
 person who carried it about with him was insured 
 
 with the worship of fiie, probably from Benledi having been 
 specially coi^ecrated to it. So Lite as in 1S26, an old farmer 
 in that county, who had lost several cattle by an epidemic 
 disease, was persuaded, by a weu'd sister in Ids neighbour- 
 hood, to ti-y the effect of a lustration of the sm-vivors, by 
 making them pass through the flame of a fire kindled in the 
 l»amyard by friction. — (See the Mirror for June, 1S26, quoted 
 by Kemble.) 
 
 - The site of Stouehenge, the plain of Sarum, is on a platform 
 of imdulating do\\'ns, about six miles from Salisbmy. The 
 structure consists of two circles and two ovals, composed of 
 hugo stones, uprights and imposts. The outer or largest circle is 
 lOj ft. iu diameter, and between that and the interior smaller 
 circle is a space of about 9 ft. Within this smaller cii'cle, 
 which is half the height (S ft.) of the exterior one, was a por- 
 tion of an eUipse formed by five groups of stones, which have 
 been called trilUhons, because foi-med by two vortical and one 
 horizontal stone. Within this ellipse is another of smgle stones, 
 half the height of tlie trilithons. The outer circle was originally 
 composed *if thirty upright stones, at nearly ccxual distances 
 apart, Bustauiing .as many stones in a horizontal position, form- 
 ing a continuous impost. The inner circle consisted of about 
 the same number of upright stones of smaller size, and without 
 imposts. Within the inner eUiptical inclosnre was a bhwk of stone 
 16 ft. long, 4 ft. broad, and 20 in. thick. This has boon usually 
 called the altar stone. Round the larger circle, and at the 
 distance of 100 ft., was a vallum 62 ft. in width, and 15 ft. in 
 height. 
 
 3 See Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 105, vol. v. 
 p. 84, and vol. xi. p. 620; Vallancey's lixsay on the Antiquity of 
 the Irish Language, p. 19; and Brando's PopiHar Antiquities, 
 vol i. p 238, A'C.
 
 54 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [IlEuolo^f. 
 
 agaiust being overcome iu any dispute iu which 
 he niiglit engage, and might count upon suc- 
 cess iu his attempts at obtaining the favour and 
 
 View of Stonehenge. — From Ili^ins' Celtic Dniirl^. 
 
 friendship of the great. It has been conjectured, 
 on highly probable grounds, that the massive 
 Druidical temples of Avebury, of Stonehenge, 
 of Carnac in Brittany, and most of the others 
 that remain both in Britain and Gaul, were dedi- 
 cated to the united worship of the sun and the 
 serpent, and that the form of their construction is 
 throughout emblematical of this combination of 
 the two religions. ' 
 
 But however comparatively simiile and re- 
 stricted may have been the Druidical worship in 
 its earliest stage, there is sufficient evidence that, 
 at a later period, its gods came to be much more 
 numerous. Ctesar, as we have already seen, men- 
 tions among those adored by the Gauls, Mercury, 
 Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Miuerv:\. It is to be 
 regretted that the historian did not give us the 
 Celtic names of the deities in question, rather than 
 the Roman names, which he considered, from tho 
 similarity of attributes, to be their representa- 
 tives. Livy, however, tells us that the Spanish 
 Celts called Mercury Teutates; the same word, 
 no doubt, with the Phoenician Taaut, and the 
 Egyptian Thoth, which are stated by -vai-ious an- 
 
 licarnassus affirm to have been also adored by 
 the Celtic nations. Bacchus, Ceres, Proserpine, 
 Diana, and other gods of Greece and Rome, also 
 appear to have all had their re- 
 ^ presentatives in the Dnudical 
 
 ,S^"|^=1f5^-- - worship ; if, indeed, the classic 
 
 theology did not borrow these 
 divinities from the Cells. An- 
 other of the Celtic gods was 
 Tarauis, whose name signifies 
 the god of thunder. 
 
 The earliest Druidism seems, 
 like the kindred superstition of 
 Germany, as described by Taci- 
 tus, to have admitted neither of 
 covered temples nor of sculp- 
 tured images of the gods. Jupi- 
 ter, indeed, is said to have been represented by a 
 lofty oak, and Mercury by a cube— the similarity 
 of that geometrical figure on all sides typifying 
 
 Gaulish Pcities, from Roman b-is-reliefd undei the ohoir of 
 Notre Dame, Pai-is. — From Montfuucoii, 
 
 cieut writers to be the same with the Hermes of 
 the Greeks, and the Mercury of the Latins." Ju- 
 piter is thought to have been called Jow, which 
 means younrj, from his being the youngest son of 
 S;iturn, whom both Cicero and Dionysius of Ha- 
 
 • See on tliis subject a cm-ioiis dissei-t.ation, by the Rev. C. 
 Deane, in the Ai-duEotogia, vol XXT. (for 1S34) pp. 1S8-229. 
 2 Philobibliita ex Sanconiath.— Cic. de Nat. B, iii. 22. 
 
 Gauusu Deittes, from Rnm.in baa-reliefa Tinder ths choii of 
 Notre-Danie, Paris. — From Alontfaucon. 
 
 that perfect truth and unchangeableness which 
 were held to belong to this supreme deity ; but 
 these are to be considereil, not as attempts to 
 imitate the supposed bodily forms of the gods, 
 but only as emblematic illustrations of their 
 attributes. At a later period, however, material 
 configurations of the objects of worshiji seem to 
 have been introduced. Gildas speaks of such 
 images as still existing in great numbers in hia 
 time, among the unconverted Britons. They 
 had a greater number of gods, he says, than the 
 Egyptians themselves, there being hardly a river, 
 lake, mountain, or wood, which had not its di- 
 vinity. 
 
 As for the human sacrifices of which Ca;sar 
 speaks, his account is fully borne out by the testi- 
 monies of various other ancient authors. Strabo 
 describes the image of wicker or straw, in which, 
 he says, men and all descriptions of cattle and 
 beasts were roa.«ted togethei-. He also relates
 
 E.G. Co—A D. 44'J.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 55 
 
 that sometimes the victims were cnioified, some- 
 times shot to doatli witli arrows. Tlie statement 
 of DioJi>rus Siculus is, that criminals wore 1-iept 
 under ground inr five years, and then otl'ered up 
 as sacrifices to the gods, by being impaled, and 
 burned in great fires along with (piantities of 
 other oflerings. He adds, that tliey also immo- 
 lated the prisoners they had taken in war, and 
 along with them devoured, burned, or in some 
 other manner destroyed, likewise, whatever cattle 
 they had taken from their enemies. Plutarch 
 tells ns that the noise of songs .and musical in- 
 struments w-as employed on these occasions to 
 drown the cries of the sufferers.' Pliny is of 
 opinion that a part of every human victim was 
 eaten by the Druids ; but what reason he had for 
 thiukiug 30 does not ajipear, nor does the sup- 
 position seem to be probable in itself. Upon the 
 subject of the practice of human s.acrifice it has 
 been observed, that " if we rightly consider this 
 point we shall perceive that, shocking as it is, it 
 is yet a step towards the humanizing of savages ; 
 for the mere brute man listens only to his fero- 
 cious passions and horrid appetites, and sla_ys and 
 devours all the enemies he can conquer; but the 
 priest, persuading him to select only the be.st and 
 bravest as s.aci-ifices to his protecting deity, there- 
 by, in fact, preserves numberless lives, and puts 
 an end to the cannibalism which has ju.stly been 
 looked upon as the last degradation of huuiau 
 nature." " 
 
 The origin of Druidism,aud its connection with 
 other ancient creeds of religion and philosophy, 
 have given occasion to much curious speculation. 
 Diogenes Laertius describes the Druids as hold- 
 ing the same place among the Gauls and Britons 
 with that of the Philosophers among the Greeks, 
 of the Magi among the Persians, of the Gymno- 
 so])hists among the Indian.?, and of the Chaldeans 
 among the Assyrians, lie also refers to Aris- 
 totle as affirming, in one i>f his lost works, that 
 ]ihilosophy hail not been taught to the Gauls by 
 the Greeks, but had originated among the former, 
 and, from them, had passed to the latter. The 
 introduction into the Greek philosophy i,f the 
 doctrine of the Metempsychosis is commonly at- 
 tributed to Pythagoras ; and there are various 
 passages in ancient authors which m.ake mention 
 of, or allude to some connection between that 
 philosopher and the Druids. Abaris, the Hyper- 
 borean, is by man}' supposed to have been a Druid; 
 and he, lamblicus tells us, was taught by Pytha- 
 goras to find out all truth by the science of num- 
 bers.' JIarcellinus, sjieaking of the conventual 
 associations of the Druids, expresses himself as if 
 he conceived that they so lived in obedience to 
 the commands of Pythagoras; ".as the authority 
 
 I Pc Supc-ttitione. 1 lutroJ, tu IIL,tary, Emi/. Mdrop, p. C3. 
 ' Vila Pi/thag. c. xix. 
 
 of Pythagoras hath decreed," are his word.?.' 
 Others aflirm that the Grecian philo-sophcr deri- 
 ved his jihilosophy from the Druids. A rei)ort is 
 preserved, by Clement of Alex.amlria, that Pytha- 
 ;or,as, in the course of his travel.?, studied under 
 lioth the Druids and the Brahmins.'^ The ]irob.a- 
 'lility is th.at bdlh Pythagoras and the Druids 
 drew their jihilosophy from the same fountain. 
 
 Several of the ablest anil most hiborious among 
 the modern investigators of the subject of Druid- 
 ism have found themselves compelled to adopt 
 the theory of its Oriental origin. Pelloutier, from 
 the numerous and strong resembl.inces presented 
 by the Druidical and the old Persi.an religion, 
 concludes the Celts and Persians, as Mr. O'Brien 
 has lately done, to be the same jieoplc, and the 
 Celtic tongue to be the ancient Persic.' The late 
 Mr. Reuben Burrow, distinguished for his inti- 
 mate acquaintance with the Indian astronomy 
 and mytliology, in a paper in the Asiatic Jic- 
 «ea;r/(e«, decidedly pronounces the Druids to have 
 been a race of emigrated Indian philosophers, 
 and Stonehenge to be evidently one of the temples 
 of Buddha.' Some of the Welsh antiquaries have, 
 
 
 Malabar ToLMEN "— Fiuia Uigguio Celtic Druidn. 
 
 on other grouuils, brought their assumed British 
 ancestors from Ceylou, tiie great seat of Eucif Ihisin. 
 This question has been examined at great length, 
 iu a Dissertation on the Origin of the Druids^ by 
 Mr. Maurice, who, considering the Buddhists to 
 
 ■> Ammian. MarcU. xv. 9. ^ Strom, i. 35. 
 
 " Histoire des Cclles, p. 19. See also Borlaso's A lUifjuities of 
 Cormcall, cli. xxii. : *' Of tlio Groat Resemblance betwixt the 
 Pniid and Persian Suiiei^tition, and the Cause of it inquired 
 into." * Ai^iatic Reacarches, ii. 4SS. 
 
 s The similarity of remains louiid in parts of India, Persia. 
 Palestine, A-c. , ti> those of Druidical character still existing in this 
 country, tends strongly to confimi the hypothesis of the Kastei n 
 origin of Dniidism. The above representation "f a tolmon in 
 Malabar ia taken by Higgins from Sir R. Colt Iloare, wluj has 
 omitted to state hisautliority, but the antlior of the Cdtic Pntidn 
 quotee it, remarking that from Sir Hichard's care and acumen, 
 he is pei-suaded that it is given ui>on sufficient frounda.
 
 56 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Relioion. 
 
 have been a sect of the Brahmins, comes to the 
 conchisioii tliat " the celebrated orJer of the 
 Druids, anciently established in this country, 
 were the immediate descendants of a tribe oi 
 Brahmins situated in the high northern latitudes 
 bordering on the vaat range of Caucasus; thai 
 these, during a jieriod of the Indian empire, when 
 its limits were most extended in Asia, mingling 
 with the Celto-Scythian tribes who tenanted thi 
 immense deserts of Grand Tartary, became gi-adn- 
 ally incorporated, though not confounded with 
 that ancient nation; introduced among them tlu 
 rites of the Brahmin religion, occasionally adopt- 
 ing those of the Scythians; and, together with 
 them, finally emigrated to the western regions of 
 Europe." ' 
 
 It must be confessed that the Druidical system, 
 as established in Gaul and Britain, has altogether 
 very much the appearance of something not the 
 growth of the country, but superinduced upon 
 the native barbarism by importation from abroad. 
 The knowledge and arts of which they appear to 
 have been possessed, seem to point out the Druids 
 as of foreign extraction, and as continuing to form 
 the depositories of a civilization greatly superior 
 to that of the general community in the midst of 
 which they dwelt. It was quite natural, how- 
 ever, that Druidism, supposing it to have been 
 originally an imported antl foreign religion, should 
 nevertheless gradually adopt some things from 
 the idolatry of a different form which may have 
 prevailed in Britain and Gaul previous to its in- 
 troduction ; just as we find Christianity itself to 
 have become adulterated in some countries by an 
 infusion of the heathenism with which it was 
 brought into contact. 
 
 The Germans, Coesar expressly tells us, had no 
 Druids; nor is there a vestige of such an institu- 
 tion to be discovered in the ancient history, tra- 
 ditions, customs, or monuments of any Gothic 
 people. It was probably, indeed, confined to Ire- 
 land, South Britain, and Gaul, until the measures 
 taken to root it out from the Roman dominions 
 compelled some of the Druids to take refuge in 
 other countries. The Emperor Tiljerius, accord- 
 ing to Pliny and Strabo, and the Emperor Clau- 
 dius, according to Suetonius, issued decrees for 
 the total abolition of the Druidical religion, on 
 the pretext of an abhorrence of the atrocity ol the 
 human sacrifices in which it indulged its votaries. 
 The true motive may be suspected to have been 
 a jealousy of the influence, among the provincials 
 of Gaul and Britain, of a native order of priest- 
 hood so powerful as that of the Druids. Sue- 
 tonius, indeed, states that the practice of the 
 Druidical religion had been already interdicted 
 to Roman citizens by Augustus. We have seen, 
 
 * Indian Antiquities, vol. vi. part i. p. 13. 
 
 in the course of the preceding narrative, how it 
 was extiri>ated from its chief seat in the south 
 of Britain by Suetonius Paulinus. Such of the 
 Druids as survived this attack are supposed to 
 have fied to the Isle of Man, which then became, 
 in place of Anglesey, the head-quarters of British 
 Druidism. It was probably after this that the 
 Druidical religion penetrated to the northern 
 parts of the island. The vestiges, at all events, 
 of its establishment at some period in Scotlaml, 
 are spread over many parts of that country, and 
 it has left its impression in various still surviving 
 popular customs and superstitions. The number 
 and variety of the Druid remains in North Bi'i- 
 tain, according to a late learned writer, are almost 
 endless. The principal seat of Scottish Druidism 
 is thought to have been the parish of Kirkmichael, 
 in the recesses of Perthshire, near the great moun- 
 tainous range of the Grampians.- 
 
 Druidism long survived, though in obscurity 
 and decay, the thunder of the imperial edicts. 
 In Ireland, indeed, where the Roman arms had 
 not penetrated, it continued to flourish down 
 nearly to the middle of the fifth century, when it 
 fell before the Christian enthusiasm and energy 
 of St. Patrick. But even in Britain, the practice 
 of the Druidical worship appears to have sul)- 
 sisted among the people long after the Druids, 
 as an order of priesthood, were extinct. The 
 annals of the sixth, seventh, and even of the 
 eighth centuiy, contain numerous edicts of em- 
 perors, and canons of councils, against the wor- 
 ship of the suu, the moon, mountains, rivers, 
 lakes, and trees.' There is even a law to the 
 same etTect of the English king Canute, iu the 
 eleventh ccntui-y. Nor, as we have already more 
 than once had occa.sion to remark, have some of 
 the practices of the old superstition yet altogether 
 ceased to be remembered in our popular sports, 
 pastimes, and anniversary usages. The cere- 
 monies of All-Hallowmass, the bonfires of May 
 Day and Midsummer Eve, the vii-tues attributed 
 to the misletoe, and various other customs of the 
 villages and country parts of England, Scotland, 
 and Ireland, still speak to us of the days of 
 Druidism, and evince that the impression of its 
 grim ritual has not been wholly obliterated from 
 the ])opular imagiuation, by the Inp.se of nearly 
 twenty centuries. 
 
 On the settlement of the Romans in Britain, 
 the established religion of the province of course 
 became the same classic superstition which these 
 conquerors of the world still maintained in all 
 its ancient honours .and pre-eminence in their 
 native Italy, which was diffused alike through 
 all the customs of their private life and the whole 
 system of their state-economy, and which they 
 
 2 Clculmers, i. pp. 09- 
 
 ' relloutier, Hist, des Celtes, iii. 4.
 
 B.C. 55 — A.D. 44f).] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 57 
 
 I while the sea assunieJ the colour of blood, and 
 the receding tide seemed to leave behind it the 
 phantoms ot'human carcasses. The i)icture is com- 
 pleted by the mention of the temple, in which 
 the Roman soldiery took refuge on the rushing 
 into the city of their infuriated assailants — of the 
 undefended state of the place, in which the ele- 
 gance of the buildings had been more attended 
 to than their strength— of another temple which 
 had been raised in it to Claudius the Divine —and, 
 tiually, of its crew of rapa- 
 cious priests, who, under the 
 pretence of religion, wasted 
 every man's substance, and 
 excited a deeper indignation 
 in the breasts of the unhappy 
 natives than all the other 
 cruelties and oppressions to 
 which they were subjected. 
 
 One result of the Roman 
 invasion was the introduc- 
 tion into Britain of the Chris- 
 tian faith. But the obscurity 
 which jiervades the ecclesias- 
 tical records of the first cen- 
 tury, and the unobtrusive si- 
 lence with which the first steps 
 of Christianity were made, in- 
 
 Remaixs of Tejiple of Minerva, discovered at Bath in 1755, nn<l (ireserved in Batli volve tllis part of the I'eligious 
 Museum.— Lysou's Reliquiai Romana;. " 
 
 carried with tliem, almost as a part of themselves, 
 or at least as the very living spirit and sustaining 
 power of their entire polity and civilization, into 
 every foreign land that they colonized. In this 
 far island, too, as in the elder homes of poetry 
 and the arts, 
 
 •* An ajje hath been when earth was proud 
 Of lustre too intense 
 To 1)6 sustained; and mortals bowed 
 The front in self-defence." 
 
 Beside the rude grandeur of Stonehenge, and surrounded 
 by the gloom of the sacred groves, glittering temples, 
 displaying all the grace and pomp of finished architecture, 
 now rose to Jupi- 
 ter,and Apollo,and 
 Diana, and Venus; 
 and the air of our 
 northern clime was 
 peopled with all 
 
 ;^^ 
 
 the bright di'eams and visions of the mythology 
 of Greece. A temple of Minerva, and probably 
 other sacred edifices, appear to have adorned 
 the city of Bath ; London is supposed to have had 
 its temple of Diana, occupying the same natural 
 elevation which is now crowned by tlie magnifi- 
 cent cathedral of St. Paul's ; and the foundations 
 and other remains of similar monuments of the 
 Roman paganism have been discovered in many of 
 our other ancient towns. But perhaps no such 
 material memorials are so well fitted to strike 
 the imagination, and to convey a lively impi-es- 
 sion of this long past state of things, as the pas- 
 sage in the Annals of Tacitus, in which we find 
 a string of prodigies i-eoounted to have happened 
 in different parts of the province of Britain, im- 
 mediately before the insurrection of Boadioea, 
 just as the same events might have taken place 
 in Italy, or in Rome itself. First, in the town of 
 Camalodunum, the image of the goddess Victory, 
 without any apparent cause, suddenly falls from 
 its place, and turns its face round, as if giving 
 way to the enemy. Then females, seized with a 
 sort of prophetic fury, would be heard mourn- 
 fully calling out that destruction was at hand, 
 their cries penetrating from the streets both into 
 the curia or council-chambei", and into the theatre. 
 A representation, in the air, of the colony laid in 
 ruins, was seen near the mouth of the Thames, 
 Vol. I. 
 
 history of Britain in much un- 
 certainty. Some investigators have attributed the 
 
 Restoration by Smirke of Portico of Tf-mpi.e of Minerva, 
 at Bath. — From Lys^jn's Rtjli<iuiie l{om<infe. 
 
 work of founding Christianity in Britain to St. 
 Peter, to James the son of Zebedee, to Simon Ze-
 
 58 
 
 HISTOEY OP ENGLAND. 
 
 [Relioios. 
 
 lotes, aud some to St. Paul himself. Others.again, 
 liave attributed it to such inferior personages as 
 Aristobidus, who is iucidcntally mentioned by St. 
 Paul, Joseph of Arimathea, and tlio disciples of 
 Polycarp. Some of these accounts would imply 
 that British Christianity is as old as the apostolic 
 age ; but all that can be regarded as well estab- 
 lished is, that at a comparatively early period 
 Christianity found its way into the British Islands. 
 Before the close of the first ceutury Christian re- 
 fugees may have fled thither from the Continent 
 to escape i)ei'secution, aud Christian soldiers and 
 civilians may have accompanied the invading 
 armies. The destruction which had befallen the 
 teachei-s of the old or Druidical religion, would 
 facilitate the progress of Christianity, and the 
 wars between the Romans and the natives allow 
 it to go on unchecked. The monastic writers 
 decorate tlieir history of the fii-st centuries of the 
 British church with the legend of King Lucius, 
 the son of Coilus, who, according to their account, 
 was king of the whole island, was bajjtized, and 
 became so earnest for the conversion of his people 
 that he sent to Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome, for 
 assistance in the important work. It is possible 
 that, in this monkish legend, we see dimly sha- 
 dowed forth some petty British king or chieftain, 
 in vassalage to Rome, who, with the aid of Roman 
 missionaries, effected the conversion of his tribe. 
 In Tertullian's work against the Jews, written 
 A.D. 209, he says that "even those places in Britain 
 hitherto inaccessible to the Roman arms have 
 been subdued by the gospel of Christ." This 
 expression, however, may very possibly refer to 
 Ireland, which wd,s then accounted part of Britain. 
 During the Diocletian persecution, St. Alban, 
 the first martyr of our island, perished, with 
 many others whose names have not been recorded. 
 Bede says this event took place in a.d. 286; but if 
 it really happened in the great persecution under 
 Diocletian, a date at least seventeen or eighteen 
 years later must be assigned to it. In the year 
 314, Eborius, Bishop of York, Restitutus, Bishop 
 of London, and Adelphius,Bishopof Richborough, 
 attended the council at Aries ; and as three 
 bishops formed the full representation of a pro- 
 vince, it appears tliat Britain was thus placed on 
 
 an equality with the churches of Spain and Gaul. 
 In the fourth century, according to Gildas, Ariau- 
 ism was very prevalent in our island; but, on the 
 other hand, St. Jerome and St. Clirysostom fre- 
 quently allude, in their writings, to the orthodoxy 
 of the British Church. In the fifth ceutury the 
 oiiiuions of Pelagius were zealously disseminated 
 by his countrymen, Agrioola and Celestius ; and, 
 say.s Bode, the British ecclesiastics, in gi-eat alarm, 
 and unable to refute them, implored assistance 
 from the bishops of Gaul. The latter sent two 
 of their number, who arrived iu Britain about 
 the year 429, and completely silenced the Pela- 
 gians by their ai'guments. But the bafiled Pela- 
 gians again raised their heads, and again, in 446, 
 Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, accompanied by 
 Severus, Bishop of Treves, came to Britain, and 
 this time not only silenced the Pelagians, but 
 procured the banishment of their leaders from 
 the island. 
 
 After the Christian chui-ch had been estab- 
 lished, the same results were exhibited iu Bri- 
 tain as in other countries ; and while the Italian 
 or Greek infused into the Christian fiiith the 
 classical paganism of his fathers, the Briton 
 leavened it with his ancestral Druidical super- 
 stitions.' 
 
 It should appear that the order of monks soon 
 became numerous, though they were obliged for 
 a long time to procure their subsistence by manual 
 labour. Even the British bishops, partly tlu'ough 
 the poverty of the coiinti-y, and, perhaps, still 
 more through the partial conversion of the people 
 — many of whom still remained attached either 
 to the Roman paganism or to the Druidical wor- 
 ship — were, and long continued to be, very poor. 
 When the successor of Constantine offered to 
 maintain the bishops of the West from the im- 
 ]ierial revenues, only those of Biitain acceded to 
 the i^roposal, while the rest rejected it. The 
 number of churches and houses of religion seems 
 to be only matter of conjecture ; but it is pretty 
 certain that, eveu at the time when the Romans 
 abandoned the island, many parts of it had never 
 heard of the Christian gospel. 
 
 ' SoutLey, Book of the C1m,cU.
 
 B.C. 55-A.D. 449] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 59 
 
 CHAPTER IV.— HISTORY OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Cesar's invasion to the AimivAL of the saxons. — b.c. .53— ad. 449. 
 
 Derivation of the uanios Albion and Britain— Cresar's account of the island— Britain jieoiiled by two distinct races 
 — Cffisar's account of the inhabitants— Personal appearance of the Britons— Their painted skins— Strange mar- 
 riage institutions of the Britons— Their habitations- Their handicraft ingenuity— Their war-chariotB. baskets, 
 furniture, dress, ornaments — Their means and modes of subsistence— Their form of government — Disunion of 
 the tribes and their mutual wars— Their towns and fortifications— Eoman civilization, and its effect on the 
 Britons. 
 
 .DSAR'S own account of the isian J 
 .and its inhabitants, as given in his 
 Commentaries, shows th.at he spent 
 bnt a brief period in liis Britisli 
 invasion, and thus its results were 
 indecisive. It was not a conquest, 
 but a mere hostile landing; and the account 
 which he has given us of the ancient Britons was 
 perhaps little more than he might easily have 
 learned from the Gaulish traders, whom he con- 
 sulted before he commenced the expedition. Still, 
 his brief notices are valuable, characterized as 
 they are by his wonted sagacity and power of 
 observation, and also by their forming the first 
 introduction of the British people into th« records 
 of accredited history. 
 
 In a former chapter we had occasion to notice 
 the names, fii-st, of Samothea, and afterwards of 
 Albion, by which the island was distinguished. 
 We also adverted to the historical legends in 
 which they are said to have originated. These 
 sources, however, were uusatisfiictory to our ear- 
 liest antiquaries, who turned their inquiries to 
 another source, and they have derived the name 
 of Albion from alb or albus, signifying while, 
 which is supposed to have been given to the is- 
 land from the whiteness of its cliffs, as .seen from 
 the opposite coast of Gaul. That of Britain, 
 by which name the island was first known to 
 the Romans, is still more doubtful in its origin ; 
 so that, while some of our antiquaries, at the 
 head of whom is Camden, have derived it from 
 brit or 6;'i<A (''painted"), in allusion to the blue 
 painted skins of the natives, others, with Carte, 
 suppo.se it a corruption of a British word, pri/d- 
 hain, but of the true meaning of which they are 
 uncertain. 
 
 From this unprofitable investigation about 
 names, we gladly turn to the account of the is- 
 land itself, as given by Julius Cajsar. "The 
 inland part of Britain," he says in his Commen- 
 taries, " is inhabited by those who, according to 
 the existing tradition, were tlie aborigines of tlie 
 island ; the sea-coast, by those who, for the sake 
 
 of ])hindcr, or to make war, had cro.ssed over 
 from among the Belga;, and who, in nearly every 
 case, retain the names of their native states, from 
 wliicli they emigrated to this ishmd, wherein they 
 made war, and settled, and began to cultivate the 
 ground." Taking this statement in connection 
 with the whole tenor of antiquarian discovery 
 among the earliest ages of Britain, we find that 
 its first inhabitants were Celts, children of that 
 large Asiatic family who emigrated during the 
 primiti\'e ages into Europe, and afterwards, under 
 the names of Gauls and Cimbri, carried such ter- 
 ror into It.aly and Greece, and secured so many 
 fair European settlements, among which Britain 
 was not the least important. In process of time, 
 however, according to Ccesar's intimation, they 
 had formidable rivals in the BelgK, a Gothic race, 
 located in Gaul, and i-en owned for their supe- 
 rior valour and activity, who, crossing the nar- 
 row sea, obtained possession of the south-eastern 
 coast of Britain, and drove its Celtic population 
 into the interior. In this way two distinct races, 
 and one considerably superior to the other, as 
 well as later in its arrival, are recognized as oc- 
 cupying the island at the commencement of the 
 Roman invasion. Some addition;d information 
 upon this important head might have thrown 
 much light upon our primitive history, and ex- 
 plained those perplexing anomalies of civiliza- 
 tion, combined with barbarism, which the ancient 
 relics of our island present to the study of the 
 antiquaiy. But Cresar, although the most ob- 
 servant and intellectual of conquerors, wa.s not 
 the conqueror of Britain, and his hostile advance 
 into it never appears to have exceeded eighty 
 miles, commencing at the east coast of Kent, and 
 terminating at the capital of CassiveUaunus, sup- 
 posed to have been afterwards the ancient town 
 of Verulam, in Hertfordshire. The tribes dig- 
 nified with the name of nations, with whom he 
 successively came in contact in his h;isty inroad, 
 were the people of Cantium, the Triuobantes, the 
 Cenimagni, the Segontiaci, the Ancalites, the Bi- 
 broci, and the Cassi — clans sullicieutly uumerou.s
 
 60 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social State. 
 
 within so sliort a compass, and piobably living in 
 the old Celtic fashion, either of isolation or down- 
 right hostility ; but the different localities they 
 occupied is now a matter of mere conjecture. It 
 is worthy of remark, also, that he ha.s not men- 
 tioned tlie name of a single British town in the 
 whole course of his expedition. 
 
 From this very limited account of the island, 
 we pass to that which he has given of the inhabi- 
 tants ; and here his brevity is sufficiently charac- 
 teristic of his limited knowledge of the subject. 
 " The population," he says, " is very great, and 
 the buildings very numerous, closely resembling 
 those of the Gauls : the quantity of cattle is con- 
 siderable. For money they use copper, or rings 
 of iron of a certain weight. Tin is produced there 
 in the midland districts, and iron near the sea- 
 coast; but the quantity of this is small. The 
 copper which they use is imported. There is 
 timber of every kind that is found in Gaul, ex- 
 cept beech and fir. They reckon it unlawful to 
 eat the hare, the lien, and the goose. These ani- 
 mals, however, they breed for amusement. The 
 country has a more temperate climate than Gaiil, 
 the cold being less intense." After several geo- 
 graphical statements, which are irrelevant to our 
 purpose, Csesar thus continues his account of the 
 Britons : — ■' Of all the natives, those who inhabit 
 Kent {Cantiuni)—a district the whole of which is 
 near the coast — are by far the most civilized, and 
 do not differ greatly in their customs from the 
 Gauls. The inland people for the most part do 
 not sow corn, but subsist on milk and flesh, and 
 have clothing of skins. All the Britons, however, 
 stain themselves with wo.ad, which makes them 
 of a blue tinge, and gives them a more formidable 
 appeai-ance in battle. They also wear their hair 
 long, and shave every part of the body except 
 the head and the upper lip. Every ten or twelve 
 of them have their wives in common, especially 
 brothers with brothers, and parents with chil- 
 dren ; but if any children are born, they are ac- 
 counted the children of those by whom each 
 virgin was first espoused." 
 
 Such is the brief account of Julius Ca;sar con- 
 cerning that strange people, of whom his own 
 countrymen appear to have hut vaguely heard, 
 until he landed an army in the island, and over- 
 I'an part of it in two campaigns. So little inte- 
 rest, however, did the Romans feel about Britain, 
 or so difficult had a conquest of it beeu reckoned, 
 that an interval of nearly a century followed be- 
 fore another invasion was attempted. The supe- 
 rior opportunities for information which were then 
 acquired by his successors, not only sufficed to give 
 a general confirmation of his statements, but also 
 materially to enlarge their amount. 
 
 The first circumstance that arrests our atten- 
 tion in these notices of the ancient Britons, is 
 
 their personal appearance. The physical qualifi- 
 cations of tliose rude warriors, who fought with 
 the greatest of Roman conquerors, and who, of 
 all his enemies, reduced him to the honours of a 
 doubtful victory, could have been of no ordinary 
 character. The strength and courage of these 
 half-naked, scantily armed, mustachioed warriors, 
 were well attested by the stout resistance they 
 offered to the Roman legions. Their large cor- 
 respondent stature is mentioned by Strabo, who 
 tells us he had seen some British youths at Rome 
 half a foot taller than the Gauls, who in turn 
 were superior in height to the Romans. This 
 writer adds, that they were not gracefully and 
 strongly formed in proportion to their great sta- 
 ture, and that they did not stand very firmly 
 upon their legs; but it must be remembered that 
 these juvenile specimens were perhaps longer 
 in attaining to full maturity than persons of a 
 smaller size and warmer climate. As for their 
 painted skins, with which the Britons endea- 
 voured to dismay theii- enemies, the idea pre- 
 vailed among the Romans of Caesar's day, that 
 this was nothing more than a mere painting or 
 staining with the juice of woad — something, in- 
 deed, like the war- 
 painting of the Red 
 Indians when they 
 prepare for fight or 
 festival. But instead 
 of this mere surface- 
 colouring, which may 
 be washed off at plea- 
 sure, we learn from 
 several ancient Roman 
 writers that it was a 
 permanent tattooing, 
 like that of the South 
 Sea Islanders, which, 
 once imjjressed, could 
 never be eradicated. 
 The jirocess, they in- 
 form us, was effected 
 in early youth, by 
 puncturing the skin 
 with a sharp-pointed instrument, and squeezing 
 out the juice of certain herbs upon the punc- 
 tures, which were made to represent the forms 
 of animals, and that these pictures, which as- 
 sumed a blue colour, grew with the growth of 
 the body, and descended with it to the grave. 
 When the first steps of Roman civilization in- 
 troduced a more abundant clothing, this rude 
 fashion soon disappeared in South Britain, and 
 was retained only in the still unconquered north, 
 where it continued to form almost the only kind 
 of dress and ornament, and whose inhabitants 
 were therefore called Picti (or jjainted men) by 
 their Romanized brethren of South Britain. lu 
 
 Woad Plant, Isa'is tinctoria.
 
 C.c. 55— A.D. 449.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 CJ 
 
 this simple way we can easily account for the 
 sudden disappearance of the Caledonians in his- 
 tory, which hiis so sorely puzzled our antiquaries: 
 instead of being utterly exterminated, as has 
 sometimes been supposed, they only reappear 
 under the nickname of Plots. It is worth no- 
 ticing, by the way, that in their practice of tat- 
 tooing, and their adherence to the pastoral life, 
 the ancient Britons closely resembled two classes 
 of the most hopeful and energetic of our modern 
 savages. These, it will at once be seen, are the 
 inhabitants of the South Sea Islands and the 
 Caifres of South Africa. 
 
 But what shall we say of that strange form 
 of the marriage institution wliich Ca'sar declares 
 to have prevailed among the Britons? It appears 
 so gross and revolting, and so opposed to that ex- 
 clusive possession wliich forms the great principle 
 of marriage, that modern writers have discarded 
 the fact, by declaring such a state of society im- 
 ()ossible. Polygamy, indeed, has prevailed almost 
 since the world commenced, but in every case it 
 lias consisted of a plurality of wives, and not of 
 husbands. Man, and not woman has always been 
 the legislator, and he took care to frame the in- 
 dulgence for his own especial benefit. Besides, 
 could such a strong, healthy, and numerous race 
 as the ancient Britons have been the produce of 
 such promiscuous intercourse? It is also alleged 
 that Ctesar, whose testimony is quoted as the au- 
 thority for such a revolting fact, was but a short 
 time in the island, and saw little of the natives, 
 except in actual conflict. He may have seen 
 them, indeed, dwelling by whole families under 
 one roof, from the want of more abundant ac- 
 commodation, and thus have hastily come to 
 the conclusion that they also lived in common 
 sexual intercourse. But to this it may be an- 
 swered, on the other hand, that no such mis- 
 take was made about the ancient Germans, who 
 also lived by whole families in a single habi- 
 tation. Caesar, too, is not the only autliority for 
 the statement, for it was repeated by Dio Cassius 
 and St. Jerome, when Britain was fully known 
 to the world at large. Unpalatable, therefore, 
 though it be, it descends to us with all the stub- 
 bornness of an historical fact. And that the ideas 
 of the Britons upon the subject of marriage in 
 genei'al dilTered from those of other nations, is 
 attested by the old Roman writer, Solinus, when 
 he describes the government of the western is- 
 lands of Caledonia, afterwards called the He- 
 brides. Speaking of the sovereign, he states, 
 '■This prince is not even allowed to have a wife 
 of his own ; but he has free access to the wives 
 of all his subjects, that, having no children which 
 he knows to be his own, lie may not be prompted 
 to encroach on the privileges of his subjects, in 
 oi'der to aggrandize his family." Strange, also, 
 
 though these British marriages were, they sc;ircely 
 exceeded in guilt or extravagance the marriage 
 institutions which prevail among the Nairs of 
 India. Perhaps the Asiatic origin of the Celtic 
 race who finally settled iu Britain, and the 
 strange expedients of the earliest Eastern nations 
 to make marital jealousy a feeling not worth en- 
 tertaining, might account iu some measure for 
 these matrimonial usages of the Britons, and sliow 
 that they were not wholly improbaVde. At all 
 events, we may hope that, like the permission 
 given to polygamy, they were only confined to 
 the higher classes, and not jiarticipated by the 
 people at large; and this, too, long before the en- 
 trance of Christianity into the island, when they 
 utterly disappeared. 
 
 We have seen, in a former chapter, what kind 
 of houses the Britons occupied on the an-ival of 
 Julius Cresar. On that part of the sea-coast oppo- 
 site Gaul, where intercourse with strangera had 
 effected a higher civilization, the houses were like 
 those of the Gauls, being poles set up in a circle, 
 forming a sharp point at tlie top, with the inter- 
 stices tilled up with wattled work, and having 
 neither window nor chimney; but far inferior to 
 these wei'e the common dwellings of the interior, 
 which were little better than the holes of foxes. 
 As for the ancient British towns, according to 
 Csesar they were nothing else than a cluster of 
 these huts planted in the heart of a forest, guarded 
 by a rampart of felled trees, and sometimes also 
 by a dun, or fortress, composed of loose blocks of 
 granite. As safety and the means of absolute 
 subsistence were of more account at such a period 
 than even domestic comfort, the princiijal British 
 constructions of those days were the strongholds 
 of princes, while those of the common people 
 might be worn out in a year. Little better than 
 this were the Border houses in Scotland, even so 
 late as the fourteenth century. 
 
 In their handicraft o])eratious these islanders 
 showed considerable ingenuity. This was esjie- 
 cially manifested iu the construction of tXxah- essedce 
 or war-chariots, which must not only have been 
 strong and well-poised, to encounter the rough 
 fields over which they were driven at full speed, 
 but also to have tasked much skill iu the fabrica- 
 tion of the scythes with which they were armed, 
 and the harness with which the horses were yoked. 
 These chariots, indeed, the Britons appear to have 
 derived from their remote Eastern ancestry, and 
 such vehicles for the purposes of warfare occur in 
 the earliest records of Sacred History, as well as 
 in the pioems of Homer. Even at a late period 
 they were also occasionally used by the nations 
 of Asia against the armies of the Roman repub- 
 lic, and were continued by the Britons the last 
 of all, until they learned to imitate the military 
 arts of their conquerors. The same ingenuity
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social State. 
 
 iudeeJ, iiii{,'lit have coiiatructed war-canocs equal 
 to those of the New Zealauders, and made the 
 Britons an adventurous niaritimo people; but, as 
 we have already stated, they had that aversion 
 for the sea which has characterized the whole 
 Celtic race. Next to their war-chariots, the skill 
 of t)ie Britons was exerted in the various opera- 
 tions of basket-work, from the walls of a house 
 and the sides of a coracle, down to tlie lightest 
 utensil for household purposes. It was the same 
 kind of ingenuity as that of the Caffres of South 
 Africa, who form elegant vessels of grass, so closely 
 plaited together as to hold milk and other liquids. 
 The baskets of the Britons were so highly admired 
 at Rome, that the Latin word bascav.da is supposed 
 to have been of British origin. From the earliest 
 coins we also fiud that the houses of the Bri- 
 tons were furnished with stools, like the modern 
 crickets; while the contents of the barrows attest 
 that, even before tlie entrance of the Romans, they 
 made various kinds of pottery, such as drinking 
 cups, jai'S, and cinerary urns. In the article of 
 clothing, although the Britons of the interior wore 
 nothing but the skins of animals at the arrival of 
 Julius Cresar, yet it is certain that tlie inhabi- 
 tants of the coast opposite Gaul, in consequence 
 of their higher civilization, and intercourse with 
 foreign traders, were better provided. Even be- 
 fore this period, it is evident that the check- 
 ered cloth and braccce of the Gauls had found 
 their way into the island, and been adopted by tlie 
 wealthier inhabitants. 'W'ith regard to personal 
 
 Torques, with manner of wearing it, from tlie sculpturfs on 
 tlie monument of Vigua Ameudola. 
 
 ornaments, the principal one worn by the Britons 
 was the torques, a chain composed of flexible 
 bars twisted into the form of a rope, and clasped 
 behind by a hook. In its highest state of im- 
 provement, it was composed of links elaborately 
 carved and ornamented. These were badges of 
 distinction for kings and chieftains, and, as such, 
 were made of silver, and sometimes even of gold; 
 but, in the absence of these metals, they were 
 usually of bronze or iron. The Britons, also, as 
 well as the Gauls, wore a ring on the middle linger. 
 The ornaments of the females were still more nu- 
 merous, as is attested by the remains found iu bell- 
 shaped barrows, which appear to have been chiefly 
 
 the burial-places of women. These ornaments con- 
 sist of beads of granite, flint, and pebble; amber 
 and bead necklaces; bronze jiius, some of tliem 
 with bone and ivory handles ; and bracelets of 
 ivory.' All this, however, was poor and rude 
 enough, even at the best, and its nakedness must 
 have been keenly felt when brought in contact 
 with the wealth, grandeur, and taste of the Ro- 
 man conquerors. It was natural, therefore, that 
 Caractacusshouhl have burst into tlie exclamation, 
 while he was led a prisoner through the stately 
 streets of Rome: "Alas! that those who inhabit 
 such palaces should envy me a hut in Britain!" 
 
 The inhabitants of the island being so depen- 
 dent upon their own native produce, subsisted 
 upon the resources of agriculture, rearing of tame 
 animals, and the chase, each piireuit being prose- 
 cuted according to the facilities of the particular 
 district, or the advanced condition of the tribe 
 that occupied it. In this way the inhabitants of 
 the southern coast, and especially those of Can- 
 tium or Kent, were, like tlieir brethren the Belgaj, 
 addicted to agriculture ; while the more inland 
 tribes were chiefly shepherds, who were unac- 
 quainted with tillage, and lived upon the produce 
 of their flocks and herds — or hunters, with whom 
 the pursuit of game and wild beasts was more 
 a necessity than an amusement. It is strange 
 that to these three occupations fishing cannot be 
 added, considering the plentiful supplies of food 
 with which the rivers and coasts abounded ; but 
 Xiphiliuus informs us that none of the Britons 
 ever tasted fish. Whetlier this abstinence arose 
 from a religious prejudice, or from the general 
 Celtic aversion to the sea, it is impossible to de- 
 termine. We learn from Pliny, that iu agricul- 
 ture the people of the south coast manured the 
 soU, not only with the usual appliances, but with 
 marl, a iiractice confined to themselves and their 
 neighbours the Gauls alone He informs us, also, 
 that of this marl, one kind, which was white and 
 chalky, was so etfeetual for the purpose, that 
 ground once manured with it would retain its 
 productive qualities for eighty years, so that no 
 man using this to a field needed to apply it twice 
 during his lifetime. In the pastoral life each 
 proprietor had the boundary of his land marked 
 by a large upright stoue, within which he con- 
 fined his range; but the knowledge of his occupa- 
 tion was so limited, th.at the milk of his cattle 
 was only useful for daily subsistence; for, accord- 
 ing to Strabo, the Britons were unacquainted 
 with the making of cheese. In the hunter's life 
 the sacrilege of eating hares must have often been 
 felt as a severe game-law, even though religion 
 had enforced the ]>rohibition. Such, also, may have 
 been the case with the shepherd or the husband- 
 man in his abstinence from the hen and the goose. 
 ' Sue illuatratioas iu vol. i. pp. 11, 12.
 
 D.C. 55— A.D. 449.] 
 
 BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 63 
 
 AVhile such were the Hunted means of subsist- 
 ence possessed by the inhabitants of tlic southern 
 ]iart of the island, it was still worse with those 
 of the northern division. The tribes of the north, 
 whom the earliest Roman historians comiirised 
 under the two classes of Mxataj, or inhabitants 
 of the lowlands, and Caledonians, or those of the 
 great forest and highlanda, because they resisted 
 to the last the dej^radation of Roman conquest, 
 were lon,£;est deprived of the advantages of Ro- 
 man civilization. We find them, therefore, so late 
 as the invasion of Severus, in the same condition 
 as the southern Britons had been at the time of 
 Ctesar's arrival — or even lower in the scale — in 
 consequence of the greater sterility of the soil, 
 that offered fewer temptations to the civilizing 
 exertions of husbandry. We aro informed that 
 they had neither walls nor towns, but were a 
 pastoral people, living in tents ; and that they 
 subsisted ou milk and wild fruits, and sueh ani- 
 mals as they caught in hunting. But to a people 
 so imperfectly armed, their chief articles of game, 
 which must have been the deer, the wild bull, 
 and the boar, were not always attainable ; and 
 Xiphilinus, as we have already stated, informs us 
 that the chief resource of these northern hunters 
 in such a strait, was to swallow a certain drug, 
 about the size of a bean, by which their spirits 
 were exhilarated, and the cravings of hunger 
 deadened. When milk and wild fruits failed, we 
 are also told by the same writer, that those who 
 dwelt in the woods had recourse to roots and 
 leaves. Even worse modes of subsistence ajipear 
 to have been adopted in cases of desperate fa- 
 mine; for, on the testimony of St. Jerome, they are 
 charged with actual cannibalism. He declares 
 that in his j-outh, when he was in Gaul, he saw 
 people of tlie Attacotti, one of the northern tribes, 
 devouring human flesh; and he even specifies 
 those particular parts of the body which these 
 man-devourers held in highest account. All this 
 would be incredible, did we not know that the 
 same practice even yet prevails among the islands 
 of the South Seas, and in a part of Sumatra, 
 where the people are at least as civilized as the 
 rudest tribes of the Britons of the north, while 
 they had not their plea of urgent necessity. 
 
 Although little has been told us by the Roman 
 writers of the form of government which was 
 established in Britain, yet, from the fact of the 
 people belonging to the Celtic race, we can easily 
 conclude that it was the same patriarchal insti- 
 tution to which the Celts have invariably adhered, 
 whatever might be the country in which they 
 obtained a settlement. Politically, the Britons 
 did not constitute a collective nation, but a con- 
 geries of tribes, each ruled by its own indepen- 
 dent head. On this account, if the Belgte of the 
 southern coast had been a united peo]>le, they 
 
 might have anticipated the Saxon conquest, and 
 obtained a complete predominance over the wliole 
 island. But, from Caisar's account, it appears that 
 these colonists still retained the names of the 
 different peoples from whom they had sprung ; 
 and in all likelihood, therefore, were as much 
 divided among themselves as wei'e the rude tribes 
 whom they dispossessed. Ptolemy, in his classifi- 
 cation of the Britons, gives us not less than seven- 
 teen tribes for the south, and eighteen for the 
 north part of the island, making thirty-five in 
 all ! — a comparatively easy conquest fur Agricola, 
 and afterwards for the successors of llengist and 
 Horsa. One wonders, indeed, that, from the ditli- 
 culty of bringing so many independent and rival 
 sovereigns together, they could in any case be 
 united for a common resistance; but a common 
 danger, which brings animals the most hostile to 
 each other within a peaceful ring, until the danger 
 is over-past, could combine several, or even the 
 whole of the tribes against a dangerous foreign 
 invasion, as was evinced in the one case by the 
 army of Caractacus, and in the other by that of 
 Cassivellaunus. But these unions were of such 
 uncertain continuity that, when the tide of fortune 
 turned, the one leader was betrayed and the other 
 deserted. Of the amount of regal authority which 
 these kings possessed over their subjects, and the 
 specific manner in wliich it was exercised, the 
 Roman historians have not informed us ; all we 
 can leai'U of this subject is, that the nobles or 
 inferior chiefs had a controlling voice in every 
 public movement; and that the authority of the 
 Druiils, when they were pleased to interpose it, 
 was superior even to that of the sovereigns. They 
 were the sacred Brahmins of Britain — the race 
 who were sprung from the highest and holiest por- 
 tion of that divine body, out of which all the otiier 
 classes of society proceeded — and who, thei'efore, 
 by virtue of their superior descent, could claim a 
 paramount authority over both king and soldier. 
 Here was a check upon the otherwise uuliuiited 
 and irresponsible power of a Celtic chief, which 
 was common to Britain alone — making the con- 
 clusion obvious, that the Druids had not origi- 
 nally been Celts, but strangers, of a higher and 
 more civilized race, who hail assumed the pre- 
 eminence which kuowledge unscrupulously ex- 
 ercised will always obtain over barbarism and 
 ignoi-ance. Of this Druidical suprem.acy, even in 
 political matters, we ai-e assured by Dio Chiysos- 
 tom, who informs us that even a royal edict could 
 not be carried into effect without the sanction of 
 the Druids ; and that the kings were uothiug 
 more than the servants and instruments of the 
 priesthood. 
 
 Such a divided state of society as thus existed 
 in Britain, at once suggests the id^a of incessant 
 strife and contention. Each tribe was a nation
 
 64< 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social State. 
 
 iu itself; every king Imd a rival iu his neighbour; 
 and where none of those obstacles interposed 
 ■which keep hostile kingdoms apart, the wars of 
 the Britons among each other must have been 
 both rancorous and incessant. A boundary line, 
 a pasture field, even a personal or family pique, 
 would be enough, in the first instance, to set two 
 tribes at variance, and afterwards to involve others 
 in the contest. That such a state of internal war- 
 fare was common among the Britons, we may 
 learn from the inmiense earthen ramparts that 
 can still bo traced in the island, of which that of 
 Wansdyke is a specimen. As they seem to have 
 extended for several miles, they were probably 
 thrown up for the defence of a whole tribe against 
 their neighboui-s - a sort of Chinese wall on a 
 limited scale. The same state of insecurity is in- 
 dicated by the remains of broad and deep covered 
 ways, strongly embanked on either side, which 
 served as lines of communication from one forest- 
 town to anothex-. Of these, the specimens that 
 exist iu Wiltshire attest not only the vast labour 
 with which they were constructed, but the mili- 
 tary skill and experience that had planned them. 
 In warfare, indeed, the Britons showed that they 
 were no tyros, by their resistance to Ciesar and 
 his legions. This was evidently their chief de- 
 partment of knowledge, even as their war-chariots 
 were the most ingenious of their fabrications. 
 Strange, indeed, must have been the contrast 
 between the miserable clusters of hovels in the 
 heart of a wood, which constituted a British town 
 — if we are to put faith iu Roman authorities — 
 and the array of armed warriors, and prancing 
 steeds, and rattling chariots, that poured from 
 it through the long, broad, covered way, to at- 
 tack some rival town ! And where were the 
 Druids, the while, to prevent such terrible col- 
 lisions? Being men of like passions with their 
 worshippers, perhaps they sympathized in the 
 feud. Or perhaps they were cautious of inter- 
 posing against such outbursts, from the fear that 
 their own ascendency might be swept away in 
 the popular storm. 
 
 Such were the Britons at the period of the Ro- 
 man invasion. The sketch is not only narrow, 
 but imperfect, owing to the very scanty informa- 
 tion on the subject which the Roman writers 
 have bequeathed to us. A new school of British 
 antiquarianism has also lately risen to assert, that 
 this scantiness is not the greatest defect in their 
 statements — that they have been partial aud one- 
 sided, as well as careless and brief, in their ac- 
 counts of Britain and its inhabitants. While they 
 saw and announced the barbarism of the people, 
 why were they so silent about those Cyclopean 
 erections with which the island abounded, and 
 those relics of a liigher civilization which the 
 graves still continue to yield up? It has been 
 
 thought, from these most substantial evidences of 
 an early civilization, that the Britons were not 
 such utter savages as they have been represented; 
 and that they must have had science, and skill, 
 and long-descended experience among them, as 
 well a.s brute force, and the labour of countless 
 bands. It has been alleged, also, that with the 
 Druids for their schoolmasters, they must have 
 learned a more comfortable style of life, aud at- 
 tained a higher style of intellectual culture, than 
 have been attributed to them in Cresar's Comincn- 
 taries. It is unfortunate that these Druids have 
 passed away and left no historians to record their 
 deeds, except those who were their enemies and 
 destroyei-s. If either the records of the past of 
 our island can be more clearly deciphered, or the 
 buried treasures of its antiquarianism more plen- 
 tifully exhumed, it may be that we shall have a 
 more favourable account of the Britons than can 
 be found iu Roman history. We may then also 
 learn from what race and country the Drui<l:i 
 came, at what time they arrived in Britain, what 
 were their real qualifications and character; and 
 whether such wattled, mud-built hovels as the 
 Romans found at their arrival, had always stood 
 in full neighbourhood with the stately erections 
 of Stonehenge and Avebuiy. 
 
 Although the stay of Ctesar in Britain was so 
 brief, and his two campaigns so indecisive of re- 
 sults, compared with his usual career of conquest, 
 his visit w.as not without important consequences. 
 It opened the island more completely to the know- 
 ledge of the world, and was attended with not 
 only more frequent arrivals from Gaul, but even 
 visits from Rome itself. The effect of such inter- 
 course was that, even in the time of Augustus, 
 the arts, the manners, and religion of Rome had 
 obtained an entrance into the island. This we 
 are told by Strabo, who also informs us of the 
 increase of traflic that had already taken place in 
 Britain; and while he mentions gold, silver, and 
 iron, corn, dogs, cattle, and skins as its ej ports, 
 the imports were ivory, bridles, gold chains, cups 
 of amber, drinking glasses, and other similar ar- 
 ticles. Then, too, the ring money of bronze and 
 ii-on gave place to a regular coinage of the valu- 
 able metals, better fitted for foreign circulation ; 
 and of these, the mintage of Cunobelinus, usually 
 stamped with a human effigy on the one side, and 
 an animal or emblematic device on the other, gives 
 ample indications of the commercial improvement 
 that had taken place during the century which fol- 
 lowed the invasion of Julius Caesar. But that of 
 Claudius succeeded, when the island was con- 
 quered and occupied as well as invaded, and when 
 not only the style of British life and character, 
 but the whole aspect of the country, were to as- 
 sume a new physiognomy. 
 
 These changes, introduced by the establishment
 
 B.C. 55— A.D. 440.] 
 
 lUUTlSlI AND ROMAN PEIUOD. 
 
 65 
 
 of the Roinau domiiiiou, iieeil ouly to be hastily 
 glanced at, being of tlie same kind with tliose they 
 impressed upon every conquereil country, and the 
 iuelfaceable tol<ens of which are still distinctly 
 marked over the whole map of Eurojie. The land 
 of many tribes was reduced into a single province; 
 and although native kings in some cases were 
 allowud to retain their titles, it was only in sub- 
 servience to the paramount rule of the Roman 
 governor. jMunici])ia or free towns were estab- 
 lished, with the privileges of Roman citizenship; 
 highways wore constnicted, that linked the scat- 
 tered districts into a single country; and while 
 Roman laws, courts of j ustice, temples, and aca- 
 demies took the place of Celtic legislation and 
 Druidical training, the rich natural resources of 
 the country— its lead, copper, and tin — its ferti- 
 lizing niai'l and v.aluable chalk — its pearls, and 
 even its oysters — its spirited horses, and fleet, 
 stanch hunting-dogs — all were brought to their 
 full perfection, introduced into the markets of 
 Rome and the Continent, and converted into plen- 
 tiful sources of commercial wealth, as well as 
 motives to increased British immigration. It is 
 in this way, pei-haps, that we are to account for 
 the discrejjancies between the statements of Caesar 
 respecting the temporary forest villages of the 
 Britons, and the numerous towns by which they 
 were superseded in the days of Tacitus, 130 years 
 afterwards. The energy and rapidity of Roman 
 civilization, especially among a rude jjeople, gene- 
 rally corresponded with the previous work of 
 conquest. It was then, also, that llie youths of 
 Britain awoke as to a new life, and learned to 
 despise the rude habits of their fathers : Roman 
 dresses and ornaments were speedily adopted in 
 lieu of sheep-skins or Gaulish tartan ; and while 
 Vol. I. 
 
 they attended the courts and theatres of the con- 
 queroi-s, they did their best to imitate — and even 
 to ape when they could not imitate— the fashions 
 of Rome itself, and the refinements that had 
 newly issued from the imperial palace. Such we 
 could easily imagine to have been the case, with- 
 out turning for coufu-mation to the turgid and 
 lugubrious pages of (Jildas, in which he describes 
 the cluange, and bewails the vices that had fol- 
 lowed it. 
 
 It happened, unfortunately for the Britons, in 
 this great transformation from their primitive 
 state to the high artificial style of their con- 
 querors, that the progress was not a gradual one. 
 Ilad it been so, it would have laid a firmer hold 
 upon the native character, ami produced more 
 vital results. We might then have had British 
 orators, poets, and historians of these early ages, 
 whose works would have been worth reading, as 
 well as warriors and statesmen, whom history 
 would have been proud to commemorate. But 
 the change was eflected so rapidly, that it seemed 
 little else than an external show; it was a gay, 
 superficial varnishiug, rather than an internal 
 and thorough permeation; a few year.? would have 
 dimmed it, and a single storm effaced it for ever. 
 For only three centuries this gay show continued; 
 and what a brief period for a national history ! — 
 and when the Roman fell, the Briton could stand 
 no longer. A woful jiicture of this Iiel[ilessness 
 was presented in the inability of the Britons to 
 defend themselves from such enemies as the Scots 
 and Picts, and their calling in the Saxons to their 
 aid. It was, indeed, full time that a new people 
 should enter upon the scene — that fresh elements 
 should be introduced for the construction of a new 
 national character !
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 PERIOD FROM THE ARRIVAL OF THE SAXONS TO THE ARRIVAL 
 OF THE NORMANS— 617 YEARS. 
 
 FROM A.D. 449— lOOe. 
 
 CHAPTER I.— CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. 
 
 TUE ARRIVAL OF THE SAXONS TO THE UNION OF THE HEPTAECIIY. — A.D. 449— S25. 
 
 Origin of the Saxons — Their early history — Their arrival in Britain— Progress of tlieir conquest of Euglan'l — 
 faliuloiis history of King Artluir — The Heptarchy — The office of Bretwalda— Keigns of the successive Bret- 
 waUlas — Introduction of Christianity among the Anglo-Sa.\ons — Wars of the Heptarcliy — Reign of Olfa — Of 
 Egbert— England reduced into one Icingdojn. 
 
 OME etymologists liave dcrivetl 
 the word Saxon from the term 
 Sea.i; a .short sword, witli which 
 the warlike natives of the shores 
 of the Baltic, the Elbe, the Weser, 
 and the Rhine, are snpi)0sed, but 
 on somewhat doubtful authority, to 
 have been generally armed. It is 
 uch more probable, however, that the 
 Saxons are the Sakai-Suna, or descend- 
 ,s of the Sakai, or Sac», a tribe of Scy- 
 thians, who are mentioned by ancient writers 
 as making their v^ny towards Europe from the 
 East so early as in the age of Cyrus. Pliny 
 tells of a branch of the Sacte who called them- 
 selves Sacassani ; and Ptolemy designates an- 
 other branch by the name Saxone.s, which seems 
 to be merely another form of the same word. 
 But whatever was the etymology of the name, it 
 was certainly, at the time of the British inva- 
 sion, applied, in a very general sense,, to tribes or 
 nations who were separate, and dilfering in some 
 essentials, though they had most probably all 
 sprung from the same stock at no very distant 
 period, and still preserved the same physical 
 features, the same manners and customs, and 
 nearly, though not quite, the same unaltered lan- 
 guage which, at the distance of fourteen cen- 
 
 1 " For successive generations the tribes, or even portions of 
 tribes, may have moved from place to place, as the necessities 
 of their circumstAaces demanded; names may have appeared, 
 and vanished altogether from the scene; wai-s, seditions, con- 
 quests, the rise and fall of states, the solemn formation or disso- 
 lution of confederacies, may have filled the ages that intei-vened 
 bstween the fli-st settlement of the Teutons in Gei-many, and their 
 appearance in histoiy as dangerous to the quiet of Home. The 
 
 turies, is the basis and staple of the idiom we 
 s]5eak. They were all of the pure Teutonic or 
 Gothic race, and all their kings claimed their de- 
 scent from "Woden, or Odin, an ancient sovereign, 
 magnified by veneration and superstition into 
 a god, the traces of whose capital (real or tradi- 
 tional) are still shown to the traveller at Sigtuua, 
 on the borders of the great Malar Lake, between 
 the old city of Upsala and Stockholm, the present 
 capital of Sweden. Other tribes that issued both 
 before and after the fifth century ft-om that fruit- 
 ful storehouse of nations, Scandinavia, were of 
 the same Teutonic origin ; and the Franks, the 
 Danes, the Norwegians, the Norse or Northmen, 
 and the most distinguished of the last-mentioned, 
 those known throughout Europe under the name 
 of Normans, were all of the same race, and com- 
 menced thuh- career from the same regions, though 
 dilfering subsequently, owing to the time and 
 circumstances of their disseverance from the great 
 northern stock, the direction in which their migra- 
 tions and conquests had lain, and the character 
 physical and moral, the habits, and the langu.age 
 of the people they had conquered, or among whom 
 they had settled and been mixed.' It would neither 
 be a profitable nor a very easy task to trace all 
 these kindred streams to their primitive fountain- 
 head, by the shores of the Caspian, in Asia, ,-ind 
 
 heroic lays may possibly preserve some shadowy traces of these 
 events ; but of all the changes in detiiil we know nothing ; we 
 argue only that nations, possessing in so pre-eminent a degree as 
 the Germans the principles, the arts, and institutions of civiliza- 
 tion, must have passed tlu-ough a long apprenticeship of action 
 and suffering, and have learned in the rough school of practice 
 the wisdom they embodied in their lives." — Kembie's Saxons in 
 England, vol. i. p. 4
 
 A.r. 419— ?21] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 C7 
 
 thence follow them bacl< agniu to the coasln, pro- 
 montories, and islands of llio Baltie and the Ivhiue; 
 but it is necessary to give a local habitation to 
 the particular tribes that now began to work a 
 total change in Britain. 
 
 Although classed under one general head, as 
 Saxons, these tribes were three in number: 1. The 
 Jutes. 2. The Angles. 3. The Saxons. The Jutes 
 and the Angles dwelt in the Cimbric Cliersonesus, 
 
 Map of tlic 
 
 CIMBRIC CHERSOKESE 
 
 A.M) JUJJOns'IXG NAINLiNT) 
 TItn OIUGIKAt SrftT 
 
 SAXON 
 
 or peninsula of Jutland (now a province of Den- 
 mark), and in parts of Schleswig and Holstein, the 
 territory of the Angles extending as far as the 
 modern town of Fleusborg. In Holstein there is a 
 district still called Anglen (the real Old England); 
 and the narrowness of its limits need not interfere 
 with our belief that this was the seat of the ti'ibe 
 (the Angles) that gave its name to our island. The 
 Saxons jiroper, to the south of the Jutes and 
 Angles, wore far more widely spread, extending 
 from the Weser to the delta of the Rhine, and 
 occupying the countries now called Westphalia, 
 Frieslaud, Holland, and probably a part of Bel- 
 gium. Their precise limits are not fixed, but it 
 seems their gradual encroachments on the Con- 
 tinent had brought them from the Baltic to the 
 neighbourhood of the British Channel, when 
 they embraced, as it were, our south-eastern 
 coast. From the very close resemblance the old 
 
 Frisick dialect be.ai's to the Anglo-Saxon, a recent 
 writer conjectures that the conquerors of Britain 
 must have come principally from Friesland.' But 
 many known fluxes and reiluxcs of ]io])ulatiou 
 took place between the fifth and the twelfth cen- 
 turies; the Jutes and the Angles, whose language 
 may have been as like that of our Anglo-Saxon 
 ancestors as the old Frisick dialect, were partially 
 dispossessed of their territory in the peuinsula of 
 Jutland, and mixed up with newer tribes 
 from Scandinavia, who eventually formed 
 the Danish kingdom, and must have in- 
 fluenced the dialect there, as afterwards iu 
 Sehleswig and Holstein. Ou the other 
 hand, the occupants of the remarkable dis- 
 trict of Friesland, whei-e language, manners, 
 usages— where all things seem, even in our 
 days, to retain an ancient and primitive 
 sUinip, may, fi-om local situation or otlier 
 causes, have escaped the intermixture that 
 befell the other Saxons. It is generally 
 admitted that Horsa, Heugist, and their 
 followers, were Jutes, and that the tribe or 
 nation they first called in to partake in the 
 pay and spoils of the Britons were their 
 neighbours the Angles, from Holstein, and 
 not the Saxons, from Friesland, though the 
 latter soon joined the enterprise, and pro- 
 bably derived some advantage from being 
 nearer than the others to the scene of ac- 
 tion. 
 
 When the conquests of the Romans, in 
 the first century of our era, brought them 
 into contact with the Saxons, they fouuil 
 them as brave as the Britons, but, like the 
 latter people, unprovided with steel blades 
 and the projjer implements of war. During 
 the three centuries, however, that had elaj)- 
 sed since then, in their wars with the Ro- 
 man armies, and their friendly intercourse 
 with the Roman colonies in Gaul and on the 
 Rhine, they hail been made fully sensible of their 
 wants, and learned, in part, bow to sujiply them. 
 In their long-continued piratical excursions they 
 had looked out for bright arms and well- wrought 
 steel, as the most valuable article of plunder, and 
 a constant accunuilation must have left them well 
 provided with that ruder metal, which commands 
 gold. When they appeared iu Britaiu, they cer- 
 tainly showed no want of good ai'ms. Every 
 warrior had his dagger, his spear, his battle-axe, 
 and his sword, all of steel. In addition to these 
 weapons, they had bows and arrows, and their 
 champions frequently wielded a ponderous club, 
 bound and spiked with iron, a sort of sledge- 
 hammer, a copy, possibly, from the Scandinavian 
 type of Thor's '■ mighty hammer." These two 
 
 * Palgrave, Iliit. £ng.
 
 68 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and STiLiTAnT. 
 
 weapons, the battle-axo ami the hnnimer, wlehled 
 by nervous arms, were the dread of their enemies, 
 auJ constantly recurring images in the songs of 
 
 Saxcs S\voni>s. Spear Heads, and Bosses of Shields, ,iU of iron 
 J. W. Aiclier, fi-um examples iii tlie British Museum. 
 
 their bard.s, who represent them as cleaving hel- 
 mets and brains with blows that nothing could 
 withstand. When their depredations first at- 
 tracted the notice of the Romans, they ventured 
 fi-oni the mouth of the Baltic and the Elbe in 
 crazy little boats; and shoals of these canoes laid 
 the coasts of Gaul, Britain, and other parts of the 
 Empire under contribution. Though larger, the 
 best of these vessels could scarcely have been 
 better than the coracles of the British; they were 
 flat-bottomed, their keels and ribs were of light 
 timber, but the sides and upper works consisted 
 only of W'icker, with a covering of strong hides. 
 In the fifth century, however, their chiules,' or 
 war-ships, were long, strong, lofty, and capable 
 of containing each a considerable number of men, 
 with provision and other stores. If they had 
 boldly trusted themselves to the stormy waves of 
 the Baltic, the German Ocean, the Briti-sh Chan- 
 nel, and the Bay of Biscay, in their frail embar- 
 kations, they would laugh at the tempest in such 
 ships as these. All their contemporaries speak 
 
 -Drawn by 
 
 ' Hence our word ketl. 
 
 - " Meagre, indeed, are tlie accounts which th\is satisfied the 
 most inquiring of our forefather's : yet, such as they are, they were 
 received as the undoubted tnzth, and appealed to in later periods 
 as the earliest authentic record of our race. The acuter criticism 
 of an age less prone to believe, more skilfiU in the appreciation 
 of evidence, and familiar with the fleeting forms of mytliical 
 and epical thought, sees in tliem only a confused mciss of tradi- 
 tions, borrowed fi-om the most heterogeneous sources, compacttd 
 rudely and with little ingenuity, and in which tho smallest 
 amount of historical truth is involved in a great deal of fable. 
 Yet the truth wliich such traditions do nevertheless contain, 
 yields to the alchemy of our days a golden hai-vest ; if wo cannot 
 undoubtingly accept the details of such legends, they stiU point 
 out to us at least tho course we must pur^-ue to discover the ele- 
 ments of fact upon which the Mythus and Epos rest, and guide 
 us to the period and locality where these took root and flomished. ' 
 — Kemble'a ikixons m England, vol. i. p. 3. 
 
 of their love of the se.a, and of their great fami- 
 liarity with it and its dangers. "Tempests," s.tys 
 Sidonius, "which inspire fear in other men, fill 
 them with joy; thestorm is their 
 protection when they are pressed 
 by an enemy --their veil and 
 cover when they meditate an 
 attack." This love of a mari- 
 time life afterwai'ds gained for 
 some of the Northmen the title 
 of Sea-kings. The passion was 
 common to all the Saxon.s, and 
 to the whole Teutonic race.' 
 
 Thus, supposing that the Bri- 
 tons retained the arms of the 
 Roman legions— and there is no 
 reason to doubt that they did, 
 though the Roman discipline 
 was lost — their new enemy was 
 as well armed as themselves; 
 while the Saxons had over them 
 all the advantages of a much 
 greater command of the sea, 
 and could constantly recruit their armies on the 
 Continent, in the midst of their warlike brethren, 
 bring them over in their ships, and land them 
 at whatever point they chose. 
 
 At the period of their invasion of Britain, the 
 Saxons were as rough and uncouth as any of the 
 barbarian nations that overturned the Roman 
 empire. Of civilization and the arts, they had 
 only borrowed those parts which strengthen the 
 arm in battle by means of steel and proper 
 weapons, and facilitate the work of destruction. 
 They were still pagans, professing a bloody faith, 
 that made them hate or despise the Christian 
 Britons. Revenge was a religious duty, and 
 havock and slaughter a delight to their savage 
 tempers. Their enemies and victims who drew 
 their portraits, darkened the shades ; and the 
 Saxons had, no doubt, some of those rude virtues 
 which are generally attached to such a condition 
 of society. 
 
 The obscurity that comes over the history of 
 Britain with the departure of the Romans, con- 
 
 " Possessing no Avritten annals, and trusting to tho poet the 
 tjisk of the historian, our forefatheiB have left but scanty records 
 of their early condition. Nor did the supercilious or luisuspect- 
 ing ignoi'ance of Italy care to inquire into the mode of life and 
 habits of the biu-barians, mitil their strong arms threatened the 
 civiUiiation and the very existence of tho Empire itself. Then 
 Jii-st, dimly through tho tsvilight in wliich the sim of Home w;is 
 to set for ever, loomed the Colossus of the Genn.an r.ace, gigan- 
 tic, terrible, inexplicable ; and the vague attempt to define its 
 a\vful features came too late to be fully successful. In Tacitus 
 the City possessed, indeed, a thinker worthy of the exalted themo; 
 but his sketch, though vigorous beyond expectation, is incom- 
 plete ill mi-my of its most material points ; yet this is the most 
 detailed and fvdlest account which we possess, .and nearly the 
 only certain source of information, till we arrive at the moment 
 wlien the invading tribes in every portion of the Empire entereil 
 upon their great task of reconstnicting society from its founda- 
 tions." — Kemble'3 Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 5.
 
 A.T5. 440-825.] 
 
 SAXON TERIOn. 
 
 C9 
 
 tinucs to rest tipou it for the tvro following: cen- 
 turies.' In the first inst.auce, Ileugist ami Hors.a 
 appear to have fullilled their jiart of the eugage- 
 raent upou which they liatl come over, by march- 
 ing with the Jutes, their followers, against the 
 Picts aud Scots, and driving these invaders from 
 the kingdom. Soon after this, if it occurred at 
 all, must be placed the story of the feast given 
 by Hengist, at his stronghold of Thoug-caster, iu 
 Lincolnshire, to the British king, Vortigern, aud 
 of the bewitchment of the royal giiest by the 
 charms of Eoweua, the young and beautiful 
 daughter of his entertainer. Roweua's address, 
 as she gracefully knelt and presented the wine- 
 cup to the king, Licver Kijning wass heal (Dear 
 king, your health), is often quoted as the origin of 
 our stiU existing expressions, wassail aud wassail- 
 cup, in which, however, the word wassail might 
 mean health-drinking, or pledging, although it 
 had never been uttered by Eowena. But, as the 
 story goes on, the action and the words of the 
 Saxon maid finished the conquest over the heart 
 of the king, which her beauty had begun; and, 
 from that time, he rested not till he had obtained 
 the consent of her father to make her his wife. 
 The latest wi-iter who has investigated the history 
 of this period, sees no reason to doubt the stoiy 
 of Eoweua, and has advanced many ingenious and 
 plausible arguments in proof of its truth.- But, 
 at any rate, it appears that, either from Vorti- 
 geru's attachment thus secui-ed, or from his gra- 
 titude for martial services rendered to him, or 
 from an inability on his part to prevent it, the 
 Jutes were allowed to fortify the Isle of Thanet, 
 and to invite over fresh forces. The natural fer- 
 tility and beauty of Britain, as well as its disor- 
 ganization and weakness, must long have been 
 
 ' Tliis obscm-ity rests pai-ticularly over tho Iiistoiy and fate 
 of the cities of Britain. Of these, Lappenberg speaks thus ; — 
 " \Vhen tlie Romans abandoned Britain, it contained twenty- 
 eight cities, besides a consideiublo number of castella, forts, and 
 sniall communities. Among tho first, we Itnow of two miuiici- 
 pia — York and Verulam ; nine colonies — Camolodunum (Maldon 
 or Colchester), Rhutupia) (Richborougb), Londinium AugiLsta 
 (London), Glevum Claudia (Gloucester), TlicrmM Aquas Solis 
 (Bath), Isca Silurum (Carleon, in Monmoutiisbire), Camboricum 
 (Chesterford, near Cambridge), Lindum (Lincoln), and Deva 
 Colonia (Chester) ; also ten cities which had obtained the right 
 of Latium — Pterotone (Inverness), Victoria (Pertli), Dumoraagus 
 (Caister in Lincolnshire), Lugubalia (Cai'lisle), Cattar.actone 
 (Catterick), Cambodunum (Slack in Longwood), Coccium (Black- 
 rode Ln Lancashire?), Theodosia (Dumbarton), Corinum (Ciron- 
 cesterl, and Sorbiodunum (Old Sarum), tho last colony to the 
 south-west in the couuti-y of the free Damnonii. Volantium 
 (Ellenborough in Cumberland), so rich in Roman remains, pre- 
 sei-ves an inscription, from which we learn that it had decui-ions, 
 who assembled in a public building destined for the purjjose. 
 These cities, therefore, posseted a council {decuriomSt curiales, 
 municipes) , with m.'igihtrates of their own choosing {daumviri 
 !uxilpnnci2>a(cq), and the right of contentious as well as of vo- 
 limtnry jurisdiction. To them was committed the levying of 
 taxes in their districts ; and it is known how the joint security 
 of the civic decurions became both a burden to themselves, and 
 brought tho greatest obloquy on their order. That these abuces 
 
 familiar to the pirates on tho Continent; and ns 
 soon as they got a firm footing in the land, they 
 conceived the notinn of possessing at least a part 
 of it, not .as dependent allies or vassals, but as 
 m;isters. The conquest of the whole v.'as pro- 
 bably an after-thought, which did not suggest it- 
 self till many generations had passed away. The 
 sword was soon drawn between the Britons and 
 their Saxon guests, who thereupon allied them- 
 selves with their old friends the Scots and Picts, 
 to oppose whom they had been invited by Vorti- 
 gern. That unfortunate king is said to have been 
 deposed, and his son Vortimer elected iu his 
 stead. A i>artial and uncertain league was now- 
 formed between the Eoman faction and the Bri- 
 tons; aud several battles were fought by tlieir 
 united forces against the Saxons. In one of these 
 engagements Vortigern is said to have commanded 
 the Britons. Then, after a time, the two nations, 
 according to the story commonly told, agreed to 
 terminate their contention; and a meeting was 
 held, at which the chief personages of both were 
 mixed together in festive enjoyment, when sud- 
 denly, Ileugist, exclaiming to his Saxons, Nimed 
 euro sea.cas (Unsheath your swords), they pidled 
 forth each a short sword or knife, which he had 
 brought with him concealed in his hose, aud slew 
 all the Brjtous present, Vortigern only excepted. 
 This story, too, has been treated as a fiction by 
 most recent writers; but the same ingenious aud 
 accomplished inquirer who has vindicated the 
 historic existence of Eowena, has also argued ably 
 and powerfully in favour of the truth of this other 
 ancient tradition.' He thinks, however, that the 
 Britons were tho conspirators on this occasion, 
 and that the Saxons only acted iu self-defence. 
 The bloody congress is conjectured to have taken 
 
 had also foimd their way into Britain, we learn from an ordinance 
 of Con3t.antiiie, for tho remedying of the same in this comitry. 
 Subsequently to the time of that emperor, the defen-sor, elected 
 by tho whole city, more esx^ecially against the oppres-sions of tho 
 governor, h.ad become of consideration. Tho establishment of 
 corporations at Rome, into which certain artisans and handi- 
 craftsmen were united, was extremely advantageous to them 
 when they were removed into foreign provinces." — Seo Lappea- 
 berg, vol. i. p. 3j. 
 
 ~ Britannia after the Jiomans, pp. 42, G2, A-c. 
 
 ' Ibid. " It strikes tho inquirer at once with suspicion, when 
 he finds the tales supposed peculiar to his own race .and to tliL^ 
 island shared by the Germanic population of other lands ; and, 
 with slight changes of locality, or trifling variations of detail, 
 recorded as authentic parts of their history. The readiest belief 
 in foi-tuitous resemblances and coincidences gives way before a 
 number of instances, whose agreement defies .all the calculations 
 of chances. Thus, when we find Hengist aud Horsa approaching 
 the coasts of Kent in three keels, and TElli effecting a Landing in 
 Sussex with the same number, we are reminded of the Gothic 
 tradition wliich carries a migration of Ostrogotlis, Visigoths, and 
 Epidse, also in three vessehj, to the mouths of tho Vistula, cer- 
 tainly a spot where we do not look for recurrence to a trivi.al cal- 
 culation which so peculi.arly characterizes the modes of thought 
 of the Cymri. The murder of tho British chieftains by Ilongist 
 is told totidem vcrtiis by Widikimd and otliei-s of tho old Saxons 
 in Thuringia."— Kemble's Stwma in England, vol. i. p. 10.
 
 70 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil asd MiuTAnr. 
 
 I'lace at Stouclienge, on a May Day. lu the eud 
 line, tlie son of Hengist, remained in posse3.sion 
 of all Kent, and became the founder of the Ken- 
 tish, or first Saxon kingdom, in our island. 
 
 The conquerors of "Cantwara Land," or Kent, 
 seem to have been Jutes mi.xed with some Angles; 
 but now the Saxons appeared as their immediate 
 neighbours. lu the year 477, Ella, the Saxon, 
 with his three sons, and a formidable force, lauded 
 in the ancient territory of the Itegui, now Sussex 
 at or near to Withering, in the Isle of Selsey! 
 The Britons were defeated with great slaughter, 
 and driven into the forest of Andreade or An- 
 dredswold.' According to the old wiiters, this 
 forest was 1 20 miles long, and 
 30 broad ; prodigious dimen- 
 sions, which astonish us, al- 
 though informed that, even at 
 the evacuation of the country 
 by the Romans, a considerable 
 portion of the island was co- 
 vered with primeval woods, 
 forests, and marshes. Conti- 
 nuing to receive accessions of 
 force, Ella defeated a confe- 
 deracy of the British princes, 
 became master of nearly all 
 Sussex, and established there 
 the second kingdom, called 
 that of the South Sa.rons. 
 Taking the coast-liue, the in- 
 vadere now occupied from the 
 estuary of the Thames to the 
 river Aruu ; a nd to obtain this 
 short and narrow slip had cost them half a century 
 of conflict. Cerdic, with another band of Saxons, 
 extended the line westward, a few years after, as 
 far as the river Avon, by conquering Hampshire 
 and the Isle of Wight; when he founded Wesscx, 
 or the kingdom of the West Saxons. The country 
 to the west of the Hampshire Avon remained for 
 many years longer in possession of the Britons, 
 who now yielded no ground without hard fighting. 
 The next important descent was to the north 
 of the estuary of the Thames, where Ercenwine, 
 about 527-9, took possession of the flats of Essex, 
 with some of the contiguous country, and formed 
 the state of the East Saxons. Other tribes carried 
 theii' arms in this direction as far as the Stour, 
 when there w.as a short pause, which was not one 
 of pe.ace, for the Britons, driven from the coasts, 
 pressed them incessantly on the land side. About 
 the ye.ar 547, Ida, at the head of a formidable host 
 of Angles, landed at Flamborough Head, and 
 leaving a long lapse on the coast between him 
 and the East Saxons, proceeded to settle between 
 the Tees and the Tyne, a -ivM country, which 
 
 1 The forest or wold is also called Aiiderida. 
 
 now includes the county of Durham, but which 
 was then abandoned to the beasts of the forest. 
 This conquest obtained the name of the Kingdom 
 of Bemicia. Other invaders, again, stepped in 
 between the Tees and the Humber, but it cost 
 them much time and blood before they could 
 establish their southern frontier on the Iluinber. 
 Their possessions were called the Kingdom of 
 Beira. At the end of the sixth century, a general 
 emigration seems to have taken place from An- 
 gleu, or Old England; and under chiefs that have 
 not left so much as a doubtful name behind them, 
 the Angles, in two great divisions, called the 
 Southfolk and the Northfolk, rushed in between 
 
 Flameoeocgh IIead.2 
 
 sketch by G. Balmcr. 
 
 the Stowe and the Great Ouse and Wash, and 
 gave a lasting denomin.atiou to our two counties 
 of Suffolk and Norfolk. Their conquest was 
 called \\\Q Kingdom of East Anglia. The terri- 
 tory thus seized by the East Angles was almost 
 insulated from the rest of the island by a suc- 
 cession (on its western side) of bogs, meres, and 
 broad lakes, connected, for the most part, by nu- 
 merous streams. Where these natural defences 
 ended, the East Angles dug a deep ditch, and 
 cast up a lofty rampart of earth. In the middle 
 ages this was called the "Giants' Dyke," a name 
 which was afterwards changed into the more po- 
 pular denomination of the " Devil's Dyke." The 
 marslies upon which it leaned have been drained, 
 but the remai'kable mound is still very perfect. 
 The other Angles advanced from beyond the 
 Humber, and fresh tribes pouring in from the 
 
 2 This rera.arkable promontory, on the Yorkshire co.ast, is com- 
 posed of chalk cliffs, extending about six miles, and rising in 
 many parts to an elevation of 300 ft. peiijendicularly from the 
 sea. The bases of the cliffs ai-e worn into extensive caverns. 
 On the extreme point of the promontory, at a height of 214 ft. 
 .aljove sea-level, is a lighthonse with a revolving light, visible 
 from a distance of thirty miles. These cliffs are frequented by 
 immense nuuibei's of sea-fowl.
 
 A.D. 440—825.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 71 
 
 peuinsula of JutlauJ anJ Ilolsteiu, the torntory 
 now formiug Lincolnshire, between the Wash and 
 the Huniber, was gradually but slowly conquered 
 from the Britons, and the only lapse or chasm 
 filled up, that existed in the Saxon line of coast, 
 from the Hampshire Avon to the Northumbrian 
 Tyue. This line was extended as far north as 
 the Frith of Forth by the Angles of Bernioia and 
 Deira, who were united under one sceptre about 
 the year 617, and thenceforward were called Nor- 
 thumbriaits^ All the western coast, from the 
 Frith of Clyde to the Laud's End, in Cornwall, 
 and the southern coast, from the Laml's End to 
 the confines of Hampshire, remained unoouquered 
 by the Saxons. Such had been the security of 
 CoruT.-all, and its inditlerence to the fate of the 
 rest of the island, that, while the states of the 
 south were failing one by one under the sword of 
 the Saxon invaders, 12,000 armed Britons left its 
 shore to take part in a foreign war. This curious 
 event took place about the year 470, when Gaul 
 was overrun by the Visigoths, and Anthemius, 
 who reigned iu Ital}', was unable to protect his 
 subjects north of the Alps. He purchased or 
 otherwise procured the services of Riothamus, an 
 independent British king, whose ^ dominion in- 
 cluded, besides Cornwall, parts of Devonshire. 
 The Bi-itons sailed up the river Loire, and estab- 
 lished themselves iu Berry, where, acting as op- 
 pressive and insolent conquerors, rather than as 
 friends and allies, they so conducted themselves, 
 that the people were rejoiced when they saw them 
 cut to pieces or dispersed by the Visigoths.^ 
 
 The brea<lth of the Saxuu tei'i'itories or their 
 frontiers inland, were long uncertain and waver- 
 ing, now advancing, and now receding, according 
 to the fortune of war. Under the name oiMyrcna- 
 ric, Latinized Mercia,^ a branch of the Angles, 
 penetrating into the heart of the island, founded 
 a kingdom that extended over aJl the midland 
 counties, from the Severn to the Humber, and 
 that pressed on the borders of Wales. In this 
 district, however, the population was not de- 
 stroyed or expelled ; the Britons lived mixed up, 
 in about equal numbers, with the Saxons. The 
 Mercian Angles, who at one period had spread 
 to the south and east, until they reached the 
 
 ' " The great extent of groimd which the Angles occupied in 
 Britain is quite sufficient to explain the statement of the old 
 liiatorians, that they had completely evacuated their native land, 
 and left it iminhabited. From them, as the earliest settlers, and 
 the most numerous, the island became kuOAvn among foreign 
 writers by tlie n.-imes of Anglia and Anfflorum Terra: and among 
 the Saxons themselves it was usually called fui^/la-land (Eng- 
 laudj, and the language of its inhabitants EnyLisc (English). 
 The population of the Teutonic portion of the island is stUl 
 known by no other name than that of Englishmen." — Tlte Ctlt, 
 tin; Roman, and the Saxon, p. 394. As the Anglian settlements ill 
 England were .afterwards so completely conquered and occupied 
 by the Danes, that Danish superseded English names of many 
 imjioi-tant towns, and as the south of Eii>;land w.ts chiefly occu- 
 
 Thamos, and included London in their dominion, 
 contributed most extensively to the conquest of 
 the island, and formctl a kingdom, which was 
 one of the last of the Heptarchy to be overthrown 
 or absorbed. During their jiower, the Mercians 
 more than once followed the bold mountaineers of 
 Wales, who maintained a constant hostility, right 
 through theircountryto the shores of St. George's 
 Channel and the Irish Sea ; but they were never 
 able to subdue that rugged land. The other An- 
 glo-Saxons, who seized their dominions in tho 
 ninth and tenth centuries, were not more success- 
 ful than the Mercians ; and although, at a later 
 day, some of its princes paid a trifiing tribute, 
 and the country was reduced to its present limits 
 of Wales and Monmouthshire, Cambria was never 
 conquered by the Saxons during the 600 years of 
 their domination.' 
 
 The people of Strathclyde and Cumbria, which 
 territories extended along the western coast, from 
 the Frith of Clyde to the Mersey and the Dee, 
 ajipear to have been almost as successful as the 
 Welsh, and by the same means. Their disposi- 
 tion was fierce and warlike, their hatred to the 
 Saxons inveterate, and, above all, their country 
 %vas mountainous, and abounded with lakes, 
 marshes, moors, and forests. Part of the tcrri- 
 toi-y of Strathclyde, moreover, was defended by a 
 ditch and a rampart of earth. This work, which 
 is popularly called the Catrail or the Marcli 
 Dykes, can still be traced from the Peel-fell, on 
 the Borders, between Northumberland and Rox- 
 burghshire, to Galashiels, a little to the north of 
 Melrose and the river Tweed, and near to Ab- 
 botsford.' But lower down on the western coast 
 the Saxon arms were more successful. Even 
 there, however, the slowness of their progress 
 denotes the sturdy resistance they met with. 
 Nearly two centuries had elapsed since their 
 landing at Thanet before they found their way 
 into Dumnonia or Devonshire, which, together 
 with Cornwall, appeal's to have remained iu the 
 occupation of a great undisturbed mass of British 
 population. The king, Cadwallader, had resigned 
 his earthly crown, and gone to Rome as a pilgrim, 
 in search of a cro\vn of glory; disunited and dis- 
 heartened, the nobles of the land fled beyond sta 
 
 pied by Jutes and Saxons, it would seem that the Teutonic inhabi- 
 tants of Scotland are now the pxurest English.— See Palgrave. 
 
 '^ Jo)'nandcs, c. xlv. ; Sidonius, lib. iii. epist. 0. 
 
 ^ " We are genenilly told that Mercia signifies the march or 
 frontier — a signification peculiarly improper for a central coun- 
 try. Mijrcna-ric, in the Anglo-Saxon, signifies tho icoodland 
 kingdom, wliich agrees very closely with Coitani, tho Latinized 
 name of the old British inhabitants, signifying icoodtand men or 
 /orcfl^ers."— Macpher^on's AnjiaU of Commerce, i. 237. 
 
 * A portion of Monmouthsliire was, however, thoroughly con- 
 quered a short time before the Norman invasion, when the 
 Saxons occupied the towns of Monmouth, Chepstow, Caervvent, 
 and Caerleon. — Coxe, Monmouthshire. 
 
 * Gordon's Iter Septentrionale: Chalmers' Caledonia,
 
 mSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Mimtap-t. 
 
 to Anuorica or Brittany, and, at the (ijiproacli of 
 the invadei'S, hardly any were left to oppose them 
 except the pe;>santry. From the traditions of the 
 country, and the signs of camps, trendies, and 
 fieUls of battle spread over it, we should judge 
 that the rustics made a vigorous defence.' They 
 made a stand on the river Exe; but, being routed 
 there, retreated to the right bank of the Tamar, 
 abandoning all the fertile plains of Devonshire, 
 but still hoping to maintain themselves in tlie 
 hilly country of Cornwall. Defeat followed them 
 to the Tamar and the country beyond it, upon 
 which they, in a.d. 647, submitted to the Anglo- 
 Saxons, \\ lio by this time may be called the Eng- 
 lish. 
 
 In this rapid and general sketch of the Saxon 
 conquest, which, from the dates that have been 
 given, wiU be perceived to have occujjied altoge- 
 ther a space of nearly 200 years— of which above 
 100 were consumed even before the eastern and 
 central pai-ts of the island were subdued, and the 
 last of the several new Saxon kingdoms estab- 
 lished, a sufficient proof of the obstinate resis- 
 tance of the Bi-itons — we have omitted all details 
 of the achievements of the British champions, not 
 excepting even-^ 
 
 . "what resoxmds 
 
 In fable or romance of Uther's son," 
 
 as Milton has chosen to designate the history of 
 the famous King Aj'thur. It seems impossible to 
 arrive at any certainty with regard to the chro- 
 nology or particular events of a period, the only 
 accounts of which are so dark and confused, and 
 so mixed up and overrun with the most paljjable 
 fictions. But as to Arthur, there appear to be 
 the strongest reasons for suspecting that he was 
 not a real but only a mythological personage, the 
 chief divinity of that system of revived Druidism 
 which appears to have arisen in the unconqueved 
 parts of the west of Britain after the departure 
 of the Romans, the name being often used in the 
 poetry of the bards as the hieroglyphical repre- 
 sentative of the system. This is the most impor- 
 tant of the subjects upon which new light has 
 
 ^ BorJase; SIi-s. Bray's Litters to SoutJicy. 
 
 2 Britannia after the Romans, pp. 70-141. For a defence of the 
 historic reality of Arthur, see Turner's Anglo-Saxons, i. 26S-2S3. 
 
 *"rho glory of one of the last champions of Christendom 
 against ferocious pagans was alluring to ingenious fablers. Tlie 
 absence of authentic particulars set free their fancy ; actions seen 
 in so tlini a twilight put on the size and shape which best pleased 
 the poet ; and the wonders of mythology, which always gr.adu- 
 ally withdi-aw before the advance of civilization, found a n.atu- 
 ral and last retreat in the most remote regions of Western Eu- 
 rope. To these circumstances, or to some of them, it may pro- 
 b.ably be ascribed that in a few centimes a ConiLsh or Welsh 
 chieftain came to sh.are the popularity of Chai-lemagne himself. 
 The historical name of the great ruler of the Fr.anks has, per- 
 haps, bon*o\ved a brighter lustre from the heroic legends with 
 which it was long surrotmded. In this country, on the con- 
 trary, a disposition has been shown to take revenge on the me- 
 mory of Arthur for the credulity of o\ir forefathere, by ungrate- 
 
 been thrown by the researches of the author of 
 Britannia after the Romans, and his elaborate and 
 masterly examination of the (juestion of Arthur 
 certainly seems to go very near to settle the con- 
 troversy. "The Saxon Chronicle" he observes, 
 ujiou the several probabilities of the case (the only 
 part of his argument to which we can here ad- 
 vert), " does not suppress the names of islanders 
 with whom the Saxons had to deal, but mentions 
 those of Vortigem, Natanleod, Aidan, Brochvael, 
 Geraint, Constantine of Scots, and Cadwallon. 
 Its author betrays no knowledge of Arthurs ex- 
 istence. The venerable Beda either never heard 
 of it, or despised it as a fable." Nor is it men- 
 tioned, he goes on to i-emark, either by Florence 
 of Worcester or by Gildas. Yet, as he observes 
 elsewhere, " the name of Arthur is so great, that 
 if such a man ever reigned in Britain, he must 
 have been a man as great as the circumscribed 
 theatre of his actions could permit." And again : 
 " The Artliurian era was one in the course of 
 which the British frontier receded, and Ilauts, 
 Somerset, and other districts passed for ever into 
 the hands of the invader. It is not by suffering 
 a series of severe defeats that any Saxon or other 
 man conquers provinces ; it is done by gaining 
 successive victories. If Aa'thur lived and fought, 
 he did so with a preponderance of iU success, and 
 with the loss of battles and of provinces. But 
 exaggeration must be built upon homogeneous 
 ti'uth. For a Cornish prince to be renowned 
 through all countries, and feigned a uuiver.sal 
 conqueror, he must really have been a hero in his 
 own land, and a signal benefactor to it. No man 
 was ever deified in song for being vanquished and 
 losing half a kingdom. But the god of war 
 would retain his rank in any case. . . . The god 
 of war would keep his station and preside over 
 valiant acts, whether the results of war were for- 
 tunate or not. But the disasters of the British, 
 historically and geographically certain as they 
 are, make it also clear that they were commanded 
 by no king tit for their bards to canonize." - 
 To bring the course of the invaders and the 
 
 fidly and um'e.ison.ably calling into question his existence." — 
 Sir James Mackintosh, vol. i. p. 26. " Tlie authentic actions of 
 Arthur have been so disfigui-ed by the gorgeous additions of the 
 minstrels and of Jeffrey, that many writers have denied that he 
 ever lived ; but this is an e.xtreme as wild as the romances which 
 occasioned it. His existence is testified by his contemporarie.^, 
 whose genius has survived the ruin of twelve centuries ; and the 
 British b.ards are a body of men too illustrious for their personal 
 merit and wonderful institution, to be discredited when they at- 
 test. . . . Tills state of moderate greatness suits the character 
 in wldch the Welsh b.u-ds exliibit Arthur; they commemoi-ate 
 him, but it is not with that excelling glory with wliich he has 
 been surrounded by subsequent traditions. . . . Yet, on pe- 
 rusing the British triads, we discern some tr.aits which raise 
 Arthur .above the sitimtion of a provincial chieftain. They give 
 him tliree palaces ; and the positions of these imply a sovereignty 
 on the western part of the island, from Cornwall to Scotland." 
 — Sh. Turner's Hist, of the Anglo-Saxons, i. 228, 207.
 
 A..D. 449-825.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 permanent settlement of tlic Anglo-Saxons uuJer 
 one point of view, we have glanced from the 
 midille of the fifth to the middle of the seventh 
 centm'3'. We may now letraco our steps over 
 part of that dark and utterly confused interval ; 
 but in doing so we shall not venture into the 
 perplexing labyrinth presented by the more tliau 
 half fabulous history of the Heptarchy, or seven 
 separate and independent states or kiugiloms of 
 the Anglo-Saxons. Modern writers have a.ssumed, 
 that over these separate .states there was always 
 a lord paramount, a sort of Emperor of England, 
 who might be, by inheritance or conquest, some- 
 times the king of one state and sometimes the 
 king of another." This ascendant monarch is 
 called the Britwalda, or Bretwalda, a Saxon term, 
 which signifies the wielder, or dominator, or ruler, 
 of Brit (Britain).^ According to Bede and the 
 Saron Chronicle, seven or eight of tlie Saxon 
 princes in irregular succession bore this proud 
 title; and perhaps it may be inferred from Bede's 
 expressions that the other six kings of the island 
 acknowledged themselves the vassals of the Bret- 
 waldas. "We are not thoroughly convinced of any 
 such supremacy (even nominal), and in the real 
 operations of war and government we continually 
 find each state acting in an independent manner, 
 as if separate from all the rest — a proof at least 
 that the authority of the lord paramount was 
 very limited or very uncertain. As, however, 
 their whole history is uninteresting, and as 
 it is easier to trace the reigns of the more 
 marking monarchs tlian to enter into seven 
 separate dynasties, we shall follow the modern 
 example. 
 
 * Mr. Kemble utterly rejects the idea of there ever having 
 been any such lord piiramount : — "Much less," says he, "can 
 we admit that there w.ia any central political authority, recog- 
 nized, systematic, and regulated, by which the several kingdoms 
 were combined into a corporate body. There is, indeed, a theory, 
 respectable for its antiquity, and reproduced by modern inge- 
 nuity, according to which this important fact is assumed ; and 
 we are not only taught that the several kingdoms formed a con- 
 federation, at whose head, by election or otherwise, one of the 
 princes was placed, with imperial power, but that this institu- 
 tion was derived by direct imitation from the custom of the 
 Roman empire ; we farther loam, that the title of this high 
 functionary was Bretwalda, or Emperor of Britain, and that he 
 ix)ssessed the imperial decorations of the Roman state." This 
 learned author, who considera the Roman part of the theory, as 
 adopted by Falgrave, very well exploded by L-ippeuberg — though 
 the latter gives far- too much credence to the rest — then proceeds 
 to refute what Rapin, Sh. Turner, and others have said on the 
 subject, and sums up his own ideas upon it as follows: — "I 
 therefore again conclude that this so-called Bretwaldadom was a 
 mere accidental predominance ; there is no jieculiar function, 
 duty, or privilege anywhere mentioned as appertaining to it ; 
 and when Beda describes Eadwini of Northumberland proceed- 
 irg with the Roman tvj'a or baimer before him, as an ensign of 
 dignity, he does so in terms which show that it was not, as Pal- 
 grave seems to imagine, an ensign of imperial authority \i£ed by 
 all the Bretwaldas, but a peculiar and remarkable affectation of 
 that particular prince." — Saxoiis in England, vol. ii. p. 18. 
 
 2 The supposed universal empire held over Britain by particu- 
 lar Anglo-Saxon kings, in so far as it rests on the etymology of 
 the word Bretwalda, is overthrown by Mr. Kemble, who shows^ 
 A'OL. I. 
 
 Ella, the conqueror of Sii.ssex, and the founder, 
 there, of the kingdom of the South Saxons — the 
 smallest of all the new states — was the first 
 Bretwalda, and died, little nolicetl by the Euglisli 
 chroniclers, about tlie year 510. After a long 
 vacancy, Ceawlis, King of Wessex, who began 
 to reign about 5G8, stepped into the dignity, 
 which, however, was contested with him, by 
 Ethelbert, the fourth King of Kent, who claimed 
 it in right of his <lescent from Ueugist, the bro- 
 ther of Horsa. The dispute led to hostilities; for 
 long before the Anglo-Saxons had subdued all 
 the Britons, they made fierce wars upon one aff 
 other. The first example of this practice, which 
 must have retarded their general progress in the 
 subjugation of the island, was set by Ethelbert, 
 who, after svistaining two signal defeats from his 
 rival, and many other reverses,during the twenty- 
 two years that Ceawlin reigned, acquireil the dig- 
 nity of Bretwalda ( a.d. 593) soon after that prince's 
 death. Ceawlin, by the law of the sword, had 
 taken possession of the kingdom of Sussex, and 
 seems to have fought as often against his Saxou 
 brethren .as against the Britons. 
 
 The grand incident under the reign of this, the 
 third Bretwalda, was the conversion of himsol f 
 and court by Augustine and forty monks, chiefly 
 Italians, who were sent for th.at purpose into 
 Britain, by Pope Gregory the Great. Ethelbert's 
 change of religion was facilitated by the circum- 
 stance of his having espoused a Christian wife 
 shortly before. This was the young and beauti- 
 ful Bertha, sister or daughter of Charibert, King 
 of Paris, to whom, by stipulation, he granted the 
 free exercise of her religion when she came into 
 
 fii-st, that that word, Bretwalda, arises from a clerical error; 
 and, secondly, that the right word has notliiiig to do with Bri- 
 tain at all. 
 
 "Let us now imxm're," says he, "to what the passage in the 
 Saxcn Chronich amounts, which has put so many of our histo- 
 rians upon a wrong track, by supplying them with tlie suspicious 
 name Bretwalda. Speaking of Ecgberht, the chronicler says ; 
 ' And the same year King Ecgbcrlit overran the kingdom of the 
 Mercians, and all that was south of the llumber ; and he was 
 the eighth king who was Bretwalda.' And then, after naming 
 the seven mentioned by Beda, and totally omitting all notice 
 of the Mercian kings, he concludes : ' The eighth w.a3 Ecgberht, 
 King of the West Saxons.' 
 
 "Now it is somewhat remarkable, that of six manuscripts 
 in wliich this passage occurs, one only reads Bretwalda ; of the 
 remaining five, four have Bry-ten-walda or wealda, and one 
 Breten-anweald, which is jireciscly synonymous with Biyten- 
 wealda. All the rules of orderly criticism would, therefore, 
 compel us to look upon this as the i-ight reading ; and we aro 
 confirmed in so doing, by finding that ^Ethelstan, in one of his 
 chartei-3, calls himself .also 'Bryten-wealdaealles theses ealondea' 
 — niler or monarch of all this island. Now, the tnio meaning 
 of this word, which is compounded of wealda, a ruler, and tho 
 ailjective brijten, is totally imconnected with Bret or Bretwealh, 
 the name of the British aborigines, tho resemblance to which is 
 merely accidental; bryten is derived from breUan, to distribute, 
 to divide, to break into small portions, to disiiei-so ; it is a com- 
 mon prefix to words denoting wide or general dispereion, ami, 
 when coupled with wcalUa, means no more than .an extensive, 
 powerful king — a king whoso power is widely extended." — Kem- 
 ble, Anglo-Saxous. 
 
 10
 
 7-t 
 
 niSTOEY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militap.t. 
 
 the island. Etlielberl's olose connection with the 
 nioi-e eulighteucd n.ations of tlie Continent, .and 
 his frequent intercourse with French, Roman, 
 and Italian clmrchiuen, who, ignorant ,as they 
 were, wore infinitely more civilized than the 
 Saxons, proved highly beneficial to England; and 
 in the code of laws which this prince published 
 before his death, he is supposed to h.ave been in- 
 debted to the suggestions and science of those 
 foreigners, although the code has far more of the 
 spirit of the old German lawgivers than of Jus- 
 tinian and the Roman jurisconsults. This code 
 was not octroyed, as from an absolute sovereign 
 (a quality to which none of the Saxon princes 
 ever attained), but was enacted by Ethelbert with 
 the consent of the states of his kingdom of Kent, 
 and formed the first written laws promulgated 
 by any of the northern conquerors ; the second 
 being the code of the Burgundians, published a 
 little later; and the third, that of the Longobardi 
 or Lombards, which was promulgated in their 
 dominions in the north of Italy, about half a cen- 
 tury after Ethelbert's code. As King of Kent, 
 Ethelbert's reign was a very long and happy one; 
 as Bretwaldahe exercised considerable authority 
 or influence over all the Sason ])rinoes south of 
 the Humber. He died in 616, and w.as succeeded, 
 as King of Kent, but not as Bretwalda, by his son 
 Eadbald. The Anglo-Saxons at this period were 
 very volatile and fickle in their faith, or very 
 imperfectly converted to the Christian religion. 
 Passionately enamoured of the youth and beaiity 
 of his step-mother, Ethelbert's widow, Eadbald 
 took her to bis bed; and as the Christians repro- 
 bated such incestuous marriages, he broke with 
 them altogether, and returned to his priests of 
 the old Teutonic idolatry. The whole Kentish 
 people turned with him, forsook the missionaries 
 and the churches, expelled the Christian bishop, 
 and again set up the rude altars of the Scandi- 
 navian idols. Such a relapse as this was not un- 
 common among the recently converted heathen 
 of other countries ; but the sequel is curious, and 
 makes our Saxon ancestoi-s appear like a flock of 
 sheep following the bell-wether. Laurentius, the 
 successor of Augustine in the archbishopric of 
 Canterbury, prevailed on Eadbald to put away 
 his step-mother, and return to his fold ; and no 
 sooner had the king done so, than all his sub- 
 jects returned with him, without m\irmur or dis- 
 putation. 
 
 We have said that Eadbald did not succeed to 
 the dignity of Bretwalda. It appears, however, 
 he made a claim to it, and that the other princes 
 refused their concurrence and obedience. The 
 dignity of Bi-etwalda would seem, from this and 
 other instances, not to have been obtained by re- 
 gidar and free election, but to have been conceded 
 to him who showed himself ablest to maintain 
 
 his claim to ii by the sword. The three firet 
 Bretwaldas, Ella, Ccawlin, and Ethelbert, were 
 Saxons or Jutes; but now the dignity passed to 
 the moi-e powerful Angles, in the person of Eed- 
 WALD, about the year G17. Redwald was King of 
 East Anglia, and by profession a Christian, hav- 
 ing been converted some years before by tha 
 Bretwalda Ethelbert. But his wife and people 
 were attached to the old idolatry ; and, yielding 
 to their importunities, he re-opened the temples, 
 taking care, however, to place a Christian altar 
 by the side of the statue of Woden,' in doing 
 which he no doubt hoped to conciliate both par- 
 ties. During his reign the Scots, who had re- 
 newed hostilities in the north, were beaten by 
 the now united and extended Saxon kingdom of 
 Northumbria. At a later period Redwald him- 
 self was hostilely engaged with the Northumbrian 
 king Edilfrid, who is said to have destroyed more 
 Britons than all the other Saxon kings. The 
 armies of the Saxon kings met on the banks of 
 the river Idel, in Nottinghamshire, where victory, 
 after a sanguinary engagement, rested on the 
 crest of the Bretwalda. Edilfrid was slain. 
 
 Edwin, the fifth Bretwalda, succeeded (.about 
 621) both to the dignity of Redwald and the 
 kingdom of Edilfrid ; and so successful was he in 
 his wars and his politics, that he raised North- 
 umbria to a superiority over all the Saxon king- 
 doms, thus transferring the ascendency from the 
 south to the north of the island. After wavering 
 some time between the old national faith of the 
 Saxons and Christianity, Edwin was converted by 
 the preaching of Pauliuus, a Roman missionary, 
 and the influence of his fair wife Edilberga, who 
 was daugliter of Ethelbert, the Bretwalda and 
 King of Kent, and a Christian before she married 
 Edwin. The happiest effects are asserted to have 
 followed the conversion of the hitherto ferocious 
 Northumbrians. Edwin added the Isles of Man 
 and Anglesey to his Northumbrian dominions ; 
 and was so powerful, that all the Saxon kings 
 acknowledged his authority, and paid him a kind 
 of tribute. According to some accounts, he also 
 maintained a supremacy over the Scots and Picts. 
 In writing to him, in the year 625, the pope styles 
 Edwin " Rex Anglorum" — King of the Angles, or 
 English. In his person the dignity of Bretwalda 
 had a significant and clear meaning; but he did 
 not hold it very long. About the year C33, Penda, 
 the Saxon Prince of Mercia, rebelled against his 
 authority; and, forming an alliance with Cead- 
 walla, or Cadwallader, the King of North Wales, 
 he fought a great battle at Hatfield, or Heath- 
 field, near the river Trent, in which Edwin was 
 defeated and slain (a.d. 634). The alliance of one 
 ])arty of the Saxons with the Welsh, to tiglit 
 
 ' J3cda.
 
 A.D. 449 -825.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 io 
 
 agaiust auollier party of Saxous, is remarkable ; 
 but the case was often repeated. The confede- 
 rate armies between tliem committed a liorribl(^ 
 slaughter, sjxariug neither old men nor children, 
 women nor monks. Cadwallader and the Welsh 
 remained in tlie territory of the Northumbrians 
 at York; but Penda marched into Norfolk, against 
 the East Angles. This people had embraced the 
 Christian faith some seven years before, at the 
 eai'nest representations of the Bretwalda Edwin ; 
 and Sigebert, their old king, had lately renounced 
 his crown to his cousin Egeric, and retired iuto 
 a monastery. But at the approach of Fenda and 
 his jiagan host the old soldier left his holy retire- 
 ment, and directed the mana'uvres of his army, 
 with a white rod or wand, his religious scruples 
 not permitting him to resume the sword and 
 battle-axe. Penda was as successful here as he 
 had been against the (!liristians of Northumbria, 
 and both Sigebert and Egeric fell in battle. At 
 this time a struggle for supremacy seems to have 
 existed between the converted and unconverted 
 Saxons; and Penda, as head of the latter, evi- 
 dently aimed at possessing the full dignity of 
 Bretwalda, as it had been exercised by Edwin of 
 Noithumbria. But the latter jirince had laid a 
 broad and sure basis, which enabled the Nortli- 
 uuibriaus to retain the advantage in their own 
 country, and transmit the dignity to two mem- 
 bers of his family. 
 
 In the year G34, Oswald, the nephew of Edwin, 
 raised his banner in Northumbria, where Cad- 
 wallader, after many successes, seemed to despise 
 lu'ecaution. He and his Welsh were surpi'ised 
 near Hexham, and totally defeated by inferior 
 numbers. On the p.-irt of the Anglo-Saxons the 
 battle began with kneeling ami prayers ; it ended, 
 ou the part of the Welsh, in the death of Cad- 
 wallader, and in the annihilation of his army, 
 which appears to have assumed the title of "the 
 invincible."' Oswald being equally recognized 
 by the two Northumbrian states of Bernicia and 
 Deira, then regained all that his uncle Edwin 
 had lost, and soon after most of the Saxons ac- 
 knowledged him as Bretwalda. He attributed 
 his success to the God he worshipped ; and, to 
 show his gratitude, he invited many monks to 
 complete the conversion of the people of North- 
 umbria. The donation of Lindisfarne, or Holy Is- 
 land, and the splendid monastery that rose there, 
 
 ' " In CitdwaUa expired the last renowned hero of old BritiBh 
 race ; in foiuteen pitched battles and sixty encounters he had 
 revived and coniii'med the military famo of liifl country, and 
 aaiuii'ed dominion over a considerable part of Lloegi-ia (Lloegyr). 
 No wonder, then, if his life and death, though claiming a fai- 
 luglier degree of credibility than Arthm-'s, were soon surrounded 
 by tlie glittering imagery of tradition, and that ^ve .are now un- 
 able to ascertain the tmth, either in the apotheosis of his adoring 
 coiuitrymen, or in thevindict.ivenjiiTativeof the Anglo-Saxons." 
 — Lappettberg , vol. i. p. 15S. 
 
 testified to his munificence. Churches and mon- 
 asteries sprung up in other parts of the nortli, 
 and undoubtedly forwarded civilization, to a cer- 
 tain jioint, more than any other measures or 
 cstahlishmeiits. Oswald, who ro]\-iired to the court 
 of Cynegils, the king of that country, to demand 
 his daughter in marriage, took an active part in 
 the conversion of Wessex ; and when Cynegils 
 made a donation of land to Dirinus, the Roman 
 missionary .and bishop, ho confirmed it in his 
 quality of Bretwalda. 
 
 As Bretwalda, Oswald exercised an authority 
 over the Saxon nations and provinces fully equal 
 to that (.f his uncle Edwin; and he is said, beside, 
 although the fact is disputed, to have compelled 
 the Pictish and Scottish kings to acknowledge 
 themselves his va.ssals. Oswald was slain in 
 battle (a.d. 042), like his uncle Eilwin, and by the 
 same enemy, the fierce ami still unconverted 
 Penda, King of Meroia, who was as desirous as 
 ever of establishing his own supremacy. But 
 the Northumbrians once more rallied round the 
 family of the beloved Edwin, and on the retreat 
 of the heathens from the well-defended rock of 
 Bamborough, they enabled Oswald's brother, 
 named Oswy, or Oswio, whose wife was the 
 daughter of the great Edwin, to ascend the throne 
 of his father-in-law. His sucoessi(jn, however, 
 was not undisputed, nm- did liis murder of one 
 of his competitors preserve the integrity of the 
 Northumbrian kingdom. About the year 651 it 
 was re-divided into its two ancient independent 
 states ; and whilst Oswy i-etained to himself Ber- 
 nicia, the more northern half, Odelwald reigned 
 in Deira, or the southern jjart. The disseverance 
 was a fatal blow, from which Northumbria never 
 recovered. 
 
 Oswy had soon to contend with the old enemy 
 of his house, the slayer of his two predecessors. 
 Penda, still anxious to obtain the dignity of Bret- 
 walda, which, as on other occasions, seems to 
 have been in abeyance for some years, after driv- 
 ing the Christian King of Wessex from his throne 
 (a.d. 652), advanced once more, and this time with 
 fire and sword, into Northumberlanil. Burning 
 every house or hut he found in his way, this 
 savage marched as far as Bamborough. Trem- 
 bling at his recollections of tlie past, and his pre- 
 sent danger, Oswy entreated for peace, which he 
 at length obtaineil by means of rich presents, 
 hostages, and an arrangement of inter-marriage. 
 II is second son was sent as a hostage to Penda's 
 court. Alchfrid, his eldest son, espoused one of 
 Penda's daughters, and shortly after Penda's sou, 
 Peada or Weda, married one of Oswy's daughters, 
 the fair and Christian Alchfreda, who carried 
 four priests in her train, and became instrumental 
 in converting the people of Mercia. 
 
 But as long as Penda was alive in the land
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 there could be no lasting peace. Having deso- 
 lated East Anglia (a.d. (i!>i), lie advanced once 
 more against the Northumbrians, his army being 
 swelled by the foroos of thirty vassal kings or 
 chieftains, Welsh or Cumbrians, as well as Sax- 
 ons. This time gifts and ofj'ers were of no avail. 
 Oswy was obliged to fight; and the hardest 
 fought battle that had been seen for many years, 
 took place between hira and Penda not far from 
 York. Here, at last, this .scourge of Britain or 
 England (for the first name is now scarcely ap- 
 propriate) perished by that violent death he had 
 caused so many princes, and thirty of his chief 
 captains were slain with him. Another account 
 
 is, th.it of the thirty vassal kings or chiefs who 
 followed him to the field, only one escaped, and 
 that this one was the King of Gwyuedh, a state 
 in North Wales, which seems to have comprised 
 Cardiganshire, ]iart of Merionethshire, and all 
 Carnarvonshire. Twelve abbeys, with broad lauds 
 attached, showed the gratitude of Oswy for his 
 unexpected victory; and, according to a custom 
 which was now obtaining among all the north- 
 ern conquerors, he dedicated an infant daughter 
 to the service of God, and took her to the Lady 
 of Hilda, who shortly after removed with her nuns 
 from Haitlepool to the vale of Whitby, where 
 there soon arose one of the most famed and sjilen- 
 
 *et- 
 
 Whitby.' — From Darnell's British Coast. 
 
 did monasteries of the middle ages. But all the 
 proceedings of the victor were not of so pious or 
 tranquil a nature. After Penda's death, Oswy 
 rapidly overran the country of his old enemies 
 the Mercians, on whom he inflicted a cruel ven- 
 geance. He attached all their territory north of 
 the Trent to his Northumbrian kingdom ; and 
 Peada, his son-in-law, being treacherously mur- 
 dered soon after (it is said by his own wife, who 
 was Oswy's daughter), he seized the southern 
 part of Mercia also. It was probably at this 
 high tide of his fortune (a.d. 655) that Oswy as- 
 sumed the rank of Bretwalda. The usual broad 
 assertion is made, that the Picts and Soots, and 
 the other natives of Britain, acknowledged his 
 supremacy. There was soon, however, another 
 Bretwalda; the first instance, we believe, of two 
 such suns shining in our hemisphere. 
 
 In 656 the eoldermen or nobles of Mercia rose 
 up in arms, expelled the Northumbrians, and 
 gave the crown to Wulferk, another of Penda's 
 sons, whom they had carefully concealed from the 
 
 eager search of Oswy. This Wulfere not only 
 reta,ined possession of Mercia, but extended his 
 dominions by conquests in Wessex and the neigh- 
 bouring countries ; after which he became king 
 of all the " australian regions," or Bretwalda in 
 all those parts of the island that lie south of the 
 Humber. About the same time, Oswy was fur- 
 ther weakened by the ambition of his eldest son, 
 Alchfrid, who demanded and obtained a part of 
 Northumbria in independent sovereignty. The 
 sickness called the yellow, or the yellers jilague, 
 atilicted Oswy and his enemies alike; for it began 
 in the south, gradually extended to the north, 
 
 ' Whitby is understood to have risen from the neighbourhood 
 of an abbey, founded by Oswy, King of Northmnberland, in 
 007. Both abbey and town were utterly destroyed by the Danes, 
 and Liy in ruins till after the Nonnan conquest, when the abbey 
 w.ia rebuilt, and a considerable fishing town was established. 
 Tlio ruins of Whitby Abbey overlook the sea at an elevation of 
 240 ft. The fine central tower fell in 1S30 ; the coasting ves- 
 tiges consist of tlie choir, the north transept, which is nearly 
 entire, and part of the west front. The town of Wliitby is situ- 
 ated on botli sides of the mouth of the river Esk. It has a good 
 harljoui-, proteoteJ by piers.
 
 A.D. 449-825.] 
 
 SAXON rEinoi). 
 
 77 
 
 aud at leugtL raged over Uie whole isluiul, with 
 the exception of the mouutaius of Caledonia. 
 Among the earliest victims of thia pestilence 
 ■were kings, archbishops, bishops, monks, and 
 nuns. As the plague now makes its appearance 
 anmially in some of the countries of the East, so 
 did this yellow sickness break out in our island 
 for twenty years. King Oswy, who is generally 
 considered the last of the Bretwaldas, though 
 others continue the title to Ethelbald, King of 
 Mercia, died in 670, during the progress of this 
 fearful disease, but not of it. 
 
 Although we here lose the convenient point of 
 concentration afforded by the reigns of the Bret- 
 waldas, it is at a point where the seven kingdoms 
 of the IIe]itarchy had merged into three; for the 
 weak states of Kent, Sussex, Esses, and East 
 Anglia, were now reduced to a condition of vas- 
 salage by one or the other of their jiowerful neigh- 
 bours; and the great game for supreme dominion 
 remained in the liauds of Northumbria, Mercia, 
 and Wessex. "We are also relieved from any ne- 
 cessity of detail. The preceding narrative will 
 convey a sufficient notion of the wars the Anglo- 
 Saxon states waged with one another; and as we 
 approach the junction of the three great streams 
 of Northumbria, Mei-cia. and Wessex, which were 
 made to flow in one channel under Egbert, we 
 shall notice only the important circumstances that 
 led to that event. 
 
 Oswy was succeeded in the greater part of his 
 Northumbrian dominions by his son Egfrid, who 
 was scarcely seated on that now tottering throne, 
 when the Picts seated between the Tyne and the 
 Forth broke into insurrection. Willi a strong body 
 of cavalry, Egfrid defeated them in a bloody battle, 
 and again reduced them to a doubtful obedience. 
 Some eight years after, juubitious of obtaining all 
 the power his father had once held, Egfrid in- 
 vaded Mercia. A drawn battle was fought (a.d. 
 G79) by the rival Saxons, on the banks of the 
 Trent, and peace was then restored by means of a 
 holy servant of the church ; but it was beyond the 
 bishop's power to restore the lives of the brave 
 who had fallen, and whose loss sadly weakened 
 both Mercia and Northumbria. In 685 Egfrid 
 was slain in a war with Brude, the Pictisli king ; 
 and tlie Scots and some of the northern Welsh 
 joined the Picts, and carried their arms into Eng- 
 land. In the exposed ])arts of Northumbria the 
 Anglo-Saxons were put to the .sword or reduced 
 to slavery, and that kingdom became the scene of 
 wretchedness and anarchy. In the course of a 
 century fourteen kings ascended the throne, in a 
 manner as irregular as their descent from it was 
 rapid and tragical. Six were murdered by their 
 kinsmen or other competitors, five were expelled 
 by their subjects, two became monks, and one 
 only died with the crown on his head. 
 
 Although exposed, like all the An^du-Saxon 
 states, to sanguinary revolutions in its govern- 
 ment, Mercia, the old rival of Northumbria, for 
 a consideratile period seemed to rise on the de- 
 cline of the latter, and to bid fair to be the victor 
 of the three great states. After many hardly 
 contested battles, the kings of Wessex were re- 
 duced to serve as vassals, and by the year 737, 
 Ktiielbat.d, the Mercian king, ruled with a para- 
 mount authority over all the country south of tlie 
 Humber, with the exception only ot Wales. But 
 five years after, the vassal state asserted its inde- 
 pendence, and in a great battle at Burford, iu 
 Oxfordshire, victory declared for the Golden 
 Dragon, the standard of Wessex. Between the 
 years 757 and 794 the superiority of Mercia was 
 successfully I'e-asserted by King Offa, who, after 
 subduing parts of Sussex and Kent, invaded Ox- 
 fordshire, and took all that part of the kingdom 
 of Wessex that lay ou the left of the Thames. 
 Then turning his arms again.st the Welsh, he 
 drove the kings of Powis from Pengwern (now 
 Shrewsbury) beyond the river Wye, and yilanted 
 strong Saxon colonies between that i-iver aud the 
 Severn. To secure these conquests, and protect 
 liis subjects from the iai'oads aud forays of the 
 Welsh, he resorted to means that bear quite a 
 Roman character. He caused a ditch and ram- 
 part to be drawn all along the frontier of Wales 
 (a line measuring 100 miles), beginning at B.asing- 
 werke, iu Flintshire, not far from the mouth of 
 the Dee, aud ending on the Severn, near Bristol. 
 There are extensive I'emains of the work, which 
 the Welsh still call "Clawdh Offa," or Offu's 
 Dyke. But the work was scarcely finished when 
 the Welsh filled up part of the ditch, broke 
 through the rampart, and slew many of Otla's sol- 
 diers while they were jjleasantly eng.aged in cele- 
 brating Christmas. Offa the Terrible., as he was 
 called, took a terrible vengeance. He met tlie 
 mountaineers at Rliuddlau^ aud euoouutered them 
 in a battle there, in which the King of North 
 Wales, and the pride of the Welsh youth and 
 nobility, were cut to pieces. The prisoners he 
 took were condemned to the harshest condition 
 of slavery. Master of the south, it is said that 
 he now compelled the Noi-thunibrians bcyoml 
 the Humber to pay him tribute; but the year is 
 not mentioned, and the fact is not very clear. 
 Ten years of victory and conquest, say his monk- 
 ish eulogists, neither elated him nor swelled him 
 with pride; "yet," adds one of ther.i, "he was not 
 negligent of his regal state; for that, in reg.ird of 
 his great prerogative, aud not of any pride, he first 
 instituted aud commanded that, even iu times of 
 peace, himself and his successors in the crown 
 should, as they passed through any city, have 
 trumpeters goinfj and soundinrj before them, to 
 show that the presence of the king should breed
 
 78 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militart. 
 
 both fear and honour in uU who either see or 
 hear him.'" WiUiani of Malmesbiuy declares he 
 is at a loss to determine whether the merits or 
 crimes of tliis prince [jreponderated ; but as Offa 
 w;u<! a most munificent benefactor to the church, 
 the monks in general (the only historians of these 
 times) did not partake of this scruple, and praised 
 him to excess. As a sovereign, however, Offa 
 had indisputable and high merits, and the coun- 
 try made some progress under his reign and by 
 his example. He had some taste for the elegan- 
 cies of life and the fine arts; he built a palace at 
 "Tarn worth Town," which was the wonder of the 
 age; and his medals and coins are of much better 
 
 BitAis Corx Off Offa. — British Musexun. 
 
 taste and workmanship than those of any other 
 Saxon monarch.^ He maintained an epistolary cor- 
 respondence with Charlemagne; and it is highly 
 interesting, and a consoling proof of progression, 
 to see the trade of the nation and the commercial 
 intercourse between England and France made a 
 subject of discussion in these i-oyal letters. When, 
 towards the close of his reign, his body being 
 racked with disease and his soul with a late re- 
 morse, he gave himself up to monkish devotion 
 and superstitious observances, there was still a 
 certain taste as well as grandeur in his expiatory 
 donations, and a remarkable happiness of choice 
 (though this is said to have been directed by the 
 accidental discovery of a few bones) in his site 
 for the abbey of St. Alb.an's, the most magnifi- 
 cent of all the ecclesiastical edifices he erected.' 
 According to some of the old writers, his last war- 
 like exploit was the defeat of a body of Danish 
 invaders; and it is generally allowed that, during 
 the latter jiart of his reign, a few ship.s' crews, 
 the precui-sors of those hordes that desolated 
 England soon after, efiected a landing on our 
 coast, and did some mischief. On the death of 
 Otfa, after a long reign, in the yeai- 795, the great 
 power of Mercia, wdnch his craft, valour, and for- 
 tune had built up, and which his energies alone 
 had supported, began rapidly to decline; and as 
 Northumbria continued in a hopeless condition, 
 
 ^ Tfie Ligger Book of St. Alban's, as quoted in Speed's Chro- 
 nklea. " Palgi^ve, Hist. 
 
 3 The present venerable Abbey church of St. Alban's, which 
 stands on the site of that erected by Offa, was built, tlu'ee cen- 
 turies later, by William Rufus. A considerable portion of the 
 materials employed are Roman bricks or tiles, taken fi-om the 
 ruins of the ancient city of Vel-ulamium, which stood in the 
 neighbourhood, between St. Alban's and Gorliambmy Park. 
 
 Wessex, long the least of the three great rival 
 states, soon had the field to hei-self 
 
 At the time of Offa's death the throne of Wes- 
 sex was occupied by Brihtric, or Beortric, whose 
 right was considered very questionable even in 
 those days, when the rule of succession was very 
 fiir from being settled. Egbert, the son of Alch- 
 muud, had abetter title, but fewer partizans; and, 
 after a short antl unsuccessful struggle for the 
 crown, he fled for his life, and took refuge in the 
 court of OH'i, the Mercian. His triumphant 
 rival, Beortric, then despatched amlnissadors into 
 Mercia, charged with the double duty of demand- 
 ing the hand of Eadbm-gha, one of Offa's daugh- 
 tei-s, and the head of Egbert. Otfa readily gave his 
 daughter (lie oould hardly have given a greater 
 cui-se), but he refused the second request. He, 
 however, withdrew his protection fmm his royal 
 guest, who fled a second time for his life. Egbert 
 repaired to the court or camp of the Emperor 
 Charlemagne, who received him hospitably, and 
 employed him in his armies. During a residence 
 of fourteen or fifteen years on the Continent, living 
 chiefly among the French, who were then much 
 more polished than the Saxons, Egbert acquired 
 many accomplishments ; and, whether as a soldier 
 or statesman, he could not have found a better 
 instructor than Charlemagne. Eadburgha, the 
 daughter of OfFii, and wife of Beortric, was a woman 
 of a most depraved character — incontinent, wan- 
 ton, perfidious, and cruel. When men thwarted 
 her love, or otherwise gave her offence, she armed 
 the uxorious king against them ; ami when he 
 would not be moved to cruelty, she became the 
 executioner of her own vengeance. She had pre- 
 pared a wip of poison for a young nobleman who 
 was her husband's favourite; by some inadver- 
 tence this was so disposed that the king drank 
 of it as well a.s the intended victim, and died a 
 horrid death (4..D. 800). Accoi-ding to another 
 vereion of the story, she had filled the bowl ex- 
 pressly for the king, and many of his household 
 and warriors were poisoned by it. The crime was 
 discovered, and the queen degraded and expelled; 
 the thanes and men of Wessex decreeing, at the 
 same time, that for the future no kings' wives 
 should be called queens, nor sufl'ered to sit by 
 their husbands' sides ujjou the throne. She also 
 took refuge with Charlemagne, who assigned her 
 a residence in a convent or abbey. But in pro- 
 cess of time she beg.an to conduct herself so vi- 
 ciously, that she was turned out of this place of 
 shelter. Some years after her expulsion, a woman 
 of foreign mien and faded beauty was seen beg- 
 ging alms in the streets of Pavia, in Italy; it was 
 Eadburgha, the widow of the King of the West 
 Saxons — the daughter of Offa, monarch of all 
 England south of the Humber. It is believed 
 she ended her days at Pavia.
 
 A.D. 825—901.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 79 
 
 As soon as Egbert loarncil llie dcatli of Beor- 
 tric, he i-eturued from France to Wessex, when the 
 thanes and the pcojile received him with open 
 arms. The tii-st years of his reign were emjiloyed 
 in establishing his anthority over the inhabitants 
 of Devonsliire and Cornwall; but he had then to 
 meet the liostility of the jealous Mercians, who 
 invaded Wessex with all their forces. Egbert 
 met them at Elyndome, or Ellandum, near Wil- 
 ton, in Wiltshire, with an army very inferior in 
 numbers, but in superior fighting condition ; being, 
 to use the expression of one of our old quaint 
 chroniclers, "lean, meagre, pale, and long-breath- 
 ed," wherea-s the Mercians were "fat, corpnlent, 
 and short-winded." He gained a complete vic- 
 tory, and was soon after enabled to attach Mercia 
 and all its dependencies to his kingdom. He 
 
 established sub-reguli, or under-kings, in Kent 
 and Ea.st Anglia ; and not satisfied with the 
 dominion of the island south of the Humber, 
 he crossed that river, and penetrated into the 
 heart of Northumbria. He invaded that once 
 powerful state when anarchy was at its height. 
 Incapable of resistance, the Northumbrians made 
 an offer of entire submission (a.d. 825); and Ean- 
 red, their king, became the vassal and tributary 
 of the great monarch of Wessex. It appears, 
 however, that Egbert granted much milder terms 
 of dependence to the Northumbrians than to any 
 of the rest. Thus, in the first quarter of the ninth 
 century, and 376 years after the first landing of 
 Hengist and Horsa, was effected what some his- 
 torians call the reduction of all the kingdoms 
 under one sovereign. 
 
 CHAPTER II.-CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. 
 
 INVASION OF THE DANES TO THE DE.VTII OF ALFRED. — A.D. 825—901. 
 
 England iiivaileil Ijy tlie Danes— lleign of Etlielwulf— Ilia wars with the Danes— His jiilgrimage to Home— Kcigns 
 of Etiielbald aud Ethelbert— Their wars with the Danish invaders — History of the Danes— Their character at 
 the period of their invasion of England — Their modes of invasion and warf.are — Ethelbert succeeded by Alfred 
 the Great — Alfred's early contlicts with the Danes — Hia attempt.^ to create an English navy — His defeat and 
 flight to Athelney — His victory over the Danes at Ethaudune — His treaty with Guthrnn, and assignment of 
 tlie Danelagh to tlie enemy — luterconrse of Alfred witli Asser, his biograplier — Hasting invades England — 
 Various conflicts of the tliree years' warfare between Alfred and Hasting — Hasting compelled to leave Eng- 
 land — Alfred's navy — Review of Alfred's history and character — His education, studies, and acquirements — 
 His proceedings as a sovereign and legislator — His death and character. 
 
 LTHOUGH Egbert had now at- 
 tained to paramount authority, he 
 did not assume the title of King 
 of England. He contented himself 
 with the style of King of Wessex, 
 aud with the dignity and author- 
 ity of Bretwalda. This authoi-ity was sometimes 
 questioned or despised in more than one part 
 of the kingdom; but, counting from the river 
 Tweed to the shores of the British Channel and 
 the extremity of Cornwall, there were none who 
 could make head against him; and during the last 
 ten years of his reign he possessed, or absolutely 
 controlled, more territory, not only than any 
 Saxon sovereign that preceded him, but than 
 any that followed him. Even Wales, it not con- 
 quered, was at one time coez-ced aud kept in a 
 dependent state. 
 
 But no sooner had England made some ap- 
 proaches towards a union aud consolidation, and 
 the blessings of a regular government, than the 
 Danes or Northmen appeared in force, and began 
 to thiow everything into confusion aud hoi-ror. 
 
 In the year 832, when Egbert was in the pleni- 
 tude of his power, a number of these ferocious 
 pirates lauded in the Isle of Sheppey, and having 
 plundered it, escaped to their ships without loss 
 or hiuderance. The very next year the marau- 
 ders landed from thirty-five ships, and were en- 
 countered by the brave and active Egbert at 
 Charmouth, in Dorsetshire. The English were 
 astonished at the ferocity and desperate valour of 
 these new foes, who, though they lost great num- 
 bers, maintained their position for a while, and 
 then made good their retreat to their ships. In- 
 deed, some accounts state that Egbert's army was 
 defeated in the engagement; that two chief cap- 
 tains and two bishops were slain; and that Eg- 
 bert himself only escaped by the covert of niglit. 
 In cruising along the English coasts, where they 
 frequently landed in small bodies at defenceless 
 places, the robbers of the North formed an ac- 
 quaintance with the inhabitants of Cornwall, 
 which ended in an ill-assorted alliance. The rug- 
 ged promontory which stretclies out to tlie Land's 
 End had never been invaded by the Saxon con-
 
 80 
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militahy. 
 
 querora of the island iiulil tlie comparatively re- 
 cent period of G-iT, ami even then, as we have 
 shown, the native population there was not much 
 disturbed. As recently as 809, Egbert had in- 
 vaded their territory, where ho found them in 
 such force and spirit that he lost many of his 
 troops befoi'e he could reduce them to a nominal 
 obedience. They must even now have been nu- 
 merous and warlike, for on the stipulated landing 
 in their territory of their Danish allies, in 834, 
 they joined them in great force, and marched with 
 them into Devonshire, where they found many 
 old Britons equally willing to rise against the 
 Saxons who had settled among them. But Egbert 
 was again on the alert. He met them with his 
 well-appointed army at Hengsdown-hill, and de- 
 feated them with enormous slaughter. 
 
 This w:is the last martial exploit of Egbert, who 
 died in 836, after a long reign. The kingdom he 
 had in a manner built up out of many pieces, 
 began to fall asunder almost before his coffin was 
 deposited in the church of Winchester. He was 
 succeeded by his eldest surviving son,ETnELwnLF, 
 one of the first operations of whoso government 
 was to give the kingdom of Kent, with its depen- 
 dencies, Sussex and Essex, in separate sovereignty 
 to his son Athelstaue.' He retained Wessex; but 
 Mercia, which Egbert had subdued, again started 
 into independence ; and thus, when union was 
 becoming more and more necessary, to face an 
 enemy as terrible to the Saxons as the Saxons 
 hail been to the Britons, the spirit of disunion, 
 jealousy, and discord assumed a fatal ascendency. 
 
 The Scandinavian pir.ates soon found there was 
 no longer an Egbert in the land. They ravaged 
 all the southern coasts of the kingdoms of Wessex 
 and Kent; they audaciously sailed up the Thames 
 and the Medway; and stormed and pillaged Lon- 
 don, Rochester, and Canterbury. The idea of the 
 need of a common co-operation at last suggesteil 
 itself, and a sort of congress, composed of the 
 bishops and thanes of Wessex and Mercia, was 
 held at Kingsbury, in Oxfordshire (a.d. 851). 
 Some energetic, and for the most part successful 
 measures followed these deliberations. Barhulf, 
 King of Mercia, was defeated and slain; but Ethel- 
 wulf and his son Ethelbald, at the head of their 
 men of Wessex, gained a complete victory over 
 the Danes at Okeley, in Surrey, and achieved 
 such a slaughter as those mai-auders had never 
 before suffered in any of the several countries 
 they had invaded. Soon after Athelstane, the 
 King of Kent, with Alchere, the eolderman, de- 
 feated the pirates, and took nine of their ships at 
 Sandwich. The west of England also contri- 
 
 » Ethelwulf had been sub-re^iia of Kent binder his father, 
 but then he was in reality subordinate to Egbert, who main- 
 tained full autliority. It is not quite clear whether Athelstane 
 was the eldest son or the brother of Ethelwulf. 
 
 buted a victory; for Ccorl, with the men of Devon, 
 defeated the Danes at Weubury. These severe 
 checks, together with the disordered state of 
 France, which favoured their incursions in that 
 direction, where they soon laid Paris in ashes, 
 seem to have induced the marauders to suspend 
 for a while their great attacks on England; but 
 such was the mischief they had dune, and the ap- 
 prehensions they still inspired, that the Wednes- 
 day of each week was appointed as a day of public 
 prayer to implore the Divine assistance against 
 the Danes. During the confusion their attacks 
 caused in England, the Welsh many times de- 
 scended from their mountains, and fell upon the 
 Saxons. Ethelwulf is said to have taken ven- 
 geance for this, by marching through their coun- 
 try as far as the Isle of Anglesey, and compelling 
 the Welsh to acknowledge his authority'; but pre- 
 cisely the same stories ai-e vaguely related (as 
 this is) of several S.axon kings, who certainly 
 never preserved any conquest or authority there 
 for any length of time. 
 
 Ever since their conversion, the Saxons of su- 
 perior condition had been singularly enamoured 
 of journeys or pilgrim.ages to Eome; and besides 
 the prelates who went upon business, many 
 princes and king.s, crowned, or uncrowned and 
 dethroned, had told their orisons before the altar 
 of St. Peter. Ethelwulf, whose devotion was fer- 
 vent, though his sense of some moral duties was 
 languid, now felt the general desire, and, as the 
 island was tranquil, ho passed over to the Conti- 
 nent (a.d. 853), and crossing the Alps and the 
 Apennines, arrived at Rome, where he was hon- 
 ourably received, and where he tarried nearly 
 one year. On his return, forgetting that he was 
 an old man, he became enamoured of Judith, the 
 fair and youthful daughter of Charles the Bald, 
 King of the Franks, and espoused that princess 
 with great solemnity iu the cathedral of Rheims, 
 where he placed her by his side, and caused her 
 to be crowned as queen. Athelstane, his eldest 
 son, was dead, but Ethelwulf had still three sons 
 of man's estate — Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethel- 
 red, besides Alfred, then a boy, who was destined 
 to see his brothers ascend and descend the throne 
 in rapid succession, and to become himsel f " the 
 Great." From the usual thii-st for power, it is 
 probable that, before this French marriage, Ethel- 
 bald, who was already intrusted with the govern- 
 ment of part of his father's kingdom, was anxious 
 to possess himself of the whole; but the mari-iage 
 and the circumstances attending it gave plausi- 
 ble grounds of complaint, and Prince Ethelbald, 
 Adelstane, Bishop of Sherborn, Enwulf, Earl of 
 Somerset, and the other thanes and men of Wes- 
 sex that joined in a plot to dethrone the absent 
 king, set forth iu their manifesto that he had given 
 the name and authority of Queen to his French
 
 A.D. S25— 901.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 81 
 
 vile, had seated her by liia side on tlie throup, 
 aud "openly eaten ivilh her at the table;" all which 
 w;is agaiust the constitution and hnv.s of Wessox, 
 wliicli had for ever abolislied the ([ueenly dignity, 
 in consequence of the crimes of Eadburgha. It 
 is probable, also, that the favour shown to the boy 
 Alfred had some share in Ethelbald's resentment. 
 Ethelwulf had carried his favourite son with him 
 to Rome, where the jiope anointed him as king 
 with holy oil, and with his own hands. It is 
 more than likely that Alfred had always been 
 destined by his father to fill a minor throne in 
 the kingdom, but this act, and the wonderful 
 estimation in which the oil of consecration was 
 held in those days, especially when administered 
 by the pontiff of the Christian world, may have 
 induced his brothei-s to suspect that the Benja- 
 min of the family was to be preferred to them all. 
 A recent historian — an indefatigable searcher into 
 the old chronicles and records of the kingdom — 
 is of opinion that, though the fact is not meutiouiMl 
 in expi'css terms in our ancient historians, Os- 
 burgha, his first wife, aud the mother of his chil- 
 dren, was uot dead at the time, but merel_v jnit 
 away by Ethelwulf to make room for .Judith.' In 
 sjiite of their devotion and zeal for the church, 
 such proceedings were not uncommon among 
 kings in the middle ages; but if Ethelwulf so 
 acted, the undutifuluess of his eldest sou, who had 
 a mother's wrongs to avenge, would appear the 
 more excusable. AVhatever were their motives 
 and grievances, a formidable faction, in arms, oi>- 
 posed Ethelwulf when he returned to the island 
 with his yoimg bride. Yet the old king had many 
 friends; his party gained strength after his arrival 
 among them, and it was thought he might have 
 expelled Ethelbald and his adherents. But the 
 old man shrunk from the accumulated horrors of 
 a civil war waged between father and sou, and 
 consented to a compromise, which, on his part, 
 was attended with great sacrifices. Eetaiuing to 
 himself the eastern part of the kingdom ol Wes- 
 sex, lie resigned all the western, which w-as con- 
 sidered the richer and better ])ortion,to Ethelbald. 
 Ethelwulf did not long survive this partitiou, 
 dying in 857, in the twenty-first year of his reign. 
 Ethelbald then not only succeeded to the 
 whole of his father's kingdom, but to hi.s young 
 widow also; for, according to the chroniclers, how- 
 soever unwilling he had been that this fair queen 
 should sit in slate by his father's side, yet, con- 
 trary to idl laws both of God and man, he placed 
 her by his own, and by nujitial riles brought her 
 to his sinful and incestuous bed. A tolerably 
 well-grounded supposition that Judith was only 
 
 » According to Boine of the chrouklera, the Queeu Osbui-gha 
 w-TS alive tweuty-soveu years after Ktliohvuirs marriage with 
 .J edith, anil in S7S rep,-urej to Atheluey, m Someraetsliire, the 
 letrcLit uf Jilt son Alfred. 
 \'0L. 1. 
 
 twelve yeai-s old when Ethelwulf married her, 
 and that their marriage had never been consum- 
 mated, may diminish our horror ; but such a union 
 could in no sense be tolerated by the Koniish 
 Church, which, by means of its bishops in Eng- 
 land, at last gained Ethelbald's reluctant consent 
 to a divorce. According to other old authorities, 
 the marriage was only dissolved by his death, and 
 jiriests and people generally attributed the short- 
 ness of his reign, which did not last two years, to 
 the siuful marriage, which had drawn down God's 
 N'engeanco. As she is connected by her posterity 
 with many succeeding ages of our history, wi; 
 must devote a few words to the rest of the check- 
 ered career of Judilh. Either on her divorce, or 
 at the death of Ethelbald, she retired to France, 
 and lived some time in a convent at Senlis, a few 
 uules to the north of Paris. From this convent 
 she either eloped with, or was forcibly carried oil' 
 by Baldwin, the grand forester of Ardennes. Iler 
 father, Charles the Bald, made his bishojis excom- 
 numicato Baldwin for having r.avished a widow; 
 but the jjope took a milder view of the ease, and 
 by his meLliation the mai'riage of the still youth- 
 ful Judith with her third husband was solemnized 
 in a regular manner, aud the earldom of Flandei-s 
 was bestowed on Baldwin. Judith then lived in 
 great state and magnilicenee; her son, the second 
 Earl of Flanders, espoused Elfrida, the youngest 
 daughter of our Alfred the Great, from whom, 
 tlirough five lineal descents, proceeded !Maud, or 
 INlatilda, the wife of William the Conqueror, from 
 whom again descended all the subsequent Kings 
 of England. 
 
 Ethell>ald was succeeded iu the kingdom of 
 "Wessex by his brother Etiieluep.t, who had a 
 short reign, troubled beyond measure by the 
 Danes, who now made inroads iu idmost every 
 part of the island. lie had the mortification to 
 see them burn Vv'inchester, his capital, and per- 
 manently establish themselves in the Isle of 
 Thanet, which thej' made their nucleus, and the 
 key of their conquests, just as the Saxons had 
 done more than four centuries before. This king 
 died in the year SGG or 8G7, and was succeeded 
 by his brother Etiielred, who, in the courae of 
 one 3'ear, had to fight nine jiitcheil aud murderous 
 battles .against the Danes. Wiiiist he was thus 
 busied in resisting the invaders in the south and 
 west parts of the island, the kings and chiefs of 
 Mercia aud Norlhumbria wholly withdrew from 
 their covenanted subjeclion or alliance, and, only 
 thinking of themselves, they gave no timely aid 
 to one another or to the common cause. Thus 
 left to their own resources, the men of Wessex 
 maintained a doubtful struggle, at times losing, 
 aud at others gaining battles. According to the 
 old writers, the ilestruction of the Danes was im- 
 mense; and during the five or six years of Ethel- 
 U
 
 82 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Mit.itary. 
 
 red's rclgn tliore were killed in llie field uiiie 
 yarls or earls, one king, " besides others of the 
 meaner sort without uiinilier." But this loss was 
 constantly supplied by fresh forces from the North, 
 who brought as eager au appetite for plunder as 
 their precursors, and whose vengeance became the 
 more inflamed as the number of deaths of their 
 brethren was increased. In most of these con- 
 flicts Alfred, who was already far more fitted to 
 command, fought along with Ethelred, the last 
 of his brothers; and at Aston or Asheuden, in 
 Berkshire, while the king was engaged at his 
 prayers, and would not move with his division 
 of the Saxon army till mass was over, Alfred 
 sustained the brunt of the whole Danish force, 
 and mainly contributed to a splendid victory. 
 The victory of Aston was followed by the defeats 
 of Basing and Mereton; and, soon after, Ethel- 
 red died (871), at Whittiugham, of wounds re- 
 ceived in battle, upon which the crown fell to 
 Alfred, the only surviving and the best of all 
 the sous of Ethelwiilf. But, under existing cir- 
 cumstances, the crown was a jewel of no price, 
 and for many years the hero had to fight for ter- 
 ritory and for life against the formidable Danes. 
 The piratical hordes called Danes or Norse- 
 men by the English, Normans by our neighbours 
 the French, and Normanni by the Italians, wei-e 
 not merely natives of Denmark, properly so called, 
 but belonged also to Norway, Sweden, and other 
 countries spi-ead round the Baltic Sea. They 
 were offshoots of the great Scandinavian branch 
 of the Teutons, who, under different names, con- 
 quered and recomposed most of the states of 
 Europe on the downfall of the Roman empi]-e. 
 Such of the Scandinavian tribes as did not move 
 to the South and tlie West to establish them- 
 selves permanently in fertile provinces, but re- 
 mained in the barren and bleak regions of the 
 North, devoted themselves to piracy as a profi- 
 table and honourable profession. The Saxons, 
 then scattered along the south of the Baltic, did 
 this iu the fourth and fifth centuries, and now. 
 in the ninth century, they were becoming the 
 victims of their old system, carried into practice 
 by their kindred, the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, 
 and others. All these people were of the same race 
 as the Saxons, being an after-torrent from the 
 same Scandinavian fountain-head ; and though 
 time, and a change of country and religion on the 
 pai't of the Anglo-Saxons, had made some differ- 
 ence between them, the common re.seniblance iu 
 physical appearance, language, and other essen- 
 tials, was still strong. It is indeed remarkable 
 that the three different conquests of England, 
 made in the course of si.x centuries, were all the 
 work of one race of men, bearing different names 
 at diflTerent epochs ; for the Normans of the 
 eleventh century were called Danes in the ninth. 
 
 and were of the same stock as the Danes and 
 Saxons they subdued in England. A settlement 
 of 200 years in France, and an intermixture with 
 the people of that country, had wonderfully mo- 
 dified the Scandinavian character, but still the 
 followers of William the Conqueror had a much 
 greater affinity with the Danes and Anglo-Saxons 
 than is generally imagined. 
 
 Hume and other historians are of opinion that 
 the remorseless cruelties practised by Charle- 
 magne from the yeai- 772 to 803, upon the pagan 
 Saxons settled on the Rhine and in Germany, 
 were the cause of the fearful reaction and the 
 confinned idolatry of that people.' There can be 
 little doubt that this was partly the case; and it 
 is a well-established fact, that the Northmen or 
 Normans made the imbecile posterity of Charle- 
 magne pay dearly for their father's cruelty. Re- 
 treating from the arms, the priests, and the com- 
 pulsory baptisms of this conqueror, many of 
 these Saxons fixed their homes in the peninsula 
 of Jutland, which had been nearly evacuated 
 three centuries before by the Jutes and Angles, 
 who went to conquer England. A mixed popu- 
 lation, of which the Jutes formed the larger por- 
 tion, had, however, grown up in the interval on 
 that peninsula, and, as they were unconverted, 
 they were inclined to give a friendly reception to 
 Ijrethren suffering in the cause of Woden. The 
 next step was obvious; and iu the repi'isals made 
 on the French coasts, which were ravaged long 
 before those of England were touched, the men 
 of Jutland were probably joined by many of theii' 
 neighbours from the mouth of the Baltic, the 
 islands of Seeland, Funen, and the islets of the 
 Kattegat. All these might probably be called 
 Danes; but there are reasons for believing that 
 the invaders of oirr island, under Alfred and his 
 predecessors, were chiefly Norwegians, and not 
 Danes; and that the real Danish invasions, which 
 ended in final conquest, were not commenced 
 until nearly a centui-y later. Our old chroniclers, 
 who applied one general name to all, call Rollo 
 " the Ganger," one of the most formidable of our 
 invaders, a Dane, and yet it is well ascertained 
 that he was a Norwegian nobleman. It is dith- 
 cult, however, and not very important, to dis- 
 tinguish between two nations speaking the same 
 language, and having the same manners and pm-- 
 suits. All the raaiitime Scandinavian tribes, 
 from Jutland to the head of the Baltic — from 
 Copenhagen nearly to the North Cape — were 
 jjirates alike; and the fleet that sailed from the 
 coasts of Norway would often be mixed with 
 
 ' Charlemagne massacred the Saxons by thoiLsands, even after 
 they had laid down their arms. The alternative he oflered was 
 death or a Clmstiau baptism. Those who renounced their old 
 gods, or pretended to do so, he sent in colonies into the interior 
 of France. Some were even hniTied into Italy.
 
 A.D. 825-901.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 83 
 
 sliipg from .JutlaiKl ami Donmai-k, and vice vcn4. 
 Moreover, on certain gi-eat occasions, when their 
 highest numerical force was required, the "Sea- 
 kings," the leaders of these hordes, were known 
 to make very extensive leagues. 
 
 In their origin, the piratical associations of the 
 Northmen pai'took somewhat of the nature of 
 our privateering companies in war-time, but still 
 more closely resembled the associations of the 
 corsaii-s of the Bai-bary coast, who, crossing the 
 Mediterranean, as the Danes and Norwegians did 
 the German Ocean and the British Channel, for 
 many ages plundered every Chiistiau ship and 
 
 Danish Chiule.* 
 
 country they could ajiproach. The governments 
 at home, such as they were, licensed the depre- 
 dations, and partook of the spoils, having, as it 
 seems, a regularly fixed portion allotted them 
 after every successful expedition. Like the Saxons 
 we have described, the 
 Danes, Norwegians, 
 and all the Scandina- 
 vians, were familiar 
 with the sea and its 
 dangers, and expert 
 mariners. Every fa- 
 mily had its boat or 
 its ship, and the 
 younger sons of the 
 noblest of the land 
 had no other fortune 
 than their swords and 
 their chiules (keels). 
 With these they 
 fought their way to 
 fame and fortune, or 
 
 perished by the tempest or battle, which were 
 both considered most honourable deaths. All 
 
 1 Tliis illustnation, taken from thetombstone in lonaof Laclilan 
 M'Kiiinon, a descendant of a race of Nonvegian kings in the 
 Islo of Man, can only be regarded as an exaggerated type of the 
 Scandinavian chiule. It presents, however, tliis diiference from 
 the Roman galleys, chai-acteristic of the vessels of the Northmen 
 generally, of being sharp at both ends, and being propelled by a 
 sail rigged upon a mast, placed nearly equidistant between the 
 stem and the stem of the vessel. Instead, however, of a rudder 
 insei'ted on the quarter at either end of the vessel, the figure 
 before us baa it placed as we use it in modem times. The coal- 
 boats on the Tyne, called keels, are fonned like the Danish 
 cbiulo. 
 
 the males were practisc<I in the use of ai-ras from 
 their infaiu y, and the art of war was cultivated 
 with more success than by any nation in Europe. 
 The astonishing progress of the Danes (as they 
 were called) in England, of the Normans in 
 France, and later in Italy and Sicily, not only 
 prove their physical vigour, their valour, and per- 
 severance, but their military skill and address. 
 Their religion and literatiu-e (for they had a li- 
 terature at least as early as the eighth century) 
 were subservient to the ruling passions for war 
 and [ilunder ; or, more pro]icrly speaking, they 
 were both cast in the mould of those passions, 
 and stamped with the dccj) impress of the na- 
 tional character. The blood of their enemies in 
 war, and a rude hospitality, with a barbarous 
 excess in drinking, were held to be the incense 
 most acceptable to the god Woden, who himself 
 had perhaps been nothing more than a mighty 
 slayer and drinker. War and feasting were the 
 constant tliemes of their scalds or bards; and 
 what they called their history, which is mixed 
 with fable to such a degi-ee that the fragments 
 remaining of it are seldom intelligible, recorded 
 little else than pii-acy and bloodshed. Like their 
 brethi-en the Saxons, they were not at one time 
 very bigoted, or very intolerant to other modes 
 of faith; but when they came to England, they 
 were imbittered by recent persecution, and they 
 treated the Saxons as renegadoes, who had for- 
 
 Dakish SWORC3 ANT> AxE HEAD.— Drawn by 11. G. Hine, from sijecimens m the 
 British Museum. 
 
 saken the faith of their common ancestoi-s to cm- 
 brace that of their deadly enemies. This feeling 
 was shown in theu- merciless attacks on priests, 
 churches, monasteries, and convents. 
 
 AVith good steel arms the Danes were abun- 
 dantly provided. Then- weapons seem to have 
 been much the same as those used by the Saxons 
 at their invasion of the island, but the Scandina- 
 vian mace and V)atlle-axe were still more consjii- 
 cuous, particularly a double-bladed axe. "To 
 shoot well with the bow" was also an indispens- 
 able qualification to a Danish warrior; and as
 
 84 
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 tlie Saxona liad totally neglected archery, it 
 sliould seem the English were indebted to the 
 conquest, and intermixture with them of the 
 Dane.q, for the high fame they afterwards enjoyed 
 aa bowmen. They had gi'eat skill in choosing and 
 fortifying the positions they took uj>. Wherever 
 a camj) was established, a ditch was dug, and a 
 ramjiart raised with extraordinary rapidity; and 
 all the skill and bravery of the Saxons were 
 generally baffled by these intrencliments. Their 
 .ships were large, and capalile of containing many 
 men; but in most of their expeditions they were 
 attended by vessels di-awing little water, that 
 could easily run up the creeks and rivers of cm' 
 island. Many of our river.s, however, must have 
 been deeper in those times, for we constantly 
 hear of their ascending such as would not now 
 float the smallest embarkation. They frequently 
 drew their vessels on shore, and having formed 
 an intrenchmeut ai'ound them (as C'aisar had 
 done with his invading fleet), they left part of 
 their force to guard them, and then scattered 
 themselves over the counti-y to plunder and de- 
 stroy. On many occasions they dragged their 
 vessels overland from one i-iver to another, or 
 from one arm of the sea to another inlet.' 
 
 If they met a superior force, they fled to their 
 .ship.s, and disappeared; for there was no dishon- 
 our in retreat, when they earned off the pillage 
 they had made. They then suddenly ajjpeared 
 on some other distant or unprepared coast, and 
 repeated the same manoeuvi-es; thus, at length, 
 as their numbers increased more and more, keep- 
 ing every part of England in a constant state of 
 alai-m, and preventing the peoj^le of one country 
 from marching to the assistance of those of an- 
 other, lest in their absence their O'SA'n district 
 should be invaded, and their own families and 
 property fall the victims of the mai-auders. The 
 father and brothers of Alfred had established a 
 sort of local district militia; but the same causes 
 of self-interest and alarm continued, and it was 
 seldom that a suflicient force could be concen- 
 trated on one point, in time to prevent the de- 
 
 * "The northern fleets and vessels, however dispersed in action, 
 were always iu commnnication with each other ; so that the 
 several hosts and bands might assist iu tlicir mutual e.xigencies, 
 or best profit by their mutual good fortunes. In the British 
 Islands, as well as on the Continent, their operations were uni- 
 foiTO. Fleet after fleet, scLu.adron after squadron, vessel after 
 vessel, they sought to crush the country between river and river, 
 or between river and sea, a battue encircling the prey. 
 
 "The littoral has sustained many alterations; cliff and beach, 
 length and level, height and depth have changed and inter- 
 changed. Estimated according to a general average, we may 
 assert that, bordering on the North Sea and the Channel, and 
 as far aa the Scheldt, tlie land has lost and the sea has gained. 
 ITio bays on the coasts of France and England were generally 
 much deeper than they are at jiresent, and the rivei-s more 
 abmidant in water, whether flowing in the stream, spre.iding on 
 the sheeted broad, or stagnating in the marsh. It is veiy im- 
 portant to notice these facts : such physical mutations, rarely 
 recollected liy historians, have been almost universally neglected 
 
 predations of the ph-ates. On some occasions, 
 however, these anned burghers and jieasants, 
 throwing themselves between the Danes and 
 their ships, recovered their booty, and inflicted a 
 fearful vengeance; quai'ter was rarely given to 
 the defeated invaders. For a considerable time 
 the Danes carefully avoided coming to any gene- 
 ral engagement; for, like the Picts and Scots of 
 old, their object was merely to make forays, and 
 not conquests and settlements. Their success, 
 with the weakness and divisions of England, 
 gi'adually enlarged theh- views. They brought 
 no horses with them; but as cavahy was neces- 
 sary to scour the couutiy, and an important 
 component of an armed force, they seized and 
 mounted all the horses they could catch; and as 
 their operations extended inland, their lirst care 
 was to provide themselves with those animals, 
 for the procm'ing of which they would promise 
 neutrality or an exemption from plunder, to the 
 people or districts that furnished them. Thus, 
 on one occasion, the men of East Anglia mounted 
 the faithless robbers, who rushed upon the men 
 of Mercia, vowing they would not iujure the 
 horse-lenders. But no promises or vows were 
 regarded — no treaty was kept sacred by the 
 Danes, v,-ho had always the ready excuse (v/hen 
 they thought fit to make one) that the peace or 
 truce was broken by other bauds, over whom 
 those who made the treaty had no control. Thus, 
 when the men of Kent resorted to the fatal ex- 
 pedient of ofi'ering money for their forbeai-ance, 
 the Danes concluded a treat}', took the gold, and, 
 breaking from their permanent head-quarters in 
 the Isle of Thanet, ravaged the whole of their 
 country shortly after. The old wTiters continu- 
 ally call them "truce-breakers;" and the Danes 
 well deserved the name. 
 
 We need not follow the gi-adual development 
 of this sanguinary stor}', nor trace, step by step, 
 how the Danes established themselves in the is- 
 land. It will be enough to show their possessions 
 and power on the accession of Alfred to the de- 
 gi-aded throne. They held the Isle of Thanet, 
 
 in historical geography, a branch of science yet imperfectly pur- 
 sued. We have, for example, never seen a single map of Roman 
 Britain whose delineator has not joined tlic Isle of Thanet to 
 the Kentish land. On the Gaulish coasts, the tides, particularly 
 in the Seine, rose much higher up than .at present ; and many 
 of the existing peninsulas, which caiiso the river's sinuous 
 com-se, increasing the landscape's beauty, were then not presqii'- 
 ules, but completely eyots and islands. The French academi- 
 cians, who have investigated these questions with the most con- 
 scientious diligence, leave us in doubt whether the Isle d'Oisselle, 
 a veiy important and celebi-ated military iwst during the north- 
 ern invasions, has not been obliterated by alluvion. 
 
 " The facilities thus afforded for penetrating into the country 
 encouraged the Northmen's desperate pertinacity; the seas, the 
 blue billows, the boljen Itlau of the Danisli ballads, were their 
 home. Beaten off from the Belgic or Neustrian ccost, they would 
 ply the oar, and hoist the bhick sail for Essex or Kent, East Ang- 
 lia or Northumbria." — FaJgravo, Hist. Kormandt/ and Eiigbind, 
 vol. i. p. 320.
 
 A.D. 825— 901.] 
 
 SAXON PF.RTOD, 
 
 85 
 
 which gave them the conmiaiul of tlie river 
 Thames aud the coasts of Kent and Essex; they 
 had thoroughlj' overrun or couqucred all North- 
 uiubria, from the Tweed to the Iliimbor; they 
 had planted strong colonies at York, wliieli city, 
 destroyed during the wars, they rebuilt. South 
 of the Ilumber, with the excejition of the Isle of 
 Tlianct, their iron gi-asp on the soil was less sure, 
 but they had desolated Nottinghamshire, Liu- 
 cobishire, Cambridgcsliire, Norfolk, and Sullblk; 
 and, with nunibei'S con.stantly increa-siug, they 
 ranged through the whole length of the island, 
 on this side of the Tweed, with the exception 
 only of the western counties of England, and had 
 established fortified camps between the Severn 
 aud the Thames. The Anglo-Saxon standard 
 had been gi-adually retreating towards the south- 
 western corner of our islanil, which includes 
 Somereetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, and 
 which was now about to become the scene of 
 Alfred's most romantic adventures. For a while, 
 the English expected the arrival of their foes 
 dm-ing the spring and summer months, and their 
 departure at the close of autumn; but now a 
 Danish ai-my liad wintered seven years in the 
 land, and there was no longer a hope of the bless- 
 ing of their ever departing from it. 
 
 But Alfred, the saviour of his people, did not 
 despair, even wlien worse times came: he calmly 
 .abode the storm over which his valour, but still 
 more his prudence, skill, and wisdom finally 
 triumplied. Though only twenty-three years of 
 age, he had been already tried in many battles. 
 He had scai-cely been a month on the throne, 
 when his army, very inferior in force to that of 
 the Danes, was forced into a general engagement 
 at Wilton. After fighting desperately through 
 a gi-eat part of the day, the heathens fled; but 
 seeing the fewness of those who puraued, they 
 set themselves to battle again, and got the field. 
 Alfred was absent at the time, and it is probable 
 his army was g^nlty of some imprudence; but 
 the Danes suiTered so seriously in the battle of 
 Wilton, that they were fain to conclude a peace 
 with him, and evacuate his kingdom of Wessex, 
 which they hardly touched again for thi-ee yeai-s. 
 The invading army witlidrev/ in the direction of 
 London, in which city they passed the winter. 
 In the following spring, liaving been joined in 
 Ijondon by fresh hosts, both from Northumbria 
 and from their own country, they marched into 
 Lyndesey, or Lincolnshire, robbing and burning 
 the towns and villages as they went, and reduc- 
 ing tlie people, whose lives they spared, to a 
 complete state of slavery. From Lincolnshire 
 they marched to Derbyshire, and wintered there 
 at the town of Repton. 
 
 The next year (a.d. 87.5) one army, under Half- 
 den, or llalfdane, was employed in settling Nor- 
 
 thumbria, and in waging war with that proba- 
 bly mixed population tli.vt still dwelt in Cum- 
 berland, Westmoreland, and Calloway, or what 
 was called the king<lom of Strathclyde. They 
 now came into ho.stile collision with the Scots, 
 who were forced to retreat beyond the Fi-iths of 
 Clyde and Forth. llalfdane then divi<led the ma.sK 
 of the Northumbrian territory among his follow- 
 ers, who, settling among the Anglo-Saxons there, 
 and intermarrying with them, became, in the 
 course of a few generations, so mixed as to form 
 almost one people. It is not easy, from the vague- 
 ness of the old writers, to fix limits; but this 
 fusion was probably felt strongest along our north- 
 ea.stern coast, between the Tees and the Tweed, 
 where some Danish peculiarities are still detected 
 among the peojile. While Halfilane w;us jnu-su- 
 ing these measures in the north, a still stronger 
 army, commanded by three kings, marched upon 
 Cambridge, which they fortified and made their 
 winter-quai-ters. By this time the Anglo-Saxon 
 kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and East Ang- 
 lia, were entirely obliterated, and the contest lay 
 between the Dajues and Alfred's men of Wessex. 
 At the opening of the year 87G, the host that 
 had wintered in Cambridge took to their ships, 
 and, resolving to carry the war they had renewed 
 into the heart of Wessex, they landed on the 
 coast of Dorsetshire, surprised the castle of Ware- 
 ham, and scoured the neighbouring country. But 
 in the interval of the truce, Alfred's mind had 
 conceived an idea which may be looked upon as 
 an embryo of the naval glory of England. After 
 their establishment in om- island, the Saxons, 
 who, at theii- first coming, were as nautical it 
 people as the Danes, imprudently neglected sea 
 aftairs ; but in his present straits Alfred saw the 
 advantages to be derived from the emjiloyment 
 of ships along the coast, where they might either 
 prevent the landing of an enemy, or cut otl" their 
 supplies aud reinforcements, which generally came 
 by sea, and as frequently from the Continent a.s 
 elsewhei-e. The first flotilla he launched wa.s 
 smaO,and almost contemptible; but in its very first 
 encounter with the enemy it proved victorious, 
 attacking a Danish squadron of seven shiji.s, one 
 of which was taken, the rest i>ut to flight. This 
 hap]3ened immediately after the surprise of Ware- 
 ham ; and when, in a few days, the Danes agi'eed 
 to treat for peace, and evacuate the territory of 
 Wessex, the consequences of the victory were 
 magnified in the eyes of the people. In conclud- 
 ing this peace, after the Danish chiefs or kings 
 had sworn by their golden bracelets — a most so- 
 lemn form of oath with them — Alfred, wdio was 
 not above all the superstitions of his age, insisted 
 that they should swear upon the relics of some 
 Christian saints.' The Danes swore by both, aud 
 
 * Aiser, 28.
 
 86 
 
 the very next night fell upon Alfred sw he was 
 riding with a small force, and suspecting no mis- 
 
 IIISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 Golden Bracelet.'— From VaUancey, Col. Reb. Hob. 
 
 chief, towards the town of Winchester. The king 
 had a narrow escape ; the horsemen who attended 
 him were nearly all dismounted and slain; and, 
 seizing their hoi-sea, the Danes galloped off in the 
 direction of Exeter, whither, as they were no 
 doubt informed, another body of their brethi-en 
 were proceeding, having come rovmd by sea, and 
 landed at the mouth of the Exe. Their plan now 
 was to take Alfred in the rear of his stronghold 
 in the west of England, and to rouse again the 
 people of Cornwall against the Saxons. A for- 
 midable Danish fleet sailed from the mouth of 
 the Thames to reinforce the troops united in De- 
 vonshire; but Alfred's infant navy, strengthened 
 by some new vessels, stood ready to intercept 
 it. A storm which arose caused the wi-eck of 
 half the Danish ships on the Hampshu'e coast ; 
 and when the others arrived, tardily and in a 
 shattered condition, they were met by the Saxon 
 fleet that blockaded the Exe, and entirely de- 
 stroyed, after a gallant action. Before this, his 
 second sea-victory, Alfred had come up with his 
 laud forces and invested Exeter, and King Gu- 
 thrun, the Dane who held that town, on learning 
 the destruction of his fleet, capitulated, gave hos- 
 tages and oaths, and marched with his Northmen 
 from Exeter and the kingdom of Wessex, into 
 Mercia. 
 
 Alfred had now felt the value of the fleet he 
 liad created, and which, weak as it was, main- 
 tained his cause on the sea diuing the retreat to 
 which he was now about to be condemned. The 
 crews of these ships, however, must have been 
 oddly constituted; for, not finding English ma- 
 riners enough, he engaged a number of Friesland 
 pii'ates, or rovers, to serve him. These men did 
 their duty gallantly and faithfully. It is ciu'ious 
 to reflect that they came from the same coimtry 
 which, ages before, had sent forth many of the 
 Angles to the conquest of Britain; and they may 
 have felt, even at that distance of time, a strong 
 sympathy with the Anglo-Saxon adherents of 
 Alfred. The reader has akeady weighed the 
 
 • Tliia bracelet, preaunieJ to be of the period Epoken of, was 
 found in Ireland ; weight, 17 oz. G gl-s. 
 
 value of a Danish treaty of peace. Guthruu had 
 no sooner retreated from Exeter than he began 
 to prepare for another war, and this he did with 
 gi-eat art, and by employing all his means and 
 influence, for he had learned to appreciate the 
 qualities of his enemy, and he was liimself the 
 most skilful, steady, and persevering of all the in- 
 vaders, lie fixed his head-quarters at no greater 
 distance from Alfred than the city of Gloucester, 
 aroimd which he had broad and fertile lands to 
 distribute among his warriors. His fortunate 
 raven attracted the birds of rapine from every 
 quarter ; and when everything was ready for a 
 fresh incursion into the west, he craftily pro- 
 ceeded in a new and unexpected manner. A 
 winter campaign had hitherto been unknown 
 among the Danes, but on the first day of Janu- 
 ary, 878, his choicest wan-ioi-s received a secret 
 order to meet him on horseback at an appointed 
 place. Alfred was at Chippenham, a strong resi- 
 dence of the Wessex kings. It was the feast of the 
 Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, and the Saxons were 
 probably celebrating the festival when they heard 
 that Gutlu'un and his Danes were at the gates. 
 Surprised thus by the celerity of an overwhelm- 
 ing force, they could ofl'er but an ineifectual re- 
 sistance. Many were slain ; the foe burst into 
 Chijipenham, and Alfred, escaping with a little 
 band, retired, with an anxious mind, to the woods 
 and the fastnesses of the moors. As the story is 
 generally told, the king could not make head 
 against the Danes, but other accounts state that he 
 immediately fought several battles in rapid suc- 
 cession. We are inclined to the latter belief, 
 which renders the broken spirits and despair of 
 the men of Wessex more intelligible; but all are 
 agi-eed in the facts that, not long after the Danes 
 stole into Chippenham, they rode over the king- 
 dom of Wessex, where no army was left to o]ii)ose 
 them ; that nimibers of the population fled to the 
 Isle of Wight and the opposite shores of the Con- 
 tinent, wliUe those who remained tilled the soil 
 for their hai-d taskmastex-s, the Danes, whom they 
 ti'ied to conciliate with presents and an abject 
 submission. The brave men of Somerset alone 
 retained some spu'it, and continued, in the main, 
 true to their king; but even in their country, 
 where he finally sought a refuge, he was obliged 
 to hide in fens and coverts, for feai' of being be- 
 trayed to his powerful foe, Guthiun. Near the 
 confluence of the rivers Thone and Pai-ret there 
 is a tract of country still called Athelney, or 
 the Prince's Island. The waters of the little 
 rivers now flow by corn-fields, pasture-land, a 
 fai-m-house, and a cottage ; but in the time of 
 Alfred the whole tract was covered by a dense 
 wood, the secluded haunt of deer, wild boars, 
 wild goats, and other beasts of the forest. It 
 has now long ceased to be an island; but in
 
 A.D. 825—901.] 
 
 SAXON PEEIOD. 
 
 87 
 
 those (lays, wlicrc not wasUwl by tlie two rivers, 
 it was insulateil by bogs and inundations, w!iii-li 
 could only be passed in a boat. In tliis secure 
 lurkinfc-jilace the king abode some time, making 
 himself a small hold or fortress there. For sus- 
 tenance he and his few followers depended upon 
 hunting and fishing, and the spoil they coidd 
 make by sudden and secret forays among the 
 Danes. From an ambiguous exjiression of some 
 of tlie old writers, we might believe he sometimes 
 plundered his own subjects ; and this is not al- 
 together improbable, if we consider his pressing 
 wants, and the necessity under which he lay of 
 concealing who he was. This secret seems to 
 have been most scrupulously kept by his few ad- 
 herents, and to have been maintained on his own 
 part w-ith infinite patience and forbearance. A 
 well-known story, endeared to us all by our ear- 
 liest recollections, is told by his contempoi-ai-y 
 and bosom friend, the monk Asser ; it is repeated 
 by all the writers who lived near the time, and 
 may safely be considered as authentic as it is in- 
 teresting. In one of his excursions he took refuge 
 in the humble cabin of a swineherd, where he 
 stayed some time. On a certain day it ha])j)ened 
 that the wife of the swain pi'ejiared to bake her 
 lotidas, or loaves of bread. The king, sitting at the 
 time ueiir the hearth, was making ready his bow 
 and arrows, when the shi-ew beheld her loaves 
 bm-ning. She ran ha.stily, and removed them, 
 scolding the king for his shameful negligence, and 
 exclaiming, " You man ! you will not turn the 
 bread you see burning, but you will be glad 
 enough to eat it." '" This unlucky woman," adds 
 Asser, " little thought she was talking to the 
 King Alfred." 
 
 From his all but inaccessible retreat in Athel- 
 nej-, the king maintained a coiTespondence with 
 some of his faithful adherents. By 
 degrees a few bold warriors ga- 
 thered round him in that islet, 
 which they more strongly forti- 
 fied, as a point upon which to re- 
 treat in c;ise of reverse ; and be- 
 tween the Easter and Whitsuntide 
 following his flight, Alfred saw 
 hojies of his emerging from ob- 
 scurity. The men of Somerset- 
 shire, Wiltshii-e, Dorsetshire, and 
 Hampshire began to flock in ; 
 and, with a resolute force, Alfred 
 was soon enabled to extend his 
 operations against the Danes. In the interval, 
 an important event in Devonsliire had favoured 
 his cause, llubba, a Danish king or chief of 
 great renown, in attempting to land there, was 
 slain, with 800 or 900 of his followers, and their 
 magical banner, a raven, which liad been em- 
 broidered in one noon-tiile h\ the hands of the 
 
 three daughters of the gi-eat Lodbroke, fell into 
 the hands of the Saxons. Soon after receiving 
 the welcome news at Athclney, the king dc- 
 tennined to convert his skirmishes and loose 
 partizan warfare into luoj'e decisive operations. 
 Previously to this, however, he was anxious to 
 know the precise force and condition of the army 
 which Guthrun kept together ; and, to obtain this 
 information, he ])ut himself in gi-eat jeo))ardy, 
 trusting to his own resources and address. He 
 assumed the habit of a wandering minstrel, or 
 gleeman, and with his instruments of music in 
 his hands, gained a ready entrance into the camp, 
 and the tents and pavilions of the Danes. Ashe 
 amused these idle warriore with songs and inter- 
 ludes, he espied all theu- sloth and negligence, 
 heard much of their councils and plans, and was 
 soon enabled to return to his fz-iends at Atheluey 
 with a full and satisfactory account of the state 
 and habits of that army. Then secret messengers 
 were sent to all quai-ters, requesting the trusty 
 men of Wessex to meet in arms at Egbert's Stone, 
 on the east of Selwood Forest.' The summons 
 was obeyed, though most knew not the king had 
 sent it; and when Alfred ajipeiu-ed at the |)lace 
 of rendezvous he was received with enthusiastic 
 joy, the men of Hami>shire, and Dorset, and 
 Wilts, rejoicing as if he had been risen from death 
 to life. In the general battle of Etliandune which 
 ensued (seven weeks after Eiister), the Danes 
 were taken by surprise, and thoroughly beaten. 
 Alfred's concealment, counting from his flight 
 from C!hipiienham, did not last above five months. 
 It is reasonably supposed that the present 
 Yatton, about five miles from Chijiiieuham, is 
 the representative of Etliandune, or As.sandune ; 
 but that the battle w;is fought a little lower 
 on the Avon, at a place called " Slaughterford," 
 
 •"-1 rf ?£■! \<f' 
 
 b*eM>j ■'o„o,.da. 
 
 U' iiliiatiiia 
 TngliJih.Mltt. 
 
 where, according to a tradition of the country 
 people, the Danes suflered a gi-eat slaughter. 
 Giithrun retreated with the mournful resitlue of 
 liis army to a fortified jjosition. Alfred followed 
 him thither, cut ofj" all his coiinuunications, and 
 
 ■ Amr. 33. The wood cxtcniled Irom Fronic to Biilbnni, caA 
 was luobabl}' much largoi- at one tiiiw,
 
 88 
 
 UISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil akd Militart. 
 
 establislicil a close Wot-kaile. In fourteen days, 
 famine obliged the Danes to accept the condi- 
 tions oflered by the Saxons. These conditions 
 were libeial; for, though victorious, Alfred could 
 not hope to drive the Danes by one, nay, nor by 
 twenty battles, out of England. They were too 
 numerous, and had seciu-ed themselves in too 
 considerable a part of the island. The first points 
 insisted upon in the treaty were, that Guthruii 
 should evacuate all Wessex, and submit to be 
 baptized.' Without a convei-sion to Chiistian- 
 ity, Alfred thought it impossible to rely on the 
 promises or oaths of the Danes; he saw that a 
 change of religion would, more than anything 
 else, detach them from their savage Scandina- 
 vian brethren across the seas; and as he was a 
 devout man, with priests and monks for his 
 counsellora, religion, no doubt, was as px-ecious 
 to him as policy, and he was moved with an 
 ardent hope of propagating and extending the 
 Christian faith. Upon Guthrun's ready accept- 
 ance of these two conditions, an extensive ces- 
 sion of territory was made to him and the Danes ; 
 and here the gi-eat mind of Alfred probably con- 
 templated the gi-adual fusion of two people — the 
 Saxons and the Danes — who differed in bvit few 
 essentials; and foresaw that the pxirsuits of agi'i- 
 culture and industry, growing up among them, 
 after a tranquil settlement, would win the rovers 
 of the North from their old plundering, piratical 
 habits. As soon as this took jilace, they would 
 guard the coasts they formei-lj' desolated. If it 
 had even been in Alfred's j)uwer to expel them 
 all (\\ hich it never was), he could have had no 
 secm-ity against their prompt return and in- 
 cessant attacks. There was territory enough, 
 fertile, though neglected, to give away, without 
 straitening the Saxons. In the most happy time 
 of the Roman occupation, a gi-eat pai-t of Britain 
 was but thinly inhabited; and the famines, the 
 pestilences, the almost incessant wars which had 
 followed since then, had depopulated whole coun- 
 ties, and left immense tracts of land without 
 hands to till them, or mouths to eat the iiroduce 
 they promised the agriculturist.-' 
 
 Alfred thus drew the line of demarca,tion be- 
 tween him and the Danes: — "Let the bounds of 
 
 ' " We meet with nothing which can be constnied into an indi- 
 cation of Alfied'8 having made this determination to embrace 
 Christianity) one of tlie conditions of peace. The fii-st idea of 
 such a tiling, although it might not have been sincere, but merely 
 suggested by the straits to which lie was reduced, appears to have 
 Arisen in the soul of the he.athen. He himself ruled over Chris- 
 tian subjects, who showed more coiu-age for their religion than 
 they did in war; and already, too, w\.'re the first signs of that so 
 frequently recuiTing phenomenon apparent, namely, that tlie 
 Cliristian religion generally triumplis, in the course of time, over 
 the weapons of its oppressore." — Pauli, Life of Alfred tlu Greatf 
 p. 181. 
 
 '^ *' The magnanimity of the plan was as great as its wisdom. 
 Had Alfred sudered fear or revenge to have been his counsellors, 
 
 our dominion stretch to the river Thames, and 
 from thence to the water of Lea, even inito the 
 head of the same water; and thence straight unto 
 Bedford; and finally, going along by the river 
 Ouse, let them end at Watling-street." Beyond 
 these lines, all the east side of the island, as far 
 as the Ilumber, was sm-rendered to the Danes; 
 and !us they had established themselves in Nortli- 
 mnbria, that territory was soon united, and the 
 whole eastern country from the Tweed to the 
 Thames, where it washes a part of Essex, took 
 the name of the Ba/ielaffh, or " Dane-law," which 
 it retained for many ages, even down to the time 
 of the Norman conquest. The cession was large; 
 but it should be remembered that Alfred, at the 
 opening of his reign, was driven into the western 
 corner of England, and that he now gained tran- 
 quil ])ossossion of five, or perhaps ten times more 
 territory than he then possessed.^ lu many re- 
 spects, these his moderate measures answered the 
 end he jiroposed. Soon after the conclusion of the 
 treaty, Guthrun, relying on the good faith of the 
 Saxons, went with oidy thirty of his chiefs to 
 Aulre, near Athelney. His old but gallant and 
 generous enemy, Alfred, answered for him at 
 the baptismal font, and the Dane was christened 
 under the Saxon name of Athelstan. The next 
 week the ceremony was completed with great 
 solemnity at the royal to^vn of Wedmor, and 
 after spending twelve days as the guest of Al- 
 fred, Guthrun departed (a.d. 878), loaded with 
 jiresents, which the monk Asser says were 7naff- 
 nificcnt. Whatever were his inward convictions, 
 or the ellicacy and sincerity of his conversion, 
 the Danish prince was certainly captivated by 
 the merits of his victor, and ever after continued 
 the faithful friend and ally (if not vassal) of Al- 
 fred The subjects under his rule in the Dane- 
 lagh, or " Dane-law," assumed habits of industry 
 and tranquillity, and gradually adopted the man- 
 ners and customs of more civilized life. By 
 mutual agreement, the laws of the Danes were 
 assimilated to those of the Saxons; but the for- 
 mer long retained many of their old Scandina- 
 vian usages. All sales, ■whether of men, horses, 
 or oxen, were deehu'ed illegal, unless the pur- 
 chaser produced the voucher of the seller. This 
 
 he would never have sheathed the e.vtenuinating s« ord till every 
 Northman or ever)* Saxon had perished. Common mijids and 
 vehement feelings would have chosen this alternative. But 
 Alfred had the wisdom to rtisceni and the vhtuo to believe, that 
 the existence of his enemies was not incompatible with his ooti 
 honour and his pcojile's safety. He felt that the addition of 
 Slercia w.ns an increase of power, which placed him above any 
 perilous assaiUt, and he was contented to be seciu'e." — Sh. Tur- 
 ner, lliil. of Anfjlo-Saxons, vol. ii. p. 209. 
 
 3 Slercia fell completely into the ixiwer of Alfred after the de- 
 feat of Guthnm. He abolislied the regal honours of tliat state, 
 and uitrustcd the militaiy command of it to Ethelred, who w:us 
 afterwards married to one of his daughters. Ethelied seems to 
 have been merely styled the " Eoldernian of Mercia. '
 
 A.D. 825-001.] 
 
 SAXON TERIOD. 
 
 8!> 
 
 ^va3 to put a stop ou both sule3 to tlit> lifting of 
 cattle, and the carrying oil" of the jjcasantry as 
 slaves. Both kings engaged to promote the 
 Christian religion, and to jninisli apostasy. We 
 ai"e not well uiformed as to the progress the faith 
 made among his subjects ou Guthrun's conver- 
 sion; but it was probably rajiid, though imjier- 
 fect, and accompanied with a lingering aftection 
 for the divinities of the Scandinavian mythology'. 
 
 It was about this time, oi> very soon after 
 Alfred's breaking up from his retreat at Athcl- 
 ney, and gaining the victory of Ethandune, that, 
 moved by the love of humane letters which dis- 
 tinguished him all his life, lie invited Asser, 
 esteemed the most learned man then in the is- 
 land, to his court or camp, in order that he 
 might profit by his instructive convei-s.ation. The 
 monk of St. David's, who was not a Saxon, but 
 descended from a Welsh family, obeyed the sum- 
 mons, and, according to his own account, he was 
 introduced to the king at Dene, in Wiltshire, by 
 the thanes who had been sent to fetch him. A 
 familiar intercourse followed a most courteous 
 reception, and then the king invited the monk 
 to live constantly aliout his person. The vows 
 of Asser, and his attachment to his monastery, 
 where he had been nurtm-ed and instructed, in- 
 terfered with this arrangement; but, after some 
 delays, it was agreed he should pass half his 
 time in his monastery, and the rest of the year 
 at court. Returning, at length, to Alfred, he 
 found him at a place called Leonaford. lie re- 
 mained eight months constantly with him, con- 
 versing and reading with him all such books as 
 the king possessed. On the Christmas Eve fol- 
 lowing, Alfred, in token of his high regard, gave 
 the monk an abbey in Wiltshire, supposed to be 
 at Amesbur}', and another alibey at Banwell, in 
 Somersetshire, together with a rich silk pall, and 
 as much incense as a strong man could carry on 
 his shoulders, assm'ing him, at the same time, that 
 he considered these as small things for a man of 
 so much merit, and that hereafter he should have 
 gi'eater. Asser w;is subsequently pi-omoted to 
 the bishopric of Sherbm-n, and thenceforward 
 remained constantly with the king, enjoying his 
 entire confidence and affection, and sharing in 
 all his joys and sorrows. This rare friendship 
 between a sovereign and subject continued un- 
 broken till death ; and when the grave closed 
 over the great Alfred, the honourable testimony 
 was read in his will, that Asser was a person in 
 whom he had full confidence. To this singular 
 connection Alfred and his subjects were, no 
 doubt, indebted for some improvements in the 
 royal mind, which wi-ought good alike for the 
 king and for the people; and wc, at the distance 
 of nearly lOUCl years, owe to it .an endearing record 
 of that monarch's personal character and habits. 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 ]!ut some time had yet to pa.'is ere Alfred 
 could give himself up to quiet enjoyments, to 
 law-making, and the intellectual improvement 
 of his people. Though Guthrun kept his con- 
 tract, hosts of marauding Danes, who were not 
 bound by it, continued to cross over from the 
 (.tontinent, and infest the shores and rivers of oui- 
 island. In 879, the very year after Guthrun'.s 
 treaty and baptism, a gi-eat army of i)ag;uis came 
 from beyond the sea, imd wintered at FuUanham, 
 or Fulham, hard by the river Thames. From 
 Fulham, this host proceeded to Ghent, in the 
 Low Countries. At this period the Northmen 
 .alternated their attacks on England, and then- 
 attacks on Holland, Belgium, and East France, 
 in a curious manner, the expedition beginning 
 ou one side of the British Channel and German 
 Ocean, frequently ending on the other side. The 
 rule of their conduct, however, seems to have 
 been this — to persevere only against the weakest 
 enemy. Thus, when they found France strong, 
 they tried England; and when they found the 
 force of England consolidated under Alfred, they 
 turned off in the direction of France, or the 
 neighbouring shores of the Continent. It is a 
 melancholy fact, that England then benefited by 
 the calamities of her neighbours. In the year 
 886, while the armies of the Northmen were 
 fully employed in besieging or blockading the 
 city of Paris, Alfred took that favourable op]ior- 
 tunity to rebuild and fortify the city of Loudon. 
 Amongst other cities, we are told, it had been 
 destroyed by fire, and the people killed; but he 
 made it habitable again, and committed it to the 
 care and custody of his son-in-law, Ethelred, Earl 
 or Eolderman of the Mercians, to whom, before, 
 he had given his daughter Ethellleda. Each of 
 the six years immediately preceding the rebuild- 
 ing of London, he was engaged in hostilities; but 
 he was generally fortunate by sea as well as by 
 land, for he had increased his navy, and the care 
 due to that truly national service. In the year 
 882 his fleet, still oflBcered by Frieslanders, took 
 four, and, three years after (in one fight), sixteen 
 of the enemy's ships. In the latter year (885) 
 he gained a decisive victory over a Danish host 
 that had ascended the Medway, and were be- 
 sieging Rochester, having built them a strong 
 casLle before the gates of that city. By suddenly 
 falling on them, he took their tower with little 
 loss, seized ;dl the horses they had brought with 
 them from France, recovered the greater ]iart of 
 their captives, and drove them to their shi])s, 
 with which they returned to France in the ut- 
 most distress. 
 
 Alfred wa-s now allowed some breathing time, 
 
 which he wisely employed in strengthening his 
 
 kingdom, and bettering tlie condition of his 
 
 ]jpo]ile. Instead, however, of tracing these tilings 
 
 12
 
 90 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil. AND Military. 
 
 slrictl}' ill their clironolosical order, it will aJJ 
 to the perspicuity of the narrative, if we follow at 
 once the warlike events of his reign to their close. 
 The siege of Pai'is, to which we have alluded, 
 and which began in 886, emploj'ed the Danes or 
 Northmen two whole years. Shortly after the 
 heathens burst into the country now called Flan- 
 ders, which was then a dependency of the Frank- 
 ish or French kings, and were employed there for 
 some time in a difficult and extensive warfare. 
 A hoiTid famine ensiied in those parts of the Con- 
 tinent, and made the hungry wolves look else- 
 where for sustenance and prey. England had 
 now revived, by a happy repose of seven years; 
 her corn-fields had borne their plentiful crops; 
 her pastures, no longer swept by the tempests of 
 war, were well sprinkled with flocks and herds; 
 and those good fatted beeves, which were always 
 dear to the capacious stomachs of the Northmen, 
 made the island a very land of promise to the 
 imagination of the famished. It is ti-ue that of 
 late years they had found those treasures were 
 well defended, and that nothing was to be got 
 under Alfred's present government without hard 
 blows, and a desperate contest, at least doubtful 
 in its issue. But hunger impelled them forward ; 
 they were a larger body than had ever made the 
 attack at once; they were united under the com- 
 mand of a chief equal or superior in fame and 
 military talent to any that had preceded him; 
 and therefore the Danes, in the year 89.3, once 
 more tm-ued the prows of their vessels toward 
 England. It was indeed a formidable fleet. As 
 the men of Kent gazed seaward from their cliffs 
 and downs, they saw the horizon darkened by it; 
 as the winds and waves wafted it forward, they 
 counted 250 several ships; and every ship was 
 full of warriors and horses brought from Flan- 
 ders and France, for the immediate mounting of 
 them as a rapid, predatory cavalry. The in- 
 vadei-3 landed near Eomney Marsh, at the east- 
 em termination of the great wood or weald of 
 Anderida (ah-eady mentioned in connection with 
 an invasion of the Saxons), and at the mouth of 
 a river, now dry, called Limine. They towed 
 their ships four miles up the river towards the 
 weald, and there ma.stered a fortress the peasants 
 of the country were raising in the fens. They 
 then proceeded to Apuldre, or Appledore, at 
 which point they made a strongly fortiljed camp, 
 whence they ravaged the adjacent country for 
 many miles. Nearly simultaneously with these 
 movements, the famed Haesten or Hasting, the 
 skilful commander-in-chief of the entire expedi- 
 tion, entered the Thames with another division 
 of eighty shiijs, landed at and took Milton, near 
 Sittingbourne, and there threw up prodigiously 
 strong iutrenchments. Theu" past reverses had 
 made them extremely cautioui>; and for nearly a 
 
 whole year, the Danes in either camp did little 
 else than fortify their positions, and scorn' the 
 country in foraging parties. Other piratical 
 squadrons, however, kept hoveruig round our 
 coasts, to distract attention and create alarm at 
 many points at one and the same time. The 
 honourable and trustworthy Guthrun had now 
 been dead three yeaa-s; and to complete the most 
 critical position of Alfred, the Danes settled in 
 the Danelagh, even from the Tweed to the Thames, 
 violated their oaths, took up arms against him, 
 and joined their marauding brethren under Has- 
 ting. It was in this campaign, or rather this 
 succession of campaigns, which lasted altogether 
 three yeare, that the militaiy genius of the Anglo- 
 Saxon monarch shone with its gi-eatest lustre, 
 and was brought into full play liy the ability, 
 the wonderful and eccentric rapidity, and the 
 gi'eat resources of his opponent Hasting. To 
 follow their operations the reader must place the 
 map of England before him, for they ran over 
 half of the island, and shifted the scene of war 
 with almost as much rapidity as that with which 
 the decorations of a theatre are changed. 
 
 The first gi-eat difficulty Alfred had to encoun- 
 ter was in collecting and bringing up sufficient 
 forces to one point, and then in keeping them in 
 adequate number in the field ; for the Saxon 
 "fyrd," or levee en masse, were only bound by 
 law to serve for a certain time (probably forty 
 days), and it was indispensable to jirovide for the 
 safety of the towns, almost evei-ywhere tlu-eat- 
 ened, and to leave men sufficient for the culti- 
 vation of the country. Alfred overcame this 
 difficulty by dividing his ai'my, or militia, into 
 two bodies; of these he called one to the field, 
 while the men composing the other were left at 
 home. After a reasonable length of ser\'ice those 
 in the field returned to their homes, and those 
 left at home took their places in the field. The 
 spectacle of this large and permanent amiy, 
 to which they had been wholly unaccustomed, 
 struck Hasting and his confederates with asto- 
 nishment and dismay. Nor did the position the 
 English king took up with it give them much 
 ground for comfort. Advancing into Kent, he 
 threw himself between Hasting and the other 
 division of the Danes: a forest on one side, and 
 swamps and deep watei-s on the other, protected 
 his flanks, and he made the front and rear of his 
 position so strong that the Danes dared not look 
 at them. He thus kept asunder the two armies 
 of the Northmen, watching the motions of both, 
 being always ready to attack either, should it 
 quit its intrenchments; and so active were the 
 patrols and troops he threw out in small bodies, 
 and so good the spirit of the villagers and town- 
 folk, cheered by the presence and wise disposi- 
 tions of the sovereign, that in a short time not
 
 A.D. 825-001.] 
 
 SAXON PEraOD. 
 
 91 
 
 a sini,'le foraging )3arty could issue from the 
 Danish camp without almost certain destruction. 
 Worn out iu body and sph-it, the Northmen re- 
 solved to breali up from their camps, and, to 
 deceive the king as to tlieir intentions, they sent 
 submissive messages and hostages, and promised 
 to leave the kingdom. Hasting took to his shiji- 
 ping, and actually made sail, as if to leave the 
 well-defended island; but while the eyes of the 
 Saxons were fixed on his departure, the other 
 division, in Alfred's rear, rushed suddenly from 
 their intrenchments into the intei'ior of the coun- 
 try, in order to seek a ford across the TJiames, 
 by which they hoped to be enabled to get into 
 Essex, where the rebel Danes that had been 
 ruled by Guthrun would give them a friendly 
 reception, and where they knew they shoidd 
 meet Hasting and his di\"ision, who, instead of 
 putting to sea, merely crossed the Thames, and 
 took up a strong position at Benfleet, on the 
 Essex coast. Alfred had not ships to pm-sue 
 
 those who moved by wat^er; but tlioso who 
 marched by land he followed up closely, anil 
 brought them to action on the right bank of the 
 Thames, near Farnham, in S\irrey. The Danes 
 were thoroughly defeated. Those who escaped 
 the sword and drowning marched along the left 
 bank of the Thames, through Middlesex, into 
 Essex; but being hotly pursued by Alfred, tliej 
 were driven right through Essex, and across the 
 river Coin, when they found a strong place of 
 refuge in the Isle of Mei-scy. Here, however, 
 they were closely blockaded, and soon obliged to 
 sue for peace, jjromising hostages, as usual, and 
 an immediate depai-ture from England. Alfred 
 would have had this enemy in his hand through 
 sheer starvation, but the genius of Hasting, and 
 the defection of the Northmen of the Danelagh, 
 called him to a distant jiart of the island. Two 
 fleets, one of 100 sail, the second of forty, and 
 both iu good part manned by the Danes who had 
 been so long, and for the last fifteen years so 
 
 sketch to ninsirait 
 
 OUITAIGSS OF B3>7. ^"^^^^"^ f^^ 
 
 peacefully settled in England, set sail to attack 
 in two points, and make a formidable diversion. 
 The fii-st of these, which had pi-obably been 
 equipped in Norfolk' and Suffolk, doubled the 
 North Foreland, ran down the southern coast as 
 far as Devonshire, and laid siege to Exeter, the 
 smaller fleet, which had been fitted out in North- 
 umbria, and pi'obably sailed from the mouth of 
 the Tyne, took the passage round Scotland, ran 
 
 ' Tli.at Noi-folk w.as now peopled by the Norm.%n9, under the 
 name of Danes, may be inferred from its having the same repu- 
 tation for producing litigants and lawyers that Nonuaiidy has in 
 France, although Camden, oddly enough, attributes tliis to the 
 goodness of the soil, which he admits to bo very v.irious. " Tlie 
 soil," says he, "is difierent, according to the several qxiai-ters ; 
 in some places it is fat, luscious, and moist ; in others poor, lean, 
 and sandy ; and in others, clayey and chalky. But (to follow 
 the directions of VarroJ the goodness of the soil may be gathered 
 from hence, that the inhabitants are of a bright, clear com- 
 plexion : not to mention their slwrpness of wit, and singular 
 sa^'acity in the study of our common law, so that it ia at present, 
 
 down all the western coast, from Cape Wrath to 
 the Bristol Channel, and, ascending that arm of 
 the sea, beleaguered a fortified town to the north 
 of the Severn. Though Alfred had established 
 friendly relations with the people of the west of 
 England, who seem on many occasions to have 
 served him with as much ardour as his Saxon 
 svibjects, he still felt that Devonshire was a vul- 
 nerable pai-t. Leaving, therefore, a portion of his 
 
 and always has been reputed, the most fruitfid nursery of law- 
 yers. But oven among the common people you may meet with 
 many who, as one expresses it, if no quarrel oifcrs, aro able to 
 pick one out of the quirks and niceties of tho law." *' .\nd," 
 adds Bishop Gibson, " for tho preventing of the great and fre- 
 quent contentions that might ensue thereupon, and tho in- 
 conveniences of too many attorneys, a special statute was 
 made, as long since as tho time of King Henry VI., to restrain 
 the number of attorneys in Norfolk, SulTolk, and Norwich." 
 Thus Norfolk and Noi-mandy add their testimony to tho 
 force of the expression of a nnau's "bouig too far liOrtA to bo 
 ch'^a.ed."
 
 92 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Mii-it^ht. 
 
 army on the confines of Essex, he mounted all 
 the rest on horses, ami flew to Exeter. Victory 
 followed him to the west; he obliged the Danes 
 to raise the siege of Exeter; he beat them back 
 to their ships with gi'eat loss, and soon after the 
 minor expedition was driven from the Severn. 
 The blockade of the Danes in the Isle of Mersey 
 does not appear to have been well conducted 
 during his absence, and yet that interval was not 
 devoid of great successes: for, in the meantime, 
 Ethelred, Eolderman of the Mercians, and Alfred's 
 son-in-law, with the citizens of London and others, 
 went down to the fortified post at Benfleet, in 
 Essex, laid siege to it, broke into it, and despoiled 
 it of great quantities of gold, silver, horses, and 
 gai'ments; taking away captive also the wife of 
 Hasting and his two sons, w-ho were brought to 
 London, and presented to the king on his return. 
 Some of his followers urged him to put these 
 captives to death — others to detain them in 
 prison as a check upon Hasting ; but Alfred, 
 with a generosity which was never properly ap- 
 preciated by the savage Dane, caused them im- 
 mediately to be restored to his enemy, and sent 
 many presents of value with them. By this time 
 the untiring Hasting had thrown up another 
 formidable intrenchmeut at South Showbury, 
 in Essex, when he was soon joined by numbers 
 from Norfolk and Suffolk, from Northumbria, 
 from all parts of the Danelagh, and by fresh ad- 
 venturers from beyond sea. Thus reinforced, 
 he sailed boldly up the Thames, and thence 
 spread the mass of his forces into the heart of 
 the kingdom, while the rest returned with their 
 vessels and the spoil they had so far made to the 
 intrenched camp at South Showbury. From the 
 Thames, Hasting marched to the Severn, and 
 fortified himself at Buttington. But here he was 
 smTOunded by the Saxons and the men of North 
 Wales, who now cordially acted with them; ami 
 in brief time Alfred, with Ethelred and two 
 other eoldermen, cut off all his supplies, and 
 blockaded him in his camp. After some weeks, 
 when the Danes had eaten up nearly all theii- 
 horses, and famine was staring them in the face, 
 Hasting rushed from his intrenchments. Avoid- 
 ing the Welsh forces, he concentrated his attack 
 upon the Saxons, who formed the blockade to the 
 east of his position. The conflict was ten-ific; 
 several hundreds (some of the chroniclers say 
 thousands) of the Danes were slain in their at- 
 tempt to break through Alfred's lines ; many 
 were thrown into the Severn and drowned; but 
 the rest, headed by Hasting, effected their escape, 
 and, mai'ching across the island, reached their 
 intrenchment and their ships on the Essex coast. 
 Alfred lost many of his nobles, and must have 
 been otherwise much crippled, for he did not 
 molest Hasting, who could have h.ad hai-dly any 
 
 horse in any part of his retreat. Most of the 
 Saxons who fought at Buttington were raw levies, 
 and hastily got together. When Hpvsting next 
 showed front it was in the neighbourhood of 
 North Wales, between the rivers Dee and Mer- 
 sey. During the winter that followed his dis- 
 asters on the SeveiTi, he had been again reinforced 
 by the men of the Danelagh, and at early spring 
 he set forth with his usual ra]>idity, and marched 
 through the midland counties. Alfred was not 
 far behind him, Init could not overtake him until 
 he had seized Chester, which was then almost 
 uninhabited, and secured himself there. This 
 town had been veiy strongly fortified by the 
 Romans, and many of the works of those con- 
 querors still remaining,' no doubt gave strength 
 to Hasting's position, which was deemed too for- 
 midable for attack. But the Saxon troops pressed 
 him on the land si<le, and a squadron of Alfred's 
 ships, which had put to sea, ascended the Mersey 
 and the river Wirall, and prevented his receiving 
 succour in that du-ection. Dreading that Chester 
 might become a second Buttington, the Danes 
 burst away into North Wales. After ravaging 
 part of that country, they would have gone off in 
 the direction of the Severn and the Avon, but 
 they were met and tirrned by a fonniilable royal 
 army, upon which they retraced their steps, and 
 finally maa-ched off to the north-east. They tra- 
 versed Northumbria, Lincolnshii'e, Norfolk, Suf- 
 folk — neai-ly the whole length of the Daaelagh — 
 where they were among fiiends and allies, and by 
 that circuitous route at length regained then- forti- 
 fied post at South Showbury, in Essex, where they 
 wintered and recruited their strength as usual. 
 
 Early next spring the persevering Hasting 
 sailed to the mouth of the Lea, ascended that 
 river with his ships, and at or near Ware,- about 
 twenty miles above London, erected a new for- 
 tress on the Lea. On the approach of summer, 
 the biu-gesses of London, with many of their 
 neighbours, attacked the stronghold on the Lea, 
 but were repidsed with great loss. As London 
 was now more closely pressed than ever, Alfred 
 foimd it necessary to encamp his army round 
 about the city until the citizens got in their har- 
 vest. He then pushed a strong reconnoissance 
 to the Lea, which (far deeper and broader than 
 now) was covered by theii- shijis, and afterwards 
 surveyed, at great personal risk, the new forti- 
 fied camp of the Danes. His active ingenious 
 mind forthwith conceived a plan, which he con- 
 fidently hojied would end in their inevitable de- 
 struction. Bringing up his army, he raised two 
 
 ' Some noble .ircheU gateways, built by the Romans, were 
 standing almost entire until a recent i»crio<I, when they were 
 laid low by a barbarous decree of the Chester corporation. 
 
 2 Some topographci-s contend that this fortified camp was net 
 at Ware, but at IlertforJ.
 
 A.D. 825—901.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 93 
 
 fortresses, one ou either side the Lea, somewhat 
 below the Dajiish station, and then he dug three 
 deep channels from the Lea to the Thames, in 
 order to lower the level of the tributaiy stream. 
 So much water was thiis drawn off, that " where 
 a sliii>," says an old writer, "might sail in time 
 afore passed, then a little boat might scarcely 
 row;" — aiid the whole fleet of Hasting wa.s left 
 agroinid, and rendered useless. But yet again 
 did that remarkalile chieftain break through the 
 toils sjiread for him, to renew the war in a dis- 
 tant part of the island. Abandoning the ships 
 where they were, and putting, as they had been 
 accustomed to do, their wives, their children, 
 and their booty under the protection of their 
 frieuds in the Danelagh, the followera of Hasting 
 liroke from their intrenchments by night, and 
 hardly rested till they had traversed the whole 
 of that wide tract of coimtry which sepiirates 
 the Lea from the Severn. Mai-ching for some 
 distance along the left bank of the Severn, they 
 took post close on the river at Quatbridge, which 
 is supposed to be Quatford, near Bridgenorth, in 
 Shropshii-e. Wlien Alfred came up with them 
 there, he found them already strongly fortified. 
 
 On our fii-st introducing the Northmen, we 
 mentioned their skill in choosing and strengthen- 
 ing military positions; and the course of our nar- 
 rative will have made their skill and speed in 
 these matters evident, especially in the campaigns 
 they performed under Hasting, who had many of 
 the qualities that constitute a great general. Al- 
 fred was compeUed to respect the intrendiments 
 at Quatbi-idge, and to leave the Danes there un- 
 disturbed during the winter. In the meantime 
 the citizens of London seized Hastings fleet, 
 grounded in the Lea. Some ships they burned 
 and destroyed, but others they were enabled to 
 get afloat and conduct to London, where they 
 were received with exceeding gi-eat joy. 
 
 For full three years this Scandinavian Haniii- 
 bal had maintained a war in the country of the 
 enemy ; but now, watched on eveiy side, worn 
 out by constant losses, and probably in good part 
 forsaken as an unlucky leader, both by his bre- 
 thren settled in the Danelagh and by those on 
 the Continent, his spirit began to break, and he 
 prepared to take a reluctant and indignant fare- 
 well of England. In the following spring of 897, 
 by which time dissensions had broken out among 
 their leaders, the Danes tumultuously abandoned 
 their camp at Quatbridge, and utterly disljaudcd 
 their ai'my soon after, fleeing in small and sepa- 
 rate parties, in various directions. Some sought 
 shelter among their brethren of the Danelagh, 
 either in Northumbria, or Norfolk and Suffolk : 
 some built vessels, and sailed for the Scheldt and 
 the mouth of the Rhine ; while others, adhering 
 to Hasting in his eril fortune, waited until lu 
 
 was ready to pass into France. A small fleet, 
 bearing his drooping raven, was hastily ecpiipped 
 on our eastern coast, and the humbled chieftain, 
 according to Assei-, crossed the Channel "sine 
 lucro et sine honored without profit or honour. 
 It appeai-s that he ascended the Seine, and soon 
 after obtained a settlement on tlie banks of that 
 river (pi-obably in Normandy) from tlie weak 
 King of the [•''rench. 
 
 A few desultory attacks made by sea, and by 
 the men of the Danelagh, almost immediately 
 after Ilasting's deparhire, only tended to show 
 the naval superiority Alfred was attaining, and 
 to improve the Anglo-Sa-xons in maritime tactics. 
 A squadron of Northuml)rian pirates cniiseJ off 
 the southern coasts, with their old objects in view. 
 It was met and defeated on several occasions by 
 the improved ships of the king. Alfred, who had 
 some mechanical skill himself, had caused vessels 
 to be built, far exceeding those of his enemies 
 in length of keel, height of boai-d, swiftness, and 
 steadiness ; some of these carried sixty oare or 
 sweepers, to be used, as in the Roman galleys, 
 when the wind failed; and others can-ied even 
 more than sixty. They differed in the fonn of 
 the hull, and probably in their rigging, from the 
 other vessels used in the North Sea. Hitherto 
 the Danish and Friesland builds seem to have 
 been considered as the best models; but these 
 ships, which were found peculi;u-ly well adajited 
 to the service for which he intended them, were 
 constructed after a plan of Alfred's own inven- 
 tion. At the end of his reign they considerably 
 exceeded the number of 100 sail ; they were di- 
 vided into squadrons, and stationed at different 
 ports round the island, while some of them were 
 kept constantly cruising between England and 
 the main. Although he abandoned their system 
 of ship-building, Alfred retained many Fries- 
 landers in his service, for they were more cxpeit 
 seamen than his subjects, who still required in- 
 struction. After an ob.stinate engagement near 
 the Isle of Wight, two Danish ships, which had 
 been much injured in the fight, were cast ashore 
 and taken. When the crews were carried to the 
 king at Winchester, he ordered them all to be 
 hanged. This severity, so much at v;u-iauce with 
 Alfied's usual humanity, has caused some regi-et 
 and confusion to historians. One writer says 
 that the Danes do not seem to have violated the 
 law of nations, as such law was then undcretood, 
 and that, therefore, Alfred's execution of them 
 was inexcusable. Another writer is of opinion 
 that Alfred always, :md properly, drew .-v distinc- 
 tion between pirates and warrioi-s. This line 
 would be most difficult to draw, when all were 
 robbers and pirates alike ; but the real rule of 
 Alfred's conduct seems to have been this — to dis- 
 tinguish between such Danes as attacked him
 
 94 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militarit. 
 
 from abroad, and such Danes as attacked Liui 
 from tlie Danelagh at home. On the sei-vices and 
 gratitude of the former he had no chum, bnt the 
 men of Northumbria, Norfolk, and Sussex had, 
 through their chiefs and princes, sworn allegiance 
 to him, had received benefits from him, and stood 
 bound to the protection of his states, which they 
 were ravaging. Fi'om the situation they occupied 
 they could constantly trouble his tnmquiUity, 
 and in regai'd to them he may have been led to 
 con^der, after the expei'ience he had had of their 
 bad fadth, that measxu-es of extreme severity were 
 allowable and indispensable. The two ships cap- 
 tured at the Isle of Wight came from Northum- 
 bria, and the twenty ships taken during the thi-ee 
 remaining years of his life, and of which the 
 crews were slain or hanged on the gallows, came 
 from the same coimtry, and the other English 
 lands included in the Danelagh. 
 
 The excm-sions of Hasting were accompanied 
 with other calamities, " so that," to use the words 
 of the chronicler Fabian, "this land, for three 
 yeai'S, was vexed with three manner of sorrows 
 — with war of the Danes, pestilence of men, and 
 murrain of beasts." The horrors of famine, to 
 escajje which the Danes had come to England, 
 are not alluded to, but the pestilence, which is 
 mentioned by all the chi-oniclers, carried ofi' vast 
 numbei's. It seems to have continued some time 
 after Easting's departm-e, and then, on its cessa- 
 tion, Alfred enjoyed as much comfort as his ra- 
 pidly declining health would permit. 
 
 Before we descend to the far inferior reigns of 
 his successors, we must select from his biogi'aphers 
 a few personal details, and cull a few of those 
 flowers which adorned the great Alfred's reign, 
 and which still give it a beauty and an interest 
 we look for in vain elsewhere during those baj-- 
 biirous ages. 
 
 Historians have generally attached great con- 
 sequences to his travels on the Continent thi'ough 
 France and Italy; and, mere child as he was, it is 
 not improbable that Alfred's mind received im- 
 pressions in those countries that were afterwards 
 of benefit to himself and his kingdom. On the 
 first of these journeys to Eome, Alfred was only 
 in his fifth year, but on the second, when he was 
 accompanied by his father, and anointed by the 
 pope, he was eight years old. On this last occa- 
 sion he staid neaily a year at Eome, and return- 
 ing thence tlu-ough France, he resided some time 
 at Paris. The Eternal City, though despoiled by 
 the barbailans, and not yet enriched with the 
 works of modern ai't, must have retained much of 
 its ancient splendom- ; the Coliseum, and many 
 other edifices that remain, ai-e known to have 
 been much more perfect m the days of Alfred 
 than they are now ; the proud Cajjitol was com- 
 p.iratively entire, and in various p.ai-ts of the city, 
 
 where we now trace little but foundations of 
 walls and scattered fragments, there then stood 
 lofty and elegant buildings. Alfred, who at homo 
 had lived in wooden houses, and been accustomed 
 to see mud huts with thatched roofs, could hardly 
 fail of being struck with the superior si>leudom- 
 of Eome. The papal com-t, though as yet modest 
 and unassuming, was regulated with some taste 
 and gi-eat order, while the other court at which he 
 resided (the French) was more splendid than any 
 in Eiu-ope, with the exception of Constantinople. 
 But whatever efl'ect these scenes may have had 
 in enlai'glng the mind of Alfred, it should appear 
 he had not yet learned to read — an accomplish- 
 ment, by the way, not then very common, even 
 among princes and nobles of a more advanced 
 age. He, however, delighted in listening to the 
 Anglo-Saxon ballads and songs, which were con- 
 stantly recited by the minstrels and gleemen at- 
 tached to his father's court. From frequent vocal 
 repetition, to which he listened day and night,' 
 he leai-ned them by lieai-t ; and the taste he thus 
 acquired for poetry lasted him, through many 
 cares and sorrows, to the last day of his life. The 
 stoiy told by Asser is well known. One day liLs 
 mother, Osburgha, was sitting, sun-ounded by her 
 childi'en, with a book of Saxon poetry in her 
 hands. The precious MS. was gilded or illu- 
 minated, and the contents were pi-obably new, 
 and much to the taste of the boys. " I will give 
 it," said she, " to him among you who shall first 
 learn to read it." Alfred, the youngest of them 
 all, ran to a teacher, and studying earnestly, soon 
 learned to read Anglo-Saxon, and won the book. 
 But, with the excei^tion of popular poetiy, Anglo- 
 Saxon was the key to only a small portion of the 
 literatm-e or knowledge of the times; and as his 
 cm'iosity and intellect increased, it became ne- 
 cessary for him to learn Latin. At a subsequent 
 period of his life Alfred possessed a knowledge 
 of that learned language, which was altogether 
 extraordinary for a prince of the ninth centmy. 
 It is not very clear when he obtained this degree 
 of knowledge, but after teaching himself by trans- 
 lating, he was probably greatly improved in his 
 matm-e manhood, when the monk Asser, Johan- 
 nes Ei'igena, Grimbald, and other leai-ned men, 
 settled at liis court. Alfred was accustomed to 
 say that he regretted the neglected education of 
 his youth, the entire want of proper teachers, and 
 also the difiiculties that then biu-red his progi-ess 
 to intellectual acquii-ements, much more than all 
 the hardships, and sorrows, and crosses that befell 
 him afterwai-ds. As one of his great impediments 
 had been the Latin language, which, even with 
 our improved system of tuition, and with all om- 
 facilities and advantages, is not mastered without 
 
 • Asstr, 16.
 
 AD. 825—901.] 
 
 SAXON TERIOD. 
 
 9o 
 
 long and difficult study, lie earnestly recom- 
 mended from the throne, in a circul.ir letter ad- 
 di'essed to the bishop.f, that thenceforward " all 
 good and useful books be translated into the lan- 
 guage which we all understand, so that all the 
 youths of England, but more especially those who 
 are of gentle kind, and in easy circumstances, 
 may be grounded in letters, for they cannot pro- 
 fit in any pursuit luitil they are well aijle to read 
 English." Alfreds own literary works were 
 chiefly translations from the Latin into Anglo- 
 Saxon, the spoken language of his pcojile. It 
 excites surprise how he could find time for these 
 laudable occujiations ; but he was steady and 
 persevering, regulaj- in his habits, wdieu not kept 
 in the field by the Danes, and a great economist 
 of his time. Eight hoiu'S of each day he gave to 
 sleep, to his meals, and exercise ; eight were ab- 
 sorbed by the affairs of government ; and eight 
 were devoted to study and devotion. Clocks, 
 clepsydras, and the other ingenious instruments 
 for measuring time were then unknown in Eng- 
 land. Alfred wa.s, no doubt, acquainted with 
 the sun-dial, which was in common use in Ital}- 
 and parts of France ; but this index is of no use 
 in the hoiu's of the night, and would frequently 
 be equally unserviceable during om' foggy sunless 
 days. He, therefore, marked his time by the con- 
 stant bm'ning of wax torches or candles, which 
 were made precisely of the same weight and size, 
 and notched inthe stem at regulardistances. These 
 caudles were twelve inches long ; six of them, or 
 seventy-two inches of wax, were consmned in 
 twenty-four hours, or 1440 minutes ; and thus, 
 supposing the notches at intervals of an inch, one 
 inch would mark the lapse of twenty minutes. 
 
 
 Saxon I.ANTE8N.--Fiom Stnitt s Clironicle of England. 
 
 It ai^pears that these time-candles were jdaced 
 under the special charge of his mass -priests or 
 chaiilains. But it was soon discovered that some- 
 times the wind, rushing in through the windows 
 
 and doovs, and l/ie mimcrous c/iuds in the walls 0/ 
 the jialace, consumed the wax in a rapid and ir- 
 regular manner. Hence Asser makes the great 
 Alfred the inventor of horn lanterns ! He says 
 the king went skilfully and wisely to work ; and 
 having found out that white horn could be ren- 
 dered transparent likeglas.^, ho, wi(h that material, 
 and with [)ieces of wood, admirably (mirabiliter) 
 made a case for his candle, which kept it from 
 wasting and llaring. 
 
 In his youth Alfreil was passionately fond of 
 field sports, and was famed as being " excellent 
 cunning in all hunting;" but after his retreat 
 at Athelney he indulged this taste with becom- 
 ing moderation; and during tlie latter years of 
 his reign he seems to have ridden merely upon 
 business, or for the sake of his health. He then 
 considered every moment of value, as he could 
 devote it to lofty and improving purposes. 
 
 We have already mentioned the care and in- 
 genuity he em])loyed in creating a ua\'j-. Sea 
 affairs, geogi-a]ihy, and the discovery of unknown 
 countries, or rather the descriptions of countries 
 then little known, obtained by means of bold 
 navigatoi-s, occupied much of his time, and formed 
 one of his favourite subjects for writing. He 
 endeavoured, by liberality and kindness, to at- 
 tract to England all such foreigners as could 
 give good information on these subjects, or wei-e 
 otherwise qualified to illuminate the national 
 ignorance. From Audber, or Ohthere, who had 
 coasted the continent of Europe from the Baltic 
 to the North Cape, he obtained much informa- 
 tion ; from Wulfstan, who appears to have been 
 one of his subjects, and who undertook a voyage 
 round the Baltic, he gathered many particidai-s 
 concerning the diverse coiintries situated on that 
 sea ; and from other voyagers and travellere wlioni 
 he sent out expressly himself, he obtained a de- 
 scription of Bulgaria, Sclavonia, Bohemia, and 
 Germany. All this information he committed to 
 wi-iting in the plain mother tongue, and with 
 the noble design of impartiug it to his people. 
 Having learned that there were colonies of Chris- 
 tian Sji'ians settled on the coasts of Malaliar and 
 Coromandel, he sent out Swithelm, Bishop of 
 Sherburn, to India — a tremendous jom-ney in 
 those days. The stout-hearted ecclesiastic, how- 
 ever, making what is now called the overlaiul 
 journej', went and returned in safety, bringing 
 back with him [jresents of gems and Indian spices. 
 Hereby was Alfred's fame increased, and the name 
 and existence of England probably heard of for 
 the first time in that remote country, of which, 
 nine centimes after, she w;vs to become the al- 
 most absolute mistress.' 
 
 ' i'ui' fui-thur details relating to tlic commci*co of this and Eub- 
 .'^eqiient iieriods, wo rofor the rc.idor to Ihslorij of Brilish Com- 
 iiicixe from thr Earliest Timtt, by Gen. I., Craik, M.A.
 
 96 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militakt. 
 
 "While liis active miud, whicli anticipated the 
 national s|iii'it of mucli later times, was thus en- 
 gaged in drawing knowledge from the distant 
 comei-s of the earth, he did not neglect home 
 affairs. He taught the people how to build bet> 
 ter houses; he laboured to increase their comforts; 
 he established schools ; he founded or rebuilt 
 many towns ; and having learned the importance 
 of fortifications during his wars with the Danes, 
 lie fortified them all as well as he could. He 
 caused a survey to be made of the coast and na- 
 vigable rivere, and ordered castles to be erected 
 at those places which were most accessible to the 
 landing of the enemy. Fifty sti-ong towers and 
 castles rose in different parts of the country, but 
 the number would have been threefold had Al- 
 fred not been thwarted by the indolence, igno- 
 rance, and carelessness of his nobles aud people. 
 He revised the laws of the Anglo-Saxons, being 
 aided and sanctioned therein by his witenagemot 
 or parliament; and he established so excellent a 
 system of police, that towards the end of his 
 reign it was generally asserted that one might 
 have hung golden bracelets and jewels on the pub- 
 lic highways and cross-roads, and no man would 
 have dared to touch them, for fear of the law. 
 
 Alfred's JEWEU'—Aslmioleau Museum, Oxf^>rJ. 
 
 Towards arbitraiy, unjust, or con-upt adminis- 
 trators of the law, he was inexorable; aud, if we 
 can give credit to an old ■m'iter," he ordered the 
 execution of no fewer than forty-four judges and 
 magistrates of this stamp in the course of one 
 year. Those who were ignorant or careless he 
 
 ' This higlily interesting relic, an ornament of gold, seemingly 
 intended to be hung round the neck, was found near Athelney, 
 in Someraetshire, the very place of Alfred's retreat and deliver- 
 ance from the Danes. The jewel contains an effigy, coujectiu'ed 
 to be that of St. Cuthbei-t. enamelled on gold, surrounded by 
 the following inscription, which identifies it with the best of 
 the Saxon kings — aelfred me haet gewrcan (Alfred had me 
 wrought). On the other side is represented a flower. The jewel 
 measures al^out 3 in. long, and the workmanship of the whole is 
 good. Malmesbmy relates that St. Cuthbeit appeared to Alfred 
 in a vision at Athelney, and predicted his futui'e triumph over 
 the infidel Danes. 
 
 2 Andrew llome, author of Miroir dfi Justici^s, who wrote, in 
 Norman French, under Edward I. or Edward II. 
 
 reprimanded and suspended, commanding them 
 to qualify themselves for the pro]ier discharge 
 of their office before they ventured to gi'asp its 
 honours and emoluments. He heard all appeals 
 with the utmost patience, and, in cases of im- 
 portance, revised all the law proceedings with 
 the utmost industry. His manifold labours in 
 the court, the camp, the field, the hall of justice, 
 the study, must have been prodigious; and our 
 admiration of this wonderful man is increased by 
 the well-established fact, that all these exertions 
 were made in spite of the de]iressing influences 
 of physical pain and constant bad health. In 
 his early yeai-s he was severely afflicted ])y the 
 disease called i\ie ficus. This left him; but, at 
 the age of twenty or twenty-one, it was replaced 
 by another and still more tormenting malady, 
 the in'ward seat and unknown mysterious nature 
 of which baffled all the medical skill of his 
 "leeches." The accesses of excruciating p.ain 
 were frequent — at times almost unintennittent; 
 aud then if, by day or by night, a single hour of 
 ease was mercifidly gi-anted him, that short in- 
 terval was imbittered by the dread of the sure 
 retiu'uing anguish.^ This malady never left him 
 till the day of his death, which it must have 
 hastened. He expired iu the month of October, 
 six nights before All-Hallows-mass Day, in the 
 year 901, when he was only in the fifty -thu'd 
 year of his age, and was buried at Winchester, 
 in a monastery he had founded. 
 
 In deseribiug his brilUaut and incontestable 
 deeds, and in tracing the character of the great 
 Alfred, we, in common with nearly all the writers 
 who have preceded us in the task, have dra^vn a 
 general eulogy, and a character nearly approach- 
 ing to ideal perfection. But were there no spots 
 in all this brilliancy and pm-ity ? As Alfred was 
 a mortal man, there were, no doubt, many; but 
 to discover them, we must ransack his private 
 life, and his vaguely reported conduct when a 
 mere stripling king; and the discovei-y, after all, 
 confers no honour of sagacity, and does not jus- 
 tify the exultation with which a recent writer 
 annoimces to the world that Alfred had not only 
 faults, but crimes to bemoan. It is passed into 
 a truism that he will seldom be in the vv-rong 
 who deducts alike from the amoimt of vu-tue aud 
 vice in the characters recorded in history; but 
 this deduction will be made according to men's 
 temjjers ; and wliile some largely reduce the 
 amount of vu-tue, they seem to leave the vice un- 
 touched — then- incredidity extending rather to 
 what elevates and ennobles human nature, than 
 to the things which degi'ade and debase it. The 
 directly contrary course, or that of reducing the 
 crime, and lea'ving the vh-tue, if not the more 
 correct (which we will not decide), is certainly 
 
 ^ As&er.
 
 A.D. 901-1012.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 97 
 
 the more generous and improving. Every people 
 above the condition of bai'bai'ity have their 
 heroes and their national objects of veneration, 
 and are probably improved by the high standard 
 of excellence they ]iresent, and by the vei-y reve- 
 rence they pay to them. We may venerate the 
 memory of our Alfred with as little danger of 
 paying an unmerited homage as any of tliem. 
 On this subject the late Su' James Mackintosh, 
 whose historical sagacity was equal to his good 
 feeling, says, '• The Norman historians, who seem 
 to have had his diai-ies and note-books in theii- 
 hands, cliose AJfred as the glory of the land 
 which liad become their own. There is no sub- 
 ject on which imanimous tradition is so nearly 
 
 sufficient evidence as on the eminence of one man 
 over others of the same condition. His bright 
 image may long be held up before the national 
 mind. This tradition, however parado.xical the 
 assertion may appear, is, in the case of Alfred, 
 rather su|)p(irt(>d than weakened by the fictions 
 which have sprung from it. AHliough it be an 
 infirmity of every nation (o ascribe their institu- 
 tions to the contrivance of a man, rather than to 
 the slow action of time and circumstances, yet 
 the selection of Alfred by the English people, as 
 the founder of all that was dear to them, is surely 
 the strongest pi'oof of the deep impression, left 
 on the minds of all, of his tianscendent wisdom 
 and virtue.'" 
 
 CHAPTER III.— CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. 
 
 FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD TO THE DEATH OF UARDICANUTE. — A.D. 901—1042. 
 
 Reigu of Edward — Account of his sister, Etbelfleda — Reign of Athelstane — His victory at Brunnaburgh— Reigns of 
 Edmund the Atlieliiig, Edred, and Edwy— Contest of Ed\vy with Dunstan — Tragical fate of Elgiva, the wife 
 of Ed\v3' — Reign of Edgar— His prosperity — His marriage with Elfrida — Reign of Edward the Martyr — His 
 assassination at Corfe Castle — He is succeeded by Ethelred — Iteigu of Ethelred, surnamed the Unready — The 
 Danes invade England — Their forbearance purchased with money — Massacre of the Danes in England — Inva- 
 sion of England by Sweyn, King of Denmark — His invasion repeated — Ethelred's unwise proceedings — 
 Invasion of Thurkill's host — Martyrdom of Alphege by the Danes — Sweyn once more invades England, 
 and is proclaimed king — Ethelred's return to England, and death — Succeeded by Edmund Ironside — Canute 
 becomes King of England — Marries the widow of Ethelred — His prosperous reign — His pilgruuage to Rome 
 — His rebuke of the flattery of his conrtiers — He is succeeded by his son Harold — Treacherous murder of 
 Edward the son of Ethelred — Harold succeeded by Hardicanute — Death of Uardicanute at a banquet. 
 
 IDWARD. A.D. 901. Alfred, with 
 all his wisdom and power, had not 
 been enabled to settle the succes- 
 sion to the throne on a sui'e and 
 lasting basis. On his death it was 
 disputed between his son Edwai*d 
 and his nephew Ethelwald, the son of Ethel- 
 bald, one of Alfred's elder brothers. Each pai-ty 
 ai'med ; but as Ethelwald found himself the 
 
 ' //iX. Eng. ch. xi. " The qualities of his muid were those of 
 a statesman and a hero, but elevated, and, at the same time, 
 softened, by his ardent louging for higher and more imperish- 
 able things than those on which all the splendour and power of 
 this world generally rest. The most mishakable courage was 
 most certainly the fii-st component of his being ; lie showed it, 
 wliile still a youth, in the tumult of the battle of Ascesdune. 
 There was one peiiod when his coinage seemed about to desert 
 him. This was when the yomxg king imagined that he saw hla 
 country for ever in the hands of the foe, and liis people doomed 
 to never-ending despair; but from the ordeal of Athelney he 
 came out proved and victorious, and a large number of brave 
 men rivalled each other in imitating his example. 
 
 '■ We have aheady had occasion, several times, in the course 
 of this work, to notice another peculiarity of Alfred's mind that 
 was attended with no less gratifying results ; he possessed a de- 
 cided turn for invention, which enabled him not only to extri- 
 cate l.::n.,jlf fiom pcriuu^J diHiculticj^ but to £UggCi.t new and 
 original ideas in the execution of all soi'ts of artistic productions 
 
 Vol. T. 
 
 weaker, he declined a combat at Wimburn, and 
 fled into the Danelagh, where the Danes hailed 
 him as theii' king. Many of the Saxons who 
 lived in that countiy mixed witli the Danes, 
 preferred war to the restraints of such a govern- 
 ment as Alfred had established; and an internal 
 war was renewed, which did infmite mischief, 
 and prepai*ed the way for other horrors. Ethel- 
 wald was slain in a terrible battle fought in 
 
 and Iiantliwork. Tlia pillars on which the church at Athelney 
 was built, the long sliips he constructed, the maimer m which 
 he turned a river from its natui-al course, and his clock of tajwra, 
 afford us as convincing evidence of liis iwwers of thought as tlie 
 
 battles which ho gained 
 
 " Elevated by his piety above all his subjects and contempora- 
 ries, no one could be farther than ho was from becoming a weak 
 bigot, willingly bending beneath the yoke of an arrogant priest- 
 hood ; and, while immersed in the fiJfilment of his religious 
 duties, forgetting the prosperity of worldly affaiiB, as u*oH as that 
 of his subjects. He was well awai'o what the country had suffered 
 from the too yielding disposition of his father to the will of the 
 higher ecclesiastics. It is impossible to draw a paridlel between 
 Alfred and his descendant Edward the Confessor. The latter 
 lost his kingdom, and was made a saint; tho former kept it by 
 the aid of Ids sword and a firm reliance on tho Almighty. The 
 Chiurch of Rome, it is true, did not thank liiiii fur thi«; but ho 
 lived, through hib wotku, m the hearts of his people, who cele- 
 brated liito praises in theh- songs."— Pauli'a Lifeqf Alfred the Oixat, 
 13
 
 98 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military 
 
 the yeai- 90o, upon which the Danes conchided 
 a peace upon equal terms; for Edward was not 
 yet powerful enough to treat them as a master. 
 The sons of the princes and yai-ls, and in many 
 instances the individuals themselves, who had 
 been tranquil and submissive under Alfred, soon 
 aimed, not merely at making the Danelagh an 
 independent kingdom, but at conquering the rest 
 of the island. Edward was not deficient in va- 
 loui' or military skill. In the year 911 he gained 
 a most signal victory over the Danes, who had 
 advanced to the Severn; but the whole spirit of 
 Alfred seemed more pai-ticularly to survive in 
 his daughter Ethelfleda, sister of Edward, and 
 wife of Ethelred, the Eolderman of Mercia, who 
 has been so often mentioned, and whose death, 
 in 912, left the wliole care of that kingdom to 
 his widow. Her brother Edward took possession 
 of London and Oxford, but she claimed, and then 
 defended the rest of Mercia, with the bravery 
 and ability of an experienced warrior. Following 
 her father's example, she fortified all her towns, 
 and constructed ramparts and intrenched camps 
 in the proper places; allowing them no rest, she 
 drove the Danes out of Derby and Leicester, and 
 comjjelled many tribes of them to acknowledge 
 her authority. In the assault of Derby, four of 
 her bravest commanders fell, but she boldly 
 urged the combat until the place was taken. As 
 some of the Welsh had become troublesome, she 
 conducted an expedition, with remarkable spirit 
 and rapidity, against Breccanmere or Brecknock, 
 and took the wife of the Welsh king prisoner. 
 In seeing these, her warlike operations, says an 
 old writer, one would have believed she had 
 changed her sex. The Lady Ethelfleda, as she is 
 called by the clu-ouiclers, died in 920, when Edward 
 succeeded to her authority iu Mercia, and prose- 
 cuted her plan of secm-ing the country by fortified 
 works. He was active and successful: he took 
 most of the Danish towns between the Thames 
 \nd the Humber, and forced the rest of the Dane- 
 lagh that lay north of the Humber to acknowledge 
 his supremacy. The Welsh, the Scots, the inhabi- 
 tants of Strathclyde and Cumbria (who still figure 
 as a separate people), and the men of Galloway, 
 are said to have done him homage, and to have ac- 
 cepted liim as their "father, lord, and protector." 
 ATHELSTANE. a.d. 925. Edwai-d's dominion 
 far exceeded in extent that of his father Alfred ; 
 but his son Athelstane, who succeeded him in 
 92.5, established a more brilliant tlu-one, and 
 made a still nearer approach to the sovereignty 
 of all England. By war and policy he reduced 
 nearly all Wales to an inoffensive tranquillity, if 
 not to vassalage. A tribute was certainly paid 
 during a part of the reign, and, together with 
 gold and silver, and beeves, the Welsh were 
 bound to send their best hounds and hawks to 
 
 tlie court of Athelstane. Ue next turned his 
 arms against the old tribes of Cornwall, who were 
 still turbulent, and impatient of the Saxon yoke. 
 He drove them from Devonshire, where they liad 
 again made encroachments, and reduced them to 
 obedience and good order beyond the Tamar. 
 
 In 937 he was assailed by a more jjowerful 
 confederacy than had ever been formed against 
 a Saxon king. Olave or Anlaf, a Danish prince, 
 who had already been settled in Northumbria, 
 but who had lately taken Dublin, and made con 
 siderable conquests in Ireland, sailed up the Hum- 
 ber with 620 ships ; his friend and ally, Constan- 
 tine, King of the Scots, the people of Strathclyde 
 and Cumbria, and the northern Welsh were all 
 up in arms, and ready to join him. Yet this coa- 
 Ution, formidable as it was, was uttei-ly destroyed 
 on the bloody field of Brunnaburgh,' where Ath- 
 elstane gained one of the most splendid of victo- 
 ries, and where five Danish kings and seven eai-ls 
 fell. Ajilaf escaped, with a wretched fragment 
 of his forces, to Ireland; Coustantine, bemoaning 
 the loss of his fair-haired son, who had also pe- 
 rished at Brunnaburgh, fled to the hilly country 
 north of the friths. After this great victory, 
 none seem to have dai-ed again to raise arms 
 against Athelstane in any part of the island. 
 
 It appears to have been from this time that 
 Athelstane laid aside the modest and limited title 
 of his predecessors, and assumed that of " King 
 of the Anglo-Saxons," or " King of the English," 
 a title which had been given to several of them 
 in the letters of the Roman popes and bishops, 
 but had never till now been used by the sove- 
 reigns themselves. His father, and liis grand- 
 father Alfred, had simply styled themselves Kings 
 of Wessex, or of the West Saxons. 
 
 Under Athelstane the English court was po- 
 lished to a considerable degree, and became the 
 chosen residence or asylum of several foreign 
 princes. Harold, the King of Norway, intrusted 
 Ills son Haco to the care and tuition of the en- 
 lightened Athelstane; and his son, by the aid of 
 England, afterwards succeeded to the Norwegian 
 throne, on which he distinguished himself as a 
 legislator. Louis d'Outremer, the French king, 
 took refuge in London before he secured his 
 thi'one ; and even the Celtic princes of Ai-morica 
 or Brittany, when expelled their states by the 
 Northmen or Normans, fled to the court of Athel- 
 stane in preference to all others. He bestowed 
 his sisters in man-iage on the fii-st sovereigns of 
 those times, and, altogether, he enjoyed a degree 
 of re-spect, and exercised an influence on the gene- 
 ral politics of Europe, that were not surpassed by 
 any living sovereign." A horrid suspicion of guilt 
 
 ' Supposed by some to be Bourn, in the south of Lincolnshire; 
 by others, Bmgh, in the nox-th of the same county. 
 
 - Among the costly presents sent to Athelstane by foreign so-
 
 AD. 901-1042.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 99 
 
 — the crime of muvderinp; hisowii brotlior Edwin 
 — has been cast njion liini; but this is scarcely 
 proved by any contemporary evidence, and liis 
 conduct as a sovereign seems almost irreproach- 
 able. He revised the laws, promulgated some new 
 and good ones, made a provision fortlie poor and 
 lu'lpless, and encouraged the stvidy of letters by 
 earnest recommendations and Ijy his own exanijile. 
 Like his gi'andfathcr Alfred, he was exceedingly 
 fond of the Bilile, and promoteil the translation of 
 it into the spolcen language of the jieojilc. The 
 life of this king was, in the words of William 
 of Malmesbui-v, " in time little — in deeds great." 
 TIad it been prolonged, he might possibly have con- 
 solidated his power, and averted those tempests 
 from the north which soon again desolated England. 
 He died a.d. 940, being only in his forty-seventh 
 \ear, and was buried in the abbey of Malmesbury. 
 EDMUND the Atheling, his brother, who was 
 not quite eighteen years old, succeeded to the 
 tlirone. In him the family vh'tue of courage 
 knew no blemish or decrease; and he showed a 
 determined taste for elegance and improvement, 
 which obtained for him the name of " the Mag- 
 uificent ;" but his reign was troubled from the 
 beginning, and he was cut off in his prime by the 
 hand of an assassin. He had scarcely ascended 
 the thi'one when the Danes of Northumbria re- 
 called from Ireland Ajilaf, tlie old opponent of 
 Athelstane at Brunnaburgh. The Danish prince 
 came in force, and the result of a war was, that 
 Edmund was obliged to resign to him, in sep.arate 
 sovereignt}-, the whole of the island north of 
 Watlmg-street. But Anlaf did not enjoy these 
 advantages many months ; and when he died 
 Edmund repossessed himself of all the territoi-_y 
 he had ceded. During his troubles the people of 
 Cumbria, who had submitted to Athelstane, broke 
 out in rebellion. He marched against them in 
 946, expelled their king, Dunmail, and gave the 
 coimtry as a fief to Malcolm of Scotland, whom 
 he at the same time bound to defend the north of 
 the island against Danish and other invaders. 
 The two sons of Dunmail, whom he took pri- 
 soners, he barbarously deprived of their eyes. 
 Such abominable operations, together with the 
 amputating of limbs, cutting off of tongues and 
 noses of captive princes, had become common on 
 the Continent, but hitherto had very rarely dis- 
 graced the Anglo-Saxons. Edmimd did not long 
 survive the perpetration of this atrocity. On the 
 festival of St. Augustine, in the same year, as he 
 was carousing with his nobles and officers, his 
 eye fell upon a banished robbei', named Leof , who 
 had dared to mingle with the company. The 
 royal cup-bearer, or dapifer, ordered him to 
 
 vereigTiB, was one from the King of Norway, " of a goodly ship of 
 fine workmanship, with gilt stern and purplesails,faniisheiircminl 
 about the deck within with a row of gilt pavises for shields)." 
 
 witlidraw. The robber refused. Incensed at liis 
 insolence, and heated by wine, lvlmun<l started 
 from his seat, and seizing him by his long hair, 
 tried to throw him to the gi-ound. Leof had i\ 
 dagger hid under his cloak, and in the scuflle he 
 stabbed the king in a vital ])art. The desperate 
 villain was cut to pieces by Edmund's servants, 
 but not before he liad slain and hurt divers of 
 them. The body of the king wa.s interred in 
 Glastonbury Abbey, where Dunstan, who was 
 soon to occupy a wider scene, was tlien abbot. 
 
 EDBEI) (94G), who succeeded his brother Evl- 
 mund, was another son of Edward the Elder, and 
 grandson of jVlfred. He was not twenty-three 
 years old, but a loathsome disease had brought on 
 a premature old age. He was atHicted witlia con- 
 stant cough, he lost his teeth and hair, and he 
 was so weak in his lower extremities that he was 
 nick-named " Edredus debilis pedibus" (Edred 
 weak in the feet). According to some authorities, 
 his mind was as feeble as his body, and the vig- 
 our that marked his reign sprung from the energy 
 of Dunstan, the aljbot of Glastonbury, who now 
 began to figure as a statesman, aiul of Torketul, 
 another churchman, who was chancellor of the 
 kingdom. Other writei-s, however, affirm that 
 Edi-ed's weak and puny body did not affect his 
 mind, which was resolute and vigorous, and such 
 as became a grandson of Alfred. Though, in 
 common with the other states of the north, the 
 Danes of Northumbria had sworn fealty to Edred 
 at Tadwine's Clill', they rose soon after his acces- 
 sion, and being joined by Eric, and other princes 
 and pirates from Denmark, Norway, Ireland, tlie 
 Oi'kneys, and the Hebrides (where the se.a-kiugs 
 had established themselv.?s), they once more tried 
 the fortune of war with the Saxons. The opera- 
 tions of Edred's armies, though disgraced by 
 cruelty and the devastation of the land, were 
 marked with exceeding vigour and activity, and, 
 after two or three most obstinate and sanguinary 
 battles, they were cro\vned with success. The 
 Danes in Euglaml, humbled and apparently 
 crushed, were condemned to pay a heavy peoi- 
 niarj' fine ; Northumbria was incorporated with 
 the rest of the kingdom much more completely 
 than it had hitherto been; the royal title was 
 abolished, and the administration put into the 
 hands of an earl ajipointed by the king. Even 
 the victorious Athelstane had left the title of 
 king, or sub-king, to the Danish rulers of North- 
 umbria, and it is assumed that the constant re- 
 bellions of those rulers were principally excited 
 by their anxious wish to throw off the allegiance 
 due to the English crown. We believe, however, 
 there was a powerful excitement from without. 
 The sea-kings still roamed the ocean in search of 
 [jlimder or settlements ; many princes or chiefs 
 in Denmark and Norway claimed kindred with
 
 100 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Miutarv. 
 
 those who had made conquests and obtainetl 
 kingdoms in Eugland, and whenever an oppor- 
 tunity offered they pretended to those possessions 
 l)y an indefeasible, hereditary right. Such a 
 right might not be recognized by the Anglo- 
 Saxons, but it would pass unquestioned among 
 the Scandinavian rovers, who would profit by its 
 being enforced. The names of a whole series of 
 these Danish pretenders may probably be found 
 La the mythical historians — in the more than half 
 fabulous Edda and Sagas of the north — but we 
 are not aware that the discovery of them would 
 cast any very important light on our annals. 
 
 Edred died soon after the reduction of Northum- 
 bria, and, leaving no childi'en, was succeeded by the 
 son of his brother and pi-edecessor on the throne. 
 
 EDWY was a boy of fifteen when he began his 
 troublous reign (a.d. 955). One of the first acts 
 of his government seems to have been the ap- 
 pointment of his brother Edgar (whom the monks 
 soon played off against him) to be sub-regulus or 
 vassal-king of a part of England,' most probably 
 of the old kingdom of Mercia, where he was to 
 acknowledge Ed wy's supremacy. As the Northum- 
 brians remained in subjection, and as the Danes 
 generally seem to have ceased from troubling 
 the land, he might have enjoyed a tranquil reign 
 but for some irregularities of his own, and his 
 quarrels with a body more powerful then than 
 warriors and sea-kings, and who fought with a 
 weapon more deadly than the sword. 
 
 We now reach an interesting part of our his- 
 toi-y, which, after passing cm-rent for many ages, 
 has been fiercely disputed by some recent writers, 
 whose main com-se of argument is weakened by 
 the glaring fact, that in shifting all the blame 
 from Dunstan to Edwy, they had party or secta- 
 rian purposes to serve. For ourselves, who are 
 perfectly impartial between the king and the 
 monk, we think the old narrative has been dis- 
 turbed without rendering any service to historical 
 truth, and that this is proved to be the case, al- 
 most to a demonstration, by a learned and acute 
 wi'iter who has sifted the whole question." Like 
 nearly every other jiart of the Saxon history, the 
 stoiy of Edwy and Elgiva is certainly involved 
 in some ditliculties or obscm-ities. Avoidmg dis- 
 cussion and disputation, we will briefly state the 
 facts as they seem to us best established. 
 
 Edwy, who was gay, handsome, thoughtless, 
 
 ' ' ' This fact, wliich is of some importance, i.s proved, like many 
 other points of a similar description, not by historians, but by a 
 chaiter. The document, however, does not designate the locality 
 of thedominions assigned to Edgar." — Palgrave, Hvtt. Eng. ch. -xii. 
 We foUow this learned investigator in supposing it was Mercia. 
 
 2 See article on Lingard's Ardiquities of tlie Anfilo-Saxon 
 Churchy in Edinburgh Review, vol. xxv. pp. 34(5-354 ; and 
 article on Lingard's History of England, in the same work, 
 vol. sliii. pp. 1-31. Both these reviews are acknowledged te 
 be by the late John Allen, Esq., in his Letter to Francis Jeffrey, 
 E^q., in rejily to Dr. Lingard's Vindication, 8vo. Lond. 1827. 
 
 and vei-y young, became enamoured of Elgiva, a 
 young lady of rank, and married her, althougli 
 she was related to him in a degree within which 
 the canonical laws forbade such union. She was 
 probably his first or second cousin ; and we need 
 not go nearer, as such marriages are still illegal 
 in Catholic countries, without the express dispen- 
 sation of the pope. Her mother, Ethelgiva, lived 
 with her at the court of Edwy, and seems to have 
 been a pereon of good repute, for, under the 
 honourable designation of the " king's wife's 
 mother," she attested an agi-eement between St. 
 Ethelwold and the Bishop of Wells, to which 
 three other bishops were subscribing witnesses. 
 We are entitled to assume, that had there been 
 anything more than a slight infringement of 
 church-law in the marriage of Elgiva, or had she 
 and her mother been the depraved characters 
 some writers have repi'esented them, such per- 
 sonages as saints, and bishops, and most orthodox 
 churchmen would not be found frequenting the 
 court, where both the ladies lived in pre-eminence 
 and honom-. Dunstan and his party, however, 
 must surely have had other provocations than the 
 irregularity of the marriage, or the thoughtless- 
 ness of Edwy in quitting their company, when 
 they proceeded to the insolent extremities we are 
 now to relate. On the day of the king's corona- 
 tion the chief nobles and clergy were bidden to 
 a feast, where they sat long carousing, deep in 
 their cups, which they were too much accustomed 
 to do.^ The stomach of the youthful king may 
 have been incapable of such potations — his taste 
 may have been revolted by such coai'se excesses — 
 he was still passionately enamom-ed of his beau- 
 tiful bride; and, stealing from the banqueting- 
 hall, he withdrew with her and her mother to an 
 inner apartment of the palace. His absence was 
 remarked by Odo, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 a Dane by bii-th,' a harsh, ambitious man, who 
 may be more than suspected of having jdayed 
 false with Edwy's fathei-, King Edmund, when 
 engaged in the Northumbrian troubles, and ob- 
 liged to renounce half the island to Aulaf. Odo 
 was probably exasperated himself, and perceiv- 
 ing that the comjmny were displeased at the 
 king's leaving them, he ordered some persons to 
 go and bring him back to partake of the general 
 conviviality. The individuals addressed seem to 
 have declined the office, from motives of respect 
 and decency; but Dimstan, the friend of Odo, 
 feeling no such scruples, rushed to the inner 
 apai-tment, dragged the yoimg king from the side 
 of his wife, and tlirust him back into the ban- 
 quetiug-hall by main force. Such an outrage — 
 such a humiliation in the face of his assembled 
 
 3 "Quibus Angli nimis simt assueti." — WoXlingford, 
 
 4 He was the son of one of the chieftains who had invaded 
 i England.
 
 A.D. 901— 1042.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD, 
 
 101 
 
 subjeets — must have passer! E.lwv's endurance. 
 Nor was this all the \\Tong. While in the chamber 
 Dunstan addressed the queen and her mother 
 in the most brutal language, and tlu-eatoned the 
 latter with infamy and the gallows. The king 
 had a ready rod wherewith to scourge the monk. 
 Dunstan, among other ofiices, filled that of trea- 
 surer to Edred, the preceding sovereign, and 
 Edwy, it is said, had all along suspected him of 
 having been guilty of peculation iu his charge. 
 If Edwy had ever whispered these suspicions — 
 and from his youth, imprudence, and liastiness 
 of temper, he had probably done so often — this 
 alone would account for Dunstan's ire. However 
 this may be, the fieiy abbot of Glastonbury, v/ho 
 retm'ned from the festival to his abbey, was now 
 questioned touchLug the moneys; his property was 
 sequestered; his court places were taken from 
 him ; the monks who professed celibacy were 
 driven out, and his monastery was given to the 
 seculaa- clergy, who still insisted on having wives 
 like other men; and finally a sentence of banish- 
 ment was hm-led at Dunstan. He fled for the 
 monasteiy of St. Peter's, in Ghent, but was 
 scarcely three miles from the shore, on Iiis way 
 to Flanders, when messengei-s reached it, de- 
 spatched by Edwy or his mother-in-law, and who, 
 it is said, had ordei-s to put out his eyes if they 
 caught him in this country. 
 
 Before this extreme rupture Edwy had pro- 
 bably meddled with the then stormy politics of 
 the church, or betrayed au inclination to favour 
 the secular clergy in opposition to the monks; and 
 this again would, and of itself, suffice to account 
 for Dunstan's outrageous behaviour at the coro- 
 nation feast- After Dimstan's flight the king cer- 
 tainly made himself the protector of the " man-ied 
 clerks;" for, expelling those who professed celi- 
 bacy, he put the others in possession, not only of 
 Glastonbury and Malmesbuiy, but of several other 
 abbeys, which he thus made (to speak the lan- 
 guage of Dunstan's adherents and successors) 
 "styes for canons." In so doing, Edwi,-, fatally for 
 himself, espoused the weaker pai'ty, and still fiu-- 
 ther exasperated Odo, the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bmy, who entertained the same views in state mat- 
 ters and church discipline as his friend Dun&tan. 
 
 Shortly after the departure of Dun.stan, a general 
 rising of the people, instigated by Odo, took place 
 in Northumbria (the reader will bear in mind that 
 the archbishop was a Dane), and a coiTesponding 
 movement following, under the same influence or 
 holy sanction, in Mercia, it was detennined to set 
 one brother in hostile array against the other; 
 and, in brief time, Edgar was declared indej lendent 
 sovereign of the whole of the island noi'th of the 
 Thames! Dunstan then returned in triumph from 
 his brief exile, which had scarcely lasted a year. 
 
 But while these events were in progress, and 
 
 before they were completed, the young soul of 
 Edwy was i-acked by au anguish more acute than 
 any that could be caused by the loss of territory 
 and empire. Some knights and armed retainers 
 of the iinjilacable archbishop tore his beautiful 
 wife Elgiva from one of his residences, branded 
 her in the face with a red-hot iron, to destroy 
 her beauty, and then hurried her to the coa.st, 
 whence she was transported to Ireland, i)robal)ly 
 as a slave. Her melancholy fate, her high birtli, 
 gi-acefulness, and youth (for she seems to have 
 been now not more than sixteen or seventeen 
 years old), probably gained lier friends among 
 a kind-hearted people. She was cured of the 
 cruel wounds inflicted ; her scars were oblite- 
 rated ; and, as radiant in beauty as ever, she 
 was allowed (and no doubt assisted) to return to 
 England It is not clear whether Elgiva had 
 actually joined her husband or was fleeing to his 
 embraces, when she was seized near Gloucester; 
 but 0.11 the early accounts agree in stating that 
 she was there bail larously mangled and ham- 
 strung, and that she expired a few days after in 
 great torture. The generally received statement 
 is, that the perpetrators of this atrocious deed 
 were ai'med retainers of the Aa-chbishop Odo : 
 others, however, are of opinion that the young 
 queen fell into the hands of the Mercians, who 
 were in insurrection against her husband, and 
 that in neither case was the execution ordered 
 either by Otho or Dunstan. However this may 
 be, the deed was undeniably done by the ad- 
 herents of those ehm-chmen (for the Mercians 
 were armed in their quarrel), and ])raised ;is an 
 act of inflexible vii-tue by their encomiasts. The 
 palliation set uj) by a recent historian — who can- 
 not deny the fact of the hamstringing— that such 
 a mode of punishment, " though cruel, was not 
 imusual in that age," leaves the question of jus- 
 tice and law untouched, and seems to us to be 
 conceived in the spirit of an inquisitor of the 
 worst ages. Edwy did not long sm-vivc his wife: 
 he died in the following year (OSS), when he 
 could not have been more than eighteen or nine- 
 teen years old. His death is generally attri- 
 buted to grief anil ;i broken heai-t, but it is just 
 as pi'obable that he was assassinated bj' his ene- 
 mies. ' From the comeliness of his person, he was 
 generally called Edwy the Fair. 
 
 EDGAR (958-;)), his brother, who had been 
 put forward against him in his lifetime, now suc- 
 ceeded to aU his dignities. As a boy of fifteen, 
 he could exercise little autliority: he was long a 
 passive instrument iu the hands of Dunstan and 
 
 ' \n old Ua. in the Cottouinn Library says oxplicitly, " In 
 p-ago Glocestrensi intorfectus fiiit." Another old MS., qnot««l 
 by Mr. Sharon Turner, aays, "Misera morto exspiravit ;" but 
 this wonld apply as woU (or better) to death by grief as to deatti 
 by the dagger.
 
 102 
 
 niSTOKY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militauy. 
 
 Ills party, who used their power in establishing 
 their cause, iu enforcing the celibacy of the 
 clergj', and in driving out, by main force, from 
 all abbeys, monasteries, cathedrals, cliurches, and 
 chanti'ies, all such married clergymen as would 
 not separate from their wives. At the same 
 tiuie, it cannot be denied that Dunstan and the 
 monks ruled the kingdom with vigour and suc- 
 ce.ss, and consolidated the detached states into 
 more comjiact integi-ity ami union than had ever 
 been known before. Several causes favoured this 
 process. Among others, Edgai', who had been 
 brought up among the Danes of East Anglia 
 and Northumbria, was endeared to that people, 
 who, in consequence, allowed him to weaken 
 their states, by dividing them into several sepa- 
 rate eai-ldoms or governments, and to make other 
 innovations, which they would have resented 
 with arms in their hands under any of his pre- 
 decessors. His fleet was also wisely increased to 
 the number of 300 sail; and these ships were so 
 well disposed, and powerful squadrons kept so 
 constantly in motion, that the sea-kings were 
 held in check on theu" own element, and pre- 
 vented from landing and troubling the country. 
 At the same time, tutored by the indefatigable 
 Dunstan, who soon was made, or rather who 
 soon made himself. Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 the king accustomed himself to visit in person 
 every jmrt of his dominions annually. In the 
 land progresses he was attended by tlie primate, 
 or by energetic ministers of Dunstan's appoint- 
 ing; and as he went from Wessex to Mercia, 
 from Mercia to Northumbria, courts of justice 
 were held in the different counties, audiences 
 and feasts were given, appeals were heard, and 
 Edgar cultivated the acquaintance of all the 
 nobles and principal men of the kingdom. The 
 neighbouring princes — his vassals or allies — of 
 Wales, Cumbria, and Scotland, were awed into 
 respect or obedience, and on several occasions 
 seem to have bowed before his throne. When 
 he held his court at Chester, and had one day a 
 wish to visit the monastery of St. John's, on the 
 
 ' " Hence, his fame boiiig noised .ibroad, foreigners — Saxons, 
 Flemings, and even Danes — frequently sailed hither, and ivere on 
 terms of intimacy \vith Edgar, though their an-ival was highly 
 prejudicial to the natives ; for from the Saxons they learned an 
 untamable ferocity of mind ; from the Flemings, an unm.anly 
 delicacy of body; and from the Danes, drunkemiess; though they 
 were before free from such propensities, and disposed to obsen'e 
 their own customs with native simplicity, rather than admire 
 those of others." — WilUam of Malmcsb. book ii. ch. viii. Yet, in 
 spite of these corrupting influences, the monk of Malmesbury 
 adds : "At this time the light of holy men was so resplendent 
 in England, that yoxi would believe the very stairs from licaven 
 smiled upon it. Among these was Dunstan," . . . who, with* 
 out preaching total abstinence as a remedy for the growing vice 
 of drunkenness, "ordered gold or silver pegs to be fastened in the 
 pots; th.at whilst every man knew hisjust measure, shame should 
 compel each neither to take more liimself, nor to oblige others to 
 drink more than their proportional share." — See Giles' ed. p. 14S. 
 
 river Dee, eiglit crowned kings (so goes the story) 
 plied the oars of his barge, while he guided the 
 helm. These sovereign - bargemen are said to 
 have been Kenneth, King of Scotl.and; Malcolm, 
 his son. King of Cumbria; Maccu.s the Dane, King 
 of Anglesey, the Isle of Man, and the Hebrides; 
 the Scottish K ings of Galloway and " Westmere ;" 
 and the three Welsh Kings of Dynwall, Siferth, 
 and Edwall.' 
 
 Edgar certainly bore prouder and more sound- 
 ing titles than any of his predecessors. He was 
 styled Basileus or Emperor of Albion, King of 
 the English, and of all tlie nations and islands 
 around." He obtained the more honourable epi- 
 thet of the Peaceable or Pacific; for, luckily, 
 during his wliole reign, his kingdom was not 
 troubled by a single war.^ He commuted a tri- 
 bute he i-eceived from a part or the whole of 
 Wales, into 300 wolves' heads annually, in order 
 to extii^pate those ravenous animals; and, accord- 
 ing to William of Malme.sbury, this tribute ceased 
 in the fourth year, for want of wolves to kill. 
 The cuiTency had been so diminished in weight 
 by the fraudulent practice of clipping, that the 
 actual value was far inferior to the no min al 
 He therefore reformed the coinage, and had new 
 coins issued all over the kingdom. Though Ed- 
 gar was now in mature manhood, there is pretty 
 good evidence to show that these measures, with 
 others, generally of a beneficial nature, were sug- 
 gested and carried into effect liy Dunstan, who, 
 most indubital)ly, had his full share in the next 
 operations, which are mentioned with especial 
 laud and triumjih by the monkish wi-iters. He 
 made married priests so scarce or so timid, that 
 their faces were nowhere to be seen; and he 
 founded or restored no fewer than fifty monas- 
 teries, which were all subjected to the rigid rales 
 of the Benedictine order. It is curious that the 
 monks, who had a debt of gi-atitude to pay, and 
 who, in their summary of his whole character, 
 indeed, uphold Edgar as a godly, virtuous prince, 
 should have recorded actions which prove him to 
 have been one of the most viciously profligate of 
 
 - "Nothing," says Mr. Turner, "can more strongly display 
 Edgar's vanity than the pompous and boasting titles wliich he 
 assumes in his charters. They sometimes i-un to the length of 
 fifteen or eigliteen lines. How different from Alfred's ' Ego oc- 
 cidentaliimi Saxonnm Res 1 ' " — Sharon Turner's Uistory of the 
 Anfjla-Saxons. 
 
 3 " Edgar the Pacific, as he was called, gave a greater extent 
 and majesty to the Anglo-Saxon dominion than any Bretwalda 
 h.ad hitlierto obtained. Peace, it was believed, w.as prophesied 
 to liim by Dimstan, and peace certainly prevailed. A combat 
 with the Britons, faintly indicated, is the only sign of war which 
 can be traced in the annals of his reign. Yet such obedience 
 wiis rendered to Edgar asnosovereignofBritam had ever claimed 
 before. Circumnavigating the island with a fleet whose num- 
 bers are said to have amounted to 5000 vessels, he led his mighty 
 force to the city of Chester, where the v.-i-ssiils of the Anglo-Saxon 
 crown had as.'^embled, pursuant to his behest." — Palgrave's His- 
 tory of the Anglo-Saxmis.
 
 A.D. 901- 1042.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 103 
 
 the Saxon kings. The court of this promoter of 
 eelibaey and chastity swarmeil at all times with 
 concubines, some of whom were obtained in the 
 most violent or flagitious manner. To pass over 
 less authentic cases, in an early part of his reign, 
 during the life of his first wife, he carried oii" 
 from the monastery of Wilton a beautiful young 
 lady of noble bii-th, named Wulfreda, who was 
 either a professed nun, or receiving her education 
 imder the sacred covering of the veil. It has 
 been said that Dunstan here interfered with a 
 courage which absolves him from the charge of 
 reserving his reproofs for those who stood, like 
 the unfortunate Edwy, in the position of enemies. 
 But what was the amount of his interference in 
 this extreme case, where the sanctity of the clois- 
 ter itself was violated ? He condemned the king 
 to lay aside an empty, inconvenient bauble — not 
 to wear his crown on his head for seven years — 
 iind to a penance of fasting, which was probably 
 in good part performed by deputy. This was 
 not the measiu'e of piunishment that was meted 
 out to Edw}'; and, for all that we can learn to 
 the contrary, Edgar was allowed to retain Wul- 
 freda as his mistress! On another occasion, when 
 the guest of one of his nobles at Andover, he or- 
 dered that the fair and honourable daughter of 
 his host should be sent to his bed. The young 
 lady's mother ai-tfully substituted a handsome 
 slave or servant; and this menial was added to 
 Ids harem, or taken to court, where, according to 
 William of Malmesbury, she enjoyed his exceed- 
 ing gi-eat favour, until he became enamoured of 
 Elfrida, his second lawful wife. Komantic as ai-e 
 its incidents, the story of his marriage with the 
 execrable Elfrida rests on about as good autho- 
 rity as we can find for any of the events of the 
 time. The fame of this young lady's beauty 
 reached the ears of Edgar, ever hungiy of such 
 reports. To ascertain whether her charms were 
 not exaggerated, the royal voluptuary despatched 
 Athelwold, his favourite courtier, to the dist;int 
 castle of her father, Ordgar, Earl of Devonshii-e. 
 -Vthelwold became himself enamoured of the 
 beauty, wedded Jier, and then represented her 
 to the king as being rich, indeed, but not other- 
 wise commendable. Edgar suspected or was 
 told the real truth. He insisted on paying her 
 a visit. The unlucky husband was allowed to 
 precede him, that he might put his house in 
 order; but he failed in his real object, which 
 was to obtain his wife's forgiveness for having 
 stepped between her and a thi'one, and to induce 
 her to disguise or conceal the brilliancy of her 
 charms by homely attire and rustic demeanour. 
 The visit was made : the king was captivated, 
 as she intended he should be. Soon after Athel- 
 wold was found mm-dered in a wood, and Edgar 
 married his widow. Tlus union, begun in crime, 
 
 leil to the foul murder of Edgar's eldest son: and 
 under the ind)ccilc Ethelred, the only .son he had 
 by Elfrida, the glory of the house of .Mfred was 
 eclipsetl for ever. He himself did not survive 
 the marriage more than six or seven yeai-s, when 
 he died, at the early age of thirty-two, and was 
 bm-ied in the abbey of Glastonb\n-y, which he 
 had made magnificent by viist outlays of money 
 and donations of land.' 
 
 EDWAKD, commonly called the Martyr, wlio 
 succeeded (a.d. !)75), was Edgar's son by his first 
 marriage. Like all the kings since Athelstane, 
 he was a mere boy at his accession, being not 
 more than fourteen or fifteen years old. His 
 rights were disputed, in favoiu- of her own son, 
 Ethelred, who was only six years old, by the 
 ambitious and remorseless Elfrida, who boldly 
 maintained that Edward, though the elder bro- 
 ther, and named king in his father's will, was 
 excluded by the illegitimacy of his bii-th. The 
 legitimacy of sevez-al of the Saxon princes who 
 had worn the crown was more than doubtful; 
 but in the case of Edward the challenge seems 
 to have been unfounded. The cause of Edward 
 and his half-brother was decided on fai- diiferent 
 grounds. As soon as Edgar was dead the church 
 war was I'enewed, and Dunstan, after a long and 
 unopposed triumjjh, was compelled once more to 
 descend to the ai-ena wdth his old opponents, the 
 "mai-ried clerks," or seculai' clergy, who again 
 showed themselves m force in many pai-ts of the 
 kingdom, and claimed the abbeys and churches 
 of which they had been dispossessed. The nobles 
 and the governors of provinces chose different 
 sides. Alfere, the powerful Eolderman of Mer- 
 cia, declared for the secular clergy, and di'ove the 
 monks from every part of his extensive domi- 
 nions. Alwyn, of East Anglia, on the contrary, 
 stood by Dunstan and the monks, and chased the 
 seculars. Elfrida, no doubt because Dunstan 
 and his friends had got possession of Edward, 
 gave the weight of her son Etheh'ed's n;uue and 
 herself to the party of Alfere and the seculai-s, 
 which soon j'roved again to be the weaker of the 
 two factions. Had it been the stronger, Ethel- 
 red would have been crowned; as it twned out. 
 
 1 " Edgar's reign has been celebrated as the most glorious of 
 all the ^Viiglo-Saxon liings. No other sovereign, indeed, con- 
 verted his prosperity into siich personal pomp, and no other 
 sovereign was more degraded in iiis posterity. Witli his sliort 
 Ufe — for he died at tiiirty-two — the gaudy pageantry ceased, and 
 all the va3t dominion in which he h:ul so ostent.atiousl>' exulted 
 vanished from his cliildreu's grasp. His eldest son perished by 
 the scheme of his beloved Elfrida ; his youngest reigned only to 
 show that one weal£ reign is sufficient to ruin even a bravo and 
 great people. Edgar made kings his watermen ; tlie son of his 
 love live times bought liis kingdom from Dani.ih rovera, wiis the 
 fool of traitore, and sun'endered his tlirone to a foreign invader. 
 Of Edgar's grandsons, one perished violently soon after his ivi- 
 cession. The otlier was tlie last of liis race who nUed the Anglo- 
 .Saxon n.ation." — Sharon Tinner's Uiitory of the Angio-Saxonf, 
 vol. iii. p. lao.
 
 10^ 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and jMilitart 
 
 Dunstan was eualiled to jilace Eihvai-d upon tlie 
 throne. But the animosities of two i-eligious 
 parties were not to be reconciled liy the decisions 
 of national or church councils, by disinitations, 
 or even by mu-acles; nor was the ambition of the 
 perfidious Elfrida to be cured by a single reverse. 
 She continued her intrigues with the seculiir 
 pai-ty; she united herself more closely than ever 
 with Alfere, the Eolderman of Mercia; and soon 
 saw herself at the head of a powerful confede- 
 racy of nobles, who were resolved her son shoidd 
 reign, and Dunstan be deprived of that immense 
 power he had so long held. But not even this 
 resolution would prepare us for the horrible catas- 
 trophe that followed. About three yeai-s after 
 his accession, as Edward was hunting one day in 
 Dorsetshire, he quitted his company and atten- 
 dants to visit his half-brother, Ethelred, who was 
 
 CoRrE Castle, Dorsetaliire ' 
 
 •Prom Turner s Southern CoTst 
 
 living with his mother, hard by, in Corfe Castle. 
 Elfrida came forth with her son to meet him at 
 the outer gate: she bade him welcome with a 
 smiling face, and invited him to dismount; but 
 the young king, with thanks, declined, fearing he 
 should be missed by his company, and craved only 
 a cup of wine, which he might drink in his saddle 
 to her and his brother, and so be gone. The wine 
 was brought, and as Edward was carrying the 
 
 1 The foundation of this castle is considered to date from the 
 tenth century. Its great strength, and its situation on a liigh 
 hill, caused it to be reg-arded formerly as a fortress ofpecuJiar im- 
 portance, and it was used as a resting-place by the West Saxon 
 piinces. It was the occasional residence of Iving John, and here 
 he deposited liis regalia for security. Here Edwai-d 11., when 
 he fell into the hands of his enemies, was for a time imprisoned; 
 it was stoutly defended in the war of the Parli-oment. but 
 taken by treachery in 1645-6, when it was di-sm-intled. The 
 Ciistle is separ.at^d from the town to which it gives its name by 
 a ditch, now diy, crossed by a bridge of four very narrow, high 
 &r».^ueo. 
 
 cup to his lips, one of Elfrida's attendants stabbed 
 him in the back. The wounded king put spurs 
 to his horse, Viut soon fainting from loss of blood, 
 he fell out of the saddle, and was dragged by one 
 foot in the stin-up through woods and rugged 
 ways until he was dead. His but too negligent 
 companions in the chase traced him by his blood, 
 and at last found his disfigm-ed corpse, which 
 they burned, and then bm-ied the ashes of it at 
 Wareham, without any pomp or regal ceremonies. 
 " No worse deed than this," says the Saxon Chro- 
 nicle, " had been committed among the people 
 of the Angles since they fii-st came to the land of 
 Britain." 
 
 It is believed that Alfere, the Eolderman of 
 Mercia, with other nobles opposed to Dunstan 
 and the monks, was engaged with the queen- 
 dowager in a plot to assassinate Edwai'd, but 
 that Elfrida, impatiently seiz- 
 ing an unlooked-f<ir opjjortu- 
 nity, took the bloody execution 
 _ ~_^^.-~ instantly and wholly upon her- 
 ^^ self. The boy ETHELEED, 
 
 who was not ten years old, had 
 no pai-t in the guilt which gave 
 him a crown, though that 
 crown certainly sat upon him 
 like a curse. It is related of 
 him that he dearly loved his 
 half-brother Edwai-d, and wept 
 his death, for which his virago 
 mother, seizing a large torch, 
 beat him with it until he was 
 almost dead himself. Such, 
 however, was the popular 
 odium that fell both on son 
 and mother, that an attempt 
 was made to exclude him from 
 the throne, by substituting Ed- 
 githa, Edgar's natm-al daugh- 
 ter by the lady he had stolen from the nunnery 
 of Wilton. This Edgitha was herself at the time 
 a professed nun in the same monasteiy from 
 which her mother had been torn; and it is said 
 that nothing but her timidity and the di-ead in- 
 sph-ed by her brother Edward's mm-der, and her 
 firm refusal to exchange the tranquillitj- of the 
 cell for the dangers of the throne, prevented 
 Dunstan from causing her to be jiroclaimed 
 Queen of all England. There was no other prince 
 of the blood-royal — no other pretender to set up; 
 so the prelates and thanes, with no small repug- 
 nance, were compelled to bestow the crown on the 
 son of the mui-deress ; and Dimstan, as primate, at 
 the festival of Easter (a. d. 979) put it on his weak 
 head in the old chapel of Kingston, at this time 
 the usual crowning place of the Saxon monarchs. 
 The vehement monk, who Wiis now soured Ijy 
 a^e, and exasperated at the tenipcrai-y tiiumph
 
 A.D. 901—1042.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 105 
 
 of his enemies, is said to have pronounced a male- 
 diction on Etheh-ed, even in the act of crowning 
 him, and to have given public vent to a prophecy 
 of ■\voe and misery, which some think was well 
 calculated to insure its 
 own fulfilment ; for 
 Dunstan already en- 
 joyed among the na- 
 tion the repvilalion of 
 being both a seer and 
 a saint, and the words 
 he dropped could hard- 
 ly fail of being trea- 
 sured in the memory 
 of the people, and of 
 depressing their spii-its 
 at the ajiproach of dan- 
 ger. Etheh-ed, more- 
 over, began liis reign 
 with an luilucky nick- 
 name, which it is be- 
 lieved was given him 
 by Dunstan — he was 
 
 CRO^VNlSG-STo^rE of the Saxon Kings.'— J. W. Archer, 
 from his drawing on the spot. 
 
 called "the Unready." 
 His personal and moral qualities were not cal- 
 culated to overcome a bad prestige, and the 
 unpopular circumstances attending his succes- 
 sion: in him the people lost their warm afl'ec- 
 tion for the blood of Alfred, and by degi-ees 
 many of them contemplated with indiflerence, if 
 not with pleasure, the transfer of the crown to a 
 prince of Danish race. This latter feeling more 
 than half exjilaius the events of his reign. Dm-- 
 ing the first jiai't of the minority, the infamous 
 Elfi'ida enjoyed great authority, but as the king 
 advanced in years, her influence declined, and, 
 followed by the execrations of nobles and people 
 (even by those of her own party), she at last re- 
 tired to expiate her sins, according to the fashion 
 of the tunes, in building and endowing monas- 
 teries. 
 
 Although the Northmen settled in the Dane- 
 l;\gh had so frequently troubled the peace of the 
 kingdom, and had probably at no period re- 
 noxmced the hope of gaining an ascendency over 
 the Saxons of the island, and placing a king of 
 their own race on the throne of England, the 
 Danes beyond sea had cei-tainly made no for- 
 midable attacks since the time of Athelstane, and 
 of late years had scarcely been heai'd of. This 
 suspension of hostility on theu- part is not to be 
 
 ' Tliis stone w as invested with a traditionary sanctity some- 
 what siniilai- to that in the coronation chair at Westminster Ab- 
 bey. It foi-merly stood in the ancient chapel of St. Mary, at King- 
 ston-on-Thames, wliich fell down about fifty years ago. It haa 
 been recently set up upon a new pedestal in the High Street of 
 that town. 
 
 ** The Anglo-S<ixon kings were crowned at Winchester until 
 that city was burned by the Danes, in the reign of Ethelbert, 
 when the court was removed to Kingston. Edward (called the 
 Elder) was the first Anglo-Saxon king crowned at Kingston."— 
 Brayley's Suri-ei/. 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 attributed solely to the wisdom and valour of tlic 
 intermediate Saxon kings. There were great 
 political causes connected with tlie histories of 
 Norway and Denmark, and France and Nor- 
 mandy; and circum- 
 stances which, by giv- 
 ing the Danes employ- 
 ment and settlement in 
 other countries, kept 
 ihera away from Eng- 
 land. But now, when 
 un fortunately there was 
 neither wisdom nor va- 
 lour in the king and 
 council, nor spirit in 
 the people, these ex- 
 traneous circumstances 
 had changed, and in- 
 stead of checking, they 
 tlu-ew the men of the 
 North on our shores. 
 Sweyn, a son of the 
 King of Denmark, had quarrelled with his father, 
 and been banished from his home. Young, brave, 
 and euterprisiug, he soon collected a host of ma- 
 riners and adventurers round his standard, with 
 whom he resolved to obtain wealth, if not a home 
 in our island. His first operations were on a 
 small scale, intended merely to try the state of 
 defence of the island, and wore probably not con- 
 ducted by himself. 
 
 In the third year of Ethelred's reign (a.d. 981), 
 the Danish raven was seen floating in Soutliamp- 
 ton Water, and that city was plundered, and its 
 inhabitants carried into slavery. In the com-se 
 of a few months Chester and London partook of 
 the fate of Southampton, and attacks were mul- 
 tiplied on different points — in the north, in the 
 south, and in the west — as far as the extremity of 
 Cornwall. These operations were continued for 
 some years, during which Etheh'ed seems to have 
 been much occuijied by quarrels with his bishops 
 and nobles. Alfere, the Mercian, who had con- 
 S]5ii'ed with Elfrida against Edward the Martyr, 
 was dead, and his extensive earldom had fallen 
 to his son Alfric, a notorious name in these an- 
 nals. In consequence of a cons])iracy, real or 
 alleged, this Alfric was banished. The weak 
 king was soon obliged to recal him, but tlie re- 
 vengefid nobleman never forgot the past. In the 
 yeai- 991 a more formidable host of the sea-kings 
 i-avaged all tliat part of East Anglia that lay be- 
 tween Ipswich and Maldon, and won a gi'eat 
 battle, in which Earl Brilhnoth, a Dane by de- 
 scent, but a Christian, and a friend to the estab- 
 li.shed government, was slain. Etheh-ed, then, 
 for the first time, had recourse to the fatal ex- 
 pedient of purchasing their forbeai-auce witli 
 I money. Ten thousand ])ound3 of silver were paid 
 14
 
 lOG 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil jkd Militauy. 
 
 down, and tlie sea-kings departed for a while, 
 can-ying with tliem the heail of Earl Brithnoth 
 as a trophy. In the course of the following yeai- 
 the wltenagemot adopted a wiser plan of defence. 
 A formidable fleet was collected at London, and 
 well manned and supplied with arms. But this 
 wise measure was defeated by Alfrio the Mercian, 
 who, in his hatred to the king, had opened a cor- 
 respondence with the Danes, and being intrusted 
 with a principal command in the fleet, he went 
 over to them on the eve of a battle, with many 
 of his ships. The traitor of com'se escaped, and 
 Etheh-ed wreaked his savage vengeance on Elf gar, 
 the son of Alfric, whose eyes he put out. In 993 
 a Danish host landed in the north, and took Bam- 
 borough Castle by storm. Three chiefs, of Dan- 
 ish origin, who had been appointed to command 
 the natives, threw down the standard of Etheh-ed, 
 and ranged themselves under the Danish raven. 
 AJl through Northumbria, and the rest of the 
 Danelagh, the Danish settlers gradually either 
 joined theu- still pagan brethren from the Baltic, 
 cr offered them no resistance. In the meantime, 
 the fortimes of Sweyn the exile had undergone 
 a change. By the murder of his father he had 
 ascended the throne of Denmai-k, and, formidable 
 himself, he had gained a powerful ally in Olave, 
 King of Norway, a prince of the true Scandina- 
 vian race, a son of an old pirate, who, in former 
 times, had often pillaged the coast of England. 
 In 994 the two North kings ravaged all the south- 
 ern provinces of om- island, doing " unspeakable 
 harm," and meeting nowhere with a valid re- 
 sist.ance. It was again agreed to treat, and buy 
 them off with money. Theii- pretensions of 
 course rose, and this time sixteen thousand pounds 
 of silver were exacted and paid. By a clause in 
 the treaty, Olave and some chiefs were bound to 
 embrace the Chi'istian religion, Sweyn had been 
 baptized ah-eady more than once, and had re- 
 lapsed to idolatry. One of the chiefs boasted 
 that ho had been washed twenty times hi the wa- 
 ter of baptism, by which we are to understand 
 that the marauder had submitted to what he con- 
 sidered an idle ceremony, whenever it suited his 
 convenience. Olave, the Norwegian king, how- 
 ever, stood at the font with a better spu-it ; his 
 conversion was sincere ; and an oath he there 
 took, never again to molest the English, was 
 honoiu'ably kept. During the fom- following 
 yeai'S the Danes continued their desultoi-y inva- 
 sions ; and when (in 998) Etheh-ed had got ready 
 a strong fleet and army to ojipose them, some of 
 his own oflicers g.ave the plunderers timely warn- 
 ing, and they retreated unhurt. On their next 
 returning in force (a.d. 1001), Ethelred seems to 
 have had neither fleet nor army in a condition to 
 meet them ; for, after two conflicts by land, they 
 were allowed to ravage the whole kingdom from 
 
 the Isle of Wiglit to the Bristol Channel, and 
 then tlicy v^ere stayed, not by steel, but by gold. 
 Their price of course still rose ; this time twcnty- 
 four thousand pounds were paid to purchase their 
 departui'e. These large sums were raised by 
 direct taxation upon land ; and the " Dane-geld," 
 as it was called, was an oppressive and humiliat- 
 ing bm'den, that became permanent. Nor was 
 this all. The treaties of peace or truce generally 
 allowed bands of the marauders to winter in the 
 island, at Southampton or some other town; and 
 during their stay the English people, whom they 
 had plundered and beggared, were obliged to feed 
 them. Their appetites had not decreased since 
 the days of Guthrun and Hasting. 
 
 As if the Danes were not enemies enough, 
 Ethelred had engaged in hostilities with Eichard 
 II., Duke of Normandy, and had even, at one 
 time, prepared an armament to invade his do- 
 minions. The quarrel was made up by the 
 mediation of the pope; and then the English 
 king, who was a widower, thought of strength- 
 ening his hr.nls by marrying Emma, the Duke of 
 Normandy's sister. The alliance, wliich laid the 
 first gi-ounds for the pretext of Norman claims 
 on England, afterwards pressed by William the 
 Conqueror, was readily accepted by the Duke 
 Eichard, and in the spring of 1002 Emma, " the 
 Flower of Normandy," as she was styled, arrived 
 at the coiu-t of Etheh'ed, where she was received 
 with gi-eat pomp 
 
 The long rejoicings for this maiTiage were 
 scarcely over when a memorable atrocity covered 
 the land with amazement, blood, and horror. 
 This was the sudden massacre of the Danes, per- 
 petrated by the people with whom they were 
 living intermixed as fellow-subjects. It is uni- 
 versally asserted that the plot was laid before- 
 hand, the fatal order given by the king himself ; 
 and there is little in Ethelred's general conduct 
 and character to awaken a doubt in his favour. 
 At the same time, be it observed, the people must 
 have been as guilty, as secret, as treacherous, as 
 cruel as the king, and must have entered fully 
 into the sjimt which dictated the bloody order of 
 which they were to be the executioners. Such 
 being the case, we think they were fully equal to 
 the conception of the plot themselves, and that, 
 from the loose, unguarded manner in which the 
 Danes lived scattered among them, such a mode 
 of disposing of them would naturally suggest 
 itself to a very imperfectly civilized people, mad- 
 dened by the harsh treatment and insults of their 
 invaders. In the simultaneous massacre of the 
 French invaders aU over Sicily, in 1282, the same 
 mystery was observed ; but it is still a matter of 
 doubt whether the " Sicilian Vespers " were or- 
 dered by John of Procida, or sprung spontane- 
 ously from the people. These two cases, which
 
 A.v. 001 — 101-2.' 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 107 
 
 belmg alike to the class of the terrible acts of 
 vengeance that signalize a nation's desjiair, are 
 nearly jiarallcl in their circumstances; and in 
 England, as afterwards in Sicily, it was the in- 
 sults offered by the iuvadei-s to their women that 
 extinguished tlie last sentiments of humanity in 
 the hearts of the people. The outrages of the 
 Danish pagans were extreme. According to the 
 okl chroniclers, they made the English yeomanry 
 among whom they were settled, perform the most 
 menial offices for them ; they held their houses 
 as their own, and, eating and drinking of the 
 best, scantly left the real proprietor Iiis fill of tlie 
 worst; the peasantiy were so sorely oppressed 
 that, out of fear and dread, they called them, in 
 evoy house where they had rule, " Lord Danes." 
 Their wives and daughters were everywhere a 
 prey to their lust, and when the English mado 
 resistance or remonstrance, they were killed, or 
 beaten and laughed at. All this description 
 seems to point at soldiers and adventurers, and 
 men recently settled in the land, and not to the 
 converted married Danes, who liad been living a 
 long time in different parts of the country (as 
 well as in the Danelagh, where they were too 
 numerous to be touched), who had conti-acted 
 quiet, orderly habits, and successfully cultivated 
 the friendship of the English. It was resolved, 
 however, to destroy them all at one blow ; the 
 good with the bad, the innocent infant at the 
 breast with the hai'dened ruffian, the neighbour 
 of years with the intruder of yesterday. As the 
 stoiy is told, Ethelred sent secretly to all his good 
 burghs, cities, and towns, charging the rulers 
 thereof to rise, all on a fixed day and hour, and, 
 by falling suddenly on the Danes, exterminate 
 them from the land by sword and fii'e. By what- 
 ever means this simultaneous movement was ar- 
 ranged, it certainly took place. On Nov. 13, 1002 
 (the holy festival of St. Brice),tlie Danes, dispersed 
 through a gi-eat part of England, were attacked 
 by surprise, and massacred, without distinction 
 of quality, age, or sex, by their hosts and neigh- 
 bours. GunhiUIa, the sister of Sweyn, King of 
 Denmark, who had embraced Christianity, and 
 married an English earl of Danish descent, after 
 being made to witness the murder of her husband 
 and child, was barbarously murdered herself. 
 
 This talc of horror was soon wafted across the 
 ocean, wdiere Sweyn prepared for a deadly re- 
 venge. He assembled a fleet more numerous than 
 any that had hitherto invaded England. The 
 Danish wan-iors considered the cause a national 
 and sacred one ; and in the assembled host there 
 was not a slave, or an emancipated slave, or a sin- 
 gle old man, but every combatant was a freeman, 
 the son of a freeman, and in the prime of life.' 
 
 ' Sax. Chron, 
 
 These clioice wai-riors embarked in lofty ships, 
 e\cry one of whicli bore the ensign or standard 
 of its sejiarate commander. Some carried at their 
 prow such figures as lions, bulls, dolpliins, dra- 
 gons, or armed men, all made of metal, and gayly 
 gilded ; others carried on their topmast-head the 
 figures of large birds, as eagles and ravens, that 
 stretched out their wings and turned with the 
 wind; the sides of the shii)S were painted with 
 different bright coloui-s, and, larbo.ai-d and star- 
 board, from stem to stern, shields of burnished 
 steel were susiiended in even lines, and glittered 
 in the sun. Gold, silver, and embroidered ban- 
 ners were profusely displayed, and the whole 
 wealth of the pirates of (he Baltic was made to 
 contribute to this barbaric pomp. The ship that 
 l)ore the royal standard of Sweyn was moidded 
 in the form of an enormous serpent, the sharp 
 head of which formed the prow, while the length- 
 ening tail coiled over the poop. It was called 
 "The Great Dragon." The first jilace where the 
 avengers landed was near Exeter, and that im- 
 portant city was presently surrendered to them, 
 through the treachery of Ethelred's governor, a 
 Norman nobleman, and one of the train of fa- 
 vourites and dependents that had followed Queen 
 Emma. After plundering and dismantling Exe- 
 ter, the Danes marched through the country into 
 Wiltshire, committing every excess that a thirst 
 for vengeance and rapine could suggest. In all 
 the towns and villages through which they passed, 
 after gayly eating the repasts the Saxons were 
 forced to pre]iare for them, they slew their host.s, 
 and, departing, set fire to their houses.- At last 
 an Anglo-Saxon army was brought up to oppose 
 their destructive progi'ess ; but this force was 
 commanded by another traitor — by Alfrie the 
 Mercian — who had already betrayed Ethelred, 
 and whose son, in consequence, had been barba- 
 rously blinded by the king. We are not informed 
 by what means he had been restored to favour 
 and employment after such extreme mea.sures, 
 but Alfrie now took the opportunity offered liim 
 for further revenge au the king. Ho pretended 
 to be seized with a sudden illness, called off his 
 men when they were about to join battle, and 
 permitted Sweyn to retire with his ai-my and his 
 immense booty through Salisbury to the sea- 
 coast. In the following year Norwich was taken, 
 plundered, and burned, and the same fate befell 
 nearly every town in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cam- 
 bridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and Lincolnshire. 
 The Danes then (a.d. 1004) returned to the Bal- 
 tic, retreating from a famine which their devas- 
 tations had caused in England 
 
 By marrying the Norman princess Emma, Eth- 
 elred had hoped to secure the assistance of her 
 
 2 Hen. Hunting. Uiit.
 
 108 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 brother, Duke Richnr'l, ag.ninst the D.mes ; but 
 it was soon fouiiil that the only Norm.ans wlio 
 crossed the Channel -were a set of intriguing, am- 
 bitious courtiei-s, hungry for English places and 
 honours ; and by his inconstancy and neglect of 
 his wife, Elhelred so irritated that princess that 
 she made bitter complaints to her brother, and 
 caused a fresh quarrel between England and 
 Normandy. Duke Richard seized all the native 
 English who chanced to be in his dominions, and 
 after shamefully killing some, threw the rest 
 into prison According to Walsingham, and some 
 of the old Norman writers, Etheh-ed then actu- 
 ally sent a force to invade Normandy, and this 
 force, after effecting a landing near Coutances, 
 was thoroughly defeated. We are inclined to 
 believe that the expedition was less important 
 than the Norman chronicles represent it, but it 
 shows the impolicy of the Saxon king, and had, 
 no doubt, some effect in weakening an already 
 ■weak and dispu-ited nation. 
 
 In 1006 Sweyn, whose vengeance and rapacity 
 were not yet satisfied, retm-ned, and carried fire 
 and sword over a great part of the kingdom ; and 
 when it was resolved in the great council to buy 
 him off with gold, .£36,000 was the sum de- 
 manded. The frequent raising of these large 
 sums utterly exhausted the people, whose doors 
 were almost constantly beset either by the king's 
 tax-gatherers or the Danish marauders. Those 
 few who had, as yet, the good fortune of escaping 
 the pillage of the Danes, could not now escape 
 the exactions of Ethelred, and, under one form 
 or another, they were siu-e of being plundered of 
 all they possessed. By an insolent and cruel 
 mockery, the royal tax-gatherers were accustomed 
 to demand an additional sum, from those who 
 had paid money to the Danes directly, in order 
 to save then- persons and their houses from de- 
 straction, affecting to consider such transactions 
 with the enemy as illegal. 
 
 In 1008 the people were oppressed with a new 
 burden ; but had this been properly apportioned, 
 had the coimtry been less e:^austed, and had the 
 measure for which the money was to be applied 
 been carried vigorously and honestly into effect, 
 it seems as if it ought to have saved England 
 from the Danes. Every 310 hides of land were 
 charged with the building and equipping of one 
 ship for the defence of the kingdom; and in ad- 
 dition to this, every nine hides of land were bound 
 to provide one man, anned with a helmet and 
 
 * " In the earlier years of Ethelred, the struggle commenced 
 between the two races of the inhabitants of England. The supe- 
 riority of the Saxons in art and wealth was, for a time, compen- 
 sated by the inexhaustible aid which their opponents drew from 
 Scandinavia, now almost united under one king paramount. 
 Tlie Saxon people continued faithful, though dispirited. But 
 the defection and treacheiy of several of the provincial chiefs, 
 tisiiecially of Elfric, Earl of Mercia. seem to indicate a grooving 
 
 iron breastplate. It is calculated that, if all the 
 land which still nominally belonged to Ethelred 
 had supplied its proper contingent, more than 
 800 ships and about S.'JjOOO armed men would 
 have been provided. The force actually raised 
 is not stated, but, in spite of the exhaustion of 
 the country, it appears to have been large ; some 
 of the old writera stating, particularly as to the 
 marine, that there never were so many ships got 
 together in England before. This fleet, however, 
 was soon rendered valueless by dissensions and 
 treachei-y at home. Ethelred, who had always a 
 favourite of some kind, was now governed by 
 Edric, a man of low birth, but eloquent, clever, 
 and ambitious He obtained in mari-iage one of 
 the king's daughters, and about the same time 
 one of the highest offices in the state. His family 
 shai-ed, as usual, in his promotion. Brihtric, 
 the brother of this powerful favourite, conspired 
 against Earl Wulfnoth. Wulfnoth fled, and car- 
 ried twenty of the new shijjs with him, with 
 which he plimdered all the southern coast of 
 England, even as if he had been a Danish pii-ate. 
 Eighty other ships were placed under the com- 
 mand of Brihtric, who pursued the man he had 
 sought to ruin. A stoi-m ai'ose ; these eighty 
 vessels were wrecked on the coast, where Wulf- 
 noth succeeded in bm-ning them all ; and then 
 the rest of the king's fleet appear to have dis- 
 persed in anarchy and confusion. This story, 
 like so many othera of the period, is imperfectly 
 told; but the annalists agree in stating that the 
 new navy was dissipated or lost ; and that thus 
 perished the last hope of England. 
 
 As soon as the intelligence of this disaster 
 reached the mouth of the Baltic, a large army of 
 Danes, called, fi-om their leader, " Thurkill's host," 
 set sail for England, where, dm-ing the tlu-ee fol- 
 lowing yeara, they committed incalculable mis- 
 chief, and by the end of that period had made 
 themselves mastei-s of a large part of the king- 
 dom. They now and then sold short and uncer- 
 tain truces to the Saxons, but they never evinced 
 an intention of leaving the island, as Sweyn had 
 left it on former occasions, when well loaded with 
 gold. As Ethelred's difficulties increased, he was 
 surrounded more and more by the basest treach- 
 erj', and he seems, at la.st, not to have had a 
 single officer on whom he could depend. During 
 this lamentable period of baseness and cowardice, 
 a noble instance of courage and firmness occm-red 
 in the person of a churchman.' AJphege, Arch- 
 familiarity between men of rank in both nations, and a disposi- 
 tion to regard the war as the contest of two n.atioual parties for 
 the mastery. Three times did Ethelred purchase a moraentarj- 
 respite from their ravages by large bribes, which served to insure 
 their return. In the midst of these ignominious submissions, 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, <a prisoner in the Danish camp, 
 acted with a magnanimity more signal than that which patriotic 
 fiction ascribed to Regulus." — Sir James Mackijitosh.
 
 A.D. 901-1012.1 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 ]0.1 
 
 bishop of Cauterbury, defcndcil tliat city for 
 twenty days, and when a traitoi- opened its gates 
 to the Danes, and he was made prisoner and 
 loaded with chains, he refused to purchase li- 
 berty and life with gold, which he knew must be 
 wi-uug from the people. Tii'ed out by his resist- 
 ance, they thought to overcome it by lowering 
 the rate of his ransom; and they proposed to take 
 a small sum from him, if he would engage to ad- 
 vTse the king to pay them a further amount as a 
 largess. " I do not possess so much money as 
 you demand from me," replied the Saxon arch- 
 bishop, " and I will not ask or take money from 
 anybody, nor will I advise my king against the 
 honour of my country." He continued immov- 
 able in this resolution, even refusing the means 
 of ransom voluntarily offered by his brother, say- 
 ing it would be treason in him to enrich, in any 
 degree, the enemies of England. The Danes, 
 more covetous of money than desirous of his 
 blood, frequently renewed then- demands. "You 
 press me in vain," said Aljiliege ; " I am not the 
 man to provide Clu-istian flesh for pagan teeth, 
 by robbing my poor countrjonen to enrich then- 
 enemies." The Danes at length lost patience, 
 and one day, when they were assembled at a 
 drunken banquet, they caused him to be di-agged 
 into their presence. " Gold, bishop ! give us 
 gold! gold! " was their cry, as they gathered about 
 him in menacing attitudes. Still unmoved, he 
 looked round that cii'cle of fierce men, who pre- 
 sently broke up in rage and disorder, and i-un- 
 ning to a heap of bones, horns, and jaw-bones, 
 the remains of their gi'oss feast, they threw these 
 things at him, until he fell to the gi-ound half 
 dead. A Danish pirate, whom he had previously 
 converted, or, at least, baptized with his own 
 hands, then took his battle-axe, and put an end 
 to the agony and life of Archbishop Alphege.' 
 
 This heroic example had no eflect upon King 
 Etheh-ed, who continued to pay gold as before. 
 After receiving £48,000 (for still their demands 
 rose), and the formal cession of several counties, 
 Thm-kill took the oaths of peace, and became, 
 with many of his chiefs, and a large detachment 
 of his host, the ally and soldier of the weak Saxon 
 monarch. It is probable that Earl Thm-kill en- 
 tered the service of Ethelred for the purjiose of 
 betraying him, and acted all along in concert vnth 
 Sweyn ; but the Danish king afl'ected to consider 
 the compact as treason to himself, and, with a 
 show of jealousy towards Thurkill, prepared a 
 fresh expedition, which he gave out was equally 
 directed against Ethelred and his vassal Thur- 
 kill. The fact at all events was, that Sweyn, who 
 had so often swept the laud from east to west, 
 from north to south, had now resolved to attempt 
 
 the jiermancnt conquest of oiu- islaml. lie .'iailed 
 up tlie 1 [umber with a numerous and splendid 
 fleet, and landed as near as he could to the city cf 
 York. As the Danes advanced into the country, 
 they stuck their lances into the soil, or threw 
 them into the current of the rivers, in sign of 
 their entire domination over England. They 
 m;u'ched escorted by fire and sword, their ordi- 
 nai-y satellites.- Neai-ly all the inhabitants of 
 the Danelagh joined them at once: the men of 
 Northumliria, Lindesey, and the " Five P.urglis" 
 welcomed the banner of Sweyn, and finally all the 
 " host" north of Watling-street took up amis in 
 his favour.^ Even the provinces in the centre 
 of England, where the Dani.sh settlers or troops 
 were far less numerous, prepared themselves for 
 a quiet surrender. Leaving his fleet to the care 
 of his son Canute, Sweyn conducted the main 
 body of his army to the south, exacting horses 
 and provisions as he marched rapidly along. 
 Oxford, Winchester, and other important towns 
 threw open their gates at his approach ; but he 
 wa.s obliged to reth-e from before the walls of 
 London, and the determined valoiu- of its citi- 
 zens, among whom the king had taken refuge. 
 Sweyn then turned to the we.st, where he was re- 
 ceived with open arms. The eoldermen of De- 
 vonshire, and nearly every other thane in that 
 part of the kingdom, repaired to his head-quarters 
 at Bath, and did homage to him as their lawful 
 or chosen sovereign. Seeing the whole kingdom 
 falling from him, Ethelred abandoned London, 
 which soon followed the general examj)le, and 
 suljmitted to the Dane.s. This unready king then 
 fled to the Isle of Wight, whence he secretly sent 
 his children with Emma, his Norman wife, to the 
 court of her brother at Eouen. He was for some 
 short time doubtful where he should lay his own 
 head ; for, after the hostilities and insults which 
 had passed between them, he reasonably doubted 
 the good-will of his brother-in-law. The Duke 
 of Normandy, however, not only received Eiuma 
 and her children with great kindness, but ofl'ered 
 a safe and honourable asylum to Etlielred, which 
 that luckless prince was fain to accept as his only 
 resoiu'ce. 
 
 SWEYN was now (about the middle of Jan., 
 1013) acknowledged as "full King of Euglaud;" 
 but the power which had been obtained with so 
 much labour, and at the expense of so much 
 bloodshed and wretchedness, remained to the 
 conqueror a very short time. He died suddenly 
 at Gainsborough ; and, only six weeks after the 
 time when he had been allowed to depart for 
 Normandy, "abandoned, deserted, and betrayed" 
 by all, Ethelred was invited by the Saxon nobles 
 and prelates to return and take possession of his 
 
 * Vita Alpliegi, in Anglia Sacra; Ingulf; Citron. Sax.; Eatl- - Scriptores Rer. Danic.j quoted in ThieiTy's ffistoire de la 
 riier; Rrompton. I Ctnqucte; Brompton. ^ C/tron. Sax.
 
 HO 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 kingdom, wliioh w.-i.? pleilged to liis defence and 
 support — provided onh/ (hat he wonld govern tliem 
 better than, he had done before. Etlielred, before 
 venturing liimself, sent over liis son Edward, 
 with solemn promises and assurances. Pledges 
 were exchanged for the faithful perfonuance of 
 the new compact between king and people.' A 
 sentence of perpetual ov-tlawry was pronounced 
 against every king of Danish name and race ; and 
 before the end of Lent, Ethelred wa,s restored to 
 those dominions which he had already misgo- 
 verned thirty-five years. In the meantime, the 
 Danish army in England had proclaimed Canute, 
 the son of Sweyn, as king of the whole land; and 
 in the northern provinces they and their adher- 
 ents were in a condition to maintain the election 
 they had made Indeed, north of Watling-street 
 the Danes were all-powerful ; and Canute, though 
 beset by some difficulties, was not of a character 
 to relinquish his hold of the kingdom without a 
 hard struggle. A sanguinary warfare was re- 
 newed, and mm-dering and bribing, lietraying 
 and betrayed, Ethelred was fast losing ground, 
 when he died of disease, about thr-ee years after 
 his return from Normandy.'- 
 
 The law of succession continued as loose as 
 ever ; and in seasons of extreme difficulty like the 
 pi'esent, wdien so much depended on the personal 
 character and valour of the sovereign, it was alto- 
 gether neglected or desjjised. Setting aside Eth- 
 eh-ed's legitimate children, the Saxons chose for 
 their king a natural son, EDMUND, surnamed 
 Ironside, who had already given many proofs of 
 courage in the field and wisdom in the council. 
 By general consent, indeed, Edmund was a hero; 
 but the country was too much worn out and di-' 
 vided, and the treasons that had torn his father's 
 coui-t and camp were too prevalent in his own, 
 to permit of his restoring Saxon independence 
 throughout the kingdom. After twice relieving 
 London, when besieged by Canute and all his 
 host, and fighting five pitched battles with un- 
 varying valour, but with various success. Ironside 
 proposed that he and his rival should decide their 
 claims in a single combat, saying " it was pity so 
 many lives should be lost and perilled for their 
 ambition."' Canute declined the duel, saying 
 that he, as a man of slender make, would stand 
 no chance with the stalwart Edmund; and he 
 added, that it would be wiser and better for them 
 both to divide England between them, even as 
 their forefathers had done in other times. This 
 proposal is said to have been received with en- 
 
 ' "This remai-kable transaction laid the foundations for the 
 greatest alterations in the principles of the constitution. With 
 the full acknowledgment of hereditary right, the nation stipu- 
 lated that tile king should not abuse his power. They imposed 
 terms upon Ethelred — they vindicated their national liberty, at 
 the same time that they respected the sanctity of tho crown ; 
 and in the concessions made by Ethelred we may discern the 
 
 thusiastic joy by both armies; and however the 
 negotiation may have lieen conducted, and what- 
 ever was the precise line of demarcation settled 
 between them, it was certainly agreed that Ca- 
 nute should reign over the north, and ICdmund 
 Ironside over the south, with a nominal superi- 
 ority over the Dane's portion. The brave Eil- 
 miind did not survive the treaty more than two 
 months. His death, which took place on the 
 feast of St. Andrew, was sudden and mysterious. 
 As Canute profited so much by it as to become 
 sole monarch of England immediately after, it is 
 generally believed he planned his assassination ; 
 but judging from the old chroniclers who lived 
 at or near the time, it is not clear who were the 
 contrivers and actual perpetrators of the deed, or 
 whether he was killed at all There is even a 
 doubt as to the place of his death, whether it was 
 London or Oxford. 
 
 CANUTE. A.D. 1017. Although the death of 
 Edmund removed all obstacles, and the south 
 
 Canute and his Queen. — From an illumination in the Registry 
 of Hyd** Abbey. 
 
 lay prostrate before the Danes, Canute began 
 with a show of law and moderation. A gi-eat 
 council of the bishops, "duces," and "ojjtimates" 
 was convened at London; and before them Ca- 
 nute appealed to those Sa.xous who had been wit- 
 nesses to the convention and treaty of pai-tition 
 between himself and Edmund, and called upon 
 
 germ of Magna Charta, and of all the subseqilent compacts be- 
 tween the king and people of England." — Palgi'ave, HUt. of tht 
 AiKjto- Saxons, p. 30.1. 
 
 - " His death put an end to a reign in wliich all the elements 
 of Anglo-Saxon society seemed to have fallen into the most com- 
 plete and the most frightful dissolution." — Bomiechose, Lcquatrt 
 ConqueCt'8 de V AngLterre, t. ii. p. 2S. ^ Malnietlj.
 
 A.D. 901—1042.1 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 Ill 
 
 them to state the terms upon wliich the com]i.ao(. 
 was concluded. Intimidated by force, or won by 
 promises, and the hopes of coiieiliatiuu; the favour 
 of the powerful survivor, who seemed certain to 
 be kuig, with or without their consent, they all 
 loudly testified that Edmund had never intended 
 to reserve any right of succession to his brothei-s, 
 the sons of Ethelred, who were absent in Nor- 
 mandy, and that it was his (Edmund's) express 
 wish that Canute should be the guardian of his 
 omi children during their infancy. The most im- 
 perfect and faint semblance of a right being thus 
 established, the Saxou cliiefs took an oath of fide- 
 lity to Canute, as King of all England ; and Canute, 
 in retm'n, swore to be just and benevolent, and 
 clasped theii- hands with his naked hand, in sign 
 of sincerity. A full amnesty was promised ; but 
 the promise had scai'cely passed the royal lips 
 ere Canute began to proscribe those whom he had 
 promised to love. The principal of the Saxon 
 chiefs who had formerly opposed him, and the 
 relations of Edmund and Etheh'cd, were banished 
 or put to death. " He who brings me the head 
 of one of my enemies," said the ferocious Dane, 
 "shall be de;irer to me than a brother." The 
 witeuagemot or parliament, which had so re- 
 cently passed the same sentence against the 
 Danish princes, now excluded all the descendants 
 of Etheh-ed from the throne. They declared 
 Edwy, a growm-up brother of Ironside, an out- 
 law, and when he was pm-sued and mm-dered by 
 Canute, they tacitly acknowledged the justice of 
 that execution. 
 
 Edmund and Edward, the two infant sous of 
 the deceased king, Edmund Ironside, were seized, 
 and a feeling of shame, mingled perhaps with 
 some fear of the popular odium, preventing him 
 from murdering them in England, Canute sent 
 them over sea to his ally and vassal, the King of 
 Sweden, whom be requested to dispose of them 
 in such a manner as should remove his uneasiness 
 on their account. He meant that they should 
 be murdered ; but the Swedish king, moved by 
 the innocence of the little children, instead of 
 executing the horrid commission, sent them to 
 the distant court of the King of Hungary, where 
 they were aflectionately and honourably enter- 
 tained, beyond the reach of Canute. Of these 
 two orphans, Edmund died without issue, but 
 Edward married a daughter of the German em- 
 peror, by whom he became father to Edgar 
 Atheling, Christina, and Margaret. Edgar will 
 be frequently mentioned in our subsequent pages; 
 Margaret became the wife of Malcolm, King of 
 Scotland, and through her the rights of tlie line 
 of AKred and Cerdic were transmitted to Mal- 
 colm's progeny, after the Nomian conquest of 
 England. There were stiU two princes whose 
 claims to the crown might some day disquiet 
 
 Canute, but they were out of his reach, iu Nor- 
 mandy. These were Edward and Alfred, the 
 sons of King Ethelred by Emma. Their uncle 
 Kichard, the Norman duke, at first sent an em- 
 bassy to tlie Dane, demanding, on their behalf, 
 the restitution of the kingdom; but though his 
 power was gi'eat, he adopted no measiu-es likely 
 to induce Canute to a surrender or p.artitiou of 
 the territories he was actually possessed of; and 
 very soon after, he entered into close and friendly 
 negotiations with that enemy of his nephews, and 
 even offered him their own mother ami his sister 
 in marriage. According to some historians, the 
 first overtures to this unnatural marriage, which 
 was followed by most unnatural consequences, 
 proceeded from Canute. However this may be, 
 the Dane wooed the widowed "Flower of Nor- 
 mandy;" and the heai-tless Emma, forgetfid of 
 the children she had borne, and only anxious to 
 become again the wife of a king, readily gave her 
 hand to the man who had caused the ruin and 
 hastened the death of her husband Etheli-ed. In 
 this extraordinaiy transaction an old chronicler 
 is at a loss to decide whether the greater share 
 of dishonour falls to Queen Emma or to her 
 brother, Duke Richard.' Having soon become 
 the mother of another son, by Canute, this Nor- 
 man woman neglected and despised her fii'st-born; 
 and those two princes, being detained at a dis- 
 tance from England, became by degi-ees strangers 
 to their own country, forgot its language and its 
 manners, and gi-ew up Normans instead of Sax- 
 ons. The Danish dynasty of Canute -waa not 
 destined to take root; but the cii-cumstance just 
 alluded to most essentially contributed to place 
 a long line of Norman princes upon the thror.e 
 of EngUuid. 
 
 Canute was not one that loved blood for the 
 sake of bloodshedding. When he had disposed 
 of all those who gave liim fear or umbrage, he 
 stayed his hand, and was praised, like so many 
 other conquerors, for his merciful forbearance. 
 The Danish warriors insulted, robbed, and sorely 
 oppressed the Saxons, and he himself wrimg 
 from them more "geld" than they had ever paid 
 before; but by degi-ees Canute assumed a mild 
 tone towards his new subjects, and jjartially suc- 
 ceeded in gaining their good-will. Tliey followed 
 him willingly to his foreign wars, of which there 
 was no lack, for, besides that of England, Cainito 
 now lield, or pretended to, the crowns of Den- 
 mark, Sweden, and Norway. In these distant 
 wars the Saxons, who had not been able to de- 
 fend themselves, fought most bravely under their 
 own conqueror, for the enslaving of other nations. 
 But this is a case of very connnon occurrence, 
 both in ancient and modern history. Canute's 
 
 1 Malmesb,
 
 112 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 last luilitary exjiedition (a.d.1017-9) was against 
 the Cumbrians and Scots. Duncan, the reguhis 
 or under-king of Cumbria, i-efused homage and 
 allegiance to the D.aue, on the ground that he 
 was an usurjier ; and Malcolm, King of Scotland, 
 equally maintained that the English throne be- 
 longed of right to the legitimate heir of King 
 Ethelred. Had the powerful Duke of Normandy 
 seconded these demonstrations in favour of his 
 nephews, Canute's crown might have been put in 
 jeopardy; but the Cumbrians and Scots were left 
 to themselves, and compelled to submit, in the 
 face of a most formidable army which the Dane 
 had collected. 
 
 These constant successes, and the enjoyment 
 of peace which followed tliem, together with the 
 sobering influence of increasing years, though he 
 was yet in the prime of manhood, softened the 
 conqueror's heart; and though he continued to 
 rule despotically, the latter part of his reign was 
 marked with no acts of cruelty, and was probably, 
 on the whole, a hajipier time than the English 
 had known since the days of Alfred and Athel- 
 stane.' He was cheerful and accessible to all his 
 subjects, without distinction of race or nation. 
 He took pleasiu'e in old songs and ballads, of 
 which both Danes and Saxons were passionately 
 fond ; he most liberally patronized the scalds, 
 minstrels, and, glee-men, the poets and musicians 
 of the time, and occasionally wrote verses him- 
 self, which were orally circulated among the 
 common people, and taken up and sung by them. 
 He could scarcely have hit upon a surer road 
 to popularity. A ballad of his composition con- 
 tinued long after to be a special favourite witli 
 the English peasantry. All of it is lost except 
 the fh'st verse, which has been preserved in the 
 Historia Elicnsis, or History of Ely. The inter- 
 esting royal fragment is simply this : - 
 
 Merie simgen the muneches biiinen Ely, 
 Tha Cnut Chiiijj reu there by. 
 Roweth, cniLtes, na^r the land, 
 And hear we tlies miuieches soeng. 
 
 Tliat is :— 
 
 Merrily 8uiig the monlia within Ely, 
 When Cnute king rowed there by. 
 Row, my knights, row near the land, 
 And hear we these monks' song. 
 
 The veraes are said to have been suggested to him 
 one day as he was rowing on the river Nene, 
 near Ely minster, by hearing the sweet and so- 
 
 1 "The character of the Scandinavian nations was in Eome 
 measure changed from what it had been dming their fij-st inva- 
 sions. They had embrjiced the Christian faith ; they were con- 
 solidated ijito great kingdoms ; they had lost some of that pre- 
 datory and ferocious spirit which a religion invented, it seems, 
 for ph-ates, had stimiilated. Those, too, who had long been 
 settled in England, became gradually more assimilated to the 
 natives, whose laws and language were not rjidicaUy diifei-ent 
 from their ovra. Hence the accession of a Danish line of kings 
 produced neither any evil nor any sensible change of polity. 
 Cut the English stiU outn^mlbered theii- conq^uerors, and eagerly 
 
 lemn music of the monastic choir floating over 
 tlie watei's." In his days of quiet the devotion 
 of the times had also its full influence on the 
 cliaracter of Canute. This son of an apo.state 
 Christian showed himself a zealous believer, a 
 friend to the monks, a visitor and collector of 
 relics, a founder of churches and monasteries. 
 His soul was assailed with remorse for the blood 
 he had shed and the other crimes he had com- 
 mitted ; and, in the year 1030, he detenuined to 
 make a pilgrimage to Rome. He started on his 
 journey to the Holy City with a wallet on his 
 back and a j)ilgrim's staff in his hand. He visited 
 all the most celebrated chm-ches on the road be- 
 tween the Low Countries and Rome, leaving at 
 every one of them some proof of his liberality. 
 According to a foreign chronicler, all the people 
 on his way had reason to exclaim — "The blessing 
 of God be upon the King of the English !" But 
 no one tells us how dearly this munificence cost 
 the English people. Eetui-niug from Rome, where 
 he resided a considerable time, in company with 
 other kings (there seems to have been a sort of 
 royal and ecclesiastical congi-ess held), he pxu-- 
 chased, in tlie city of Pavia, tlie arm of St. Augus- 
 tine, "the Great Doctor." This precious relic, for 
 wliich he paid 100 talents of gold and 100 talents 
 of silver, he afterwards presented to the church 
 of Coventry — an act of liberality by which, no 
 doubt, he gained many friends and many prayers. 
 
 On re-crossing the Alps, Canute did not make 
 his way direct to England, but went to his other 
 kingdom of Denmark, where, it appears, he had 
 still difficulties to settle, and where he remained 
 some months. He, however, despatclied the ab- 
 bot of Tavistock to England with a long letter 
 of explanation, command, and advice, addressed 
 "to Egelnoth the metroijolitan, to Archbishop 
 Alfric, to aU bishops and chiefs, and to all the 
 nation of tlie Englisli, both nobles and commoner;?, 
 gi"eeting." This curious letter, which appears to 
 have been carefully preserved, and which is 
 given entire by writers who lived near the time, 
 begins with explaining the motives of his pilgri- 
 mage, and the nature of tlie sacred omnijjotence 
 of tlie Church of Eome. It then continues: — 
 
 "And be it known to you that, at the solemn 
 festival of Easter, there was held a great assem- 
 blage of illustrious persons ; to wit, — the Pope 
 John, the Emjieror Conrad, and the chiefs of all 
 
 returned, when an opportunity arrived, to the ancient stock. 
 Edward the Confessor, notwithstanding his Norman favoui'itea, 
 waa endeared by the mildness of his ch.ar.acter to the English 
 nation ; and subsequent miseries gave a kind of pustliumous 
 credit to a reign not eminent either for good fortune or wise 
 government." — Hallam's Constitutional History of England, vol. 
 ii. p. 379. 
 
 - The meaning of the old English "merry," and "merrily," it 
 is to be remembered, was dift'erent from that which we now at- 
 tach to the words. A "merry" song was merely a sweet or 
 touching melody, and might be plaintive as well as gay.
 
 A.D. 901—1042.' 
 
 SAXON rERIOD. 
 
 IKi 
 
 the nations from Mount GiU-ganus to the neigh- 
 bouring sea. They all received me vrith distinc- 
 tion, and honoured me with rich presents, giving 
 me vases of gold and vessels of silver, and stufls 
 and garments of gi-eat price. I discoui-sed with 
 the Lord Pope, the Lord Emperor, and the other 
 princes, on the gi-ievances of my people, English 
 as well as Danes. I endeavoured to obtain for 
 my peoi>le justice and security in thcii- journeys 
 to Rome ; and, above all, that they might not 
 henceforth be delayed on the road by the shutting 
 up of the mountain passes, the erecting of bai-- 
 riere, and the exaction of heavy tolls. My de- 
 mands were granted both by the emperor and 
 King Rudolf, who are ma-sters of most of the 
 passes; and it was enacted that all my men, as 
 well merchants as pilgrims, should go to Rome 
 and return in full security, without being de- 
 tained at the baiTiers, or forced to pay unlawful 
 tolls. I also eomjjlained to the Lord Pope that 
 such enormous sums had been extorted up to this 
 day from my ai'chbishops, when, according to 
 custom, they went to the apostolic see to obtain 
 the pallium; and a decree was forthwith made 
 that this grievance likewise should cease. Where- 
 fore I return sincere thanks to God that I have 
 successfully done all that I intended to do, and 
 have fully satisfied all my wishes. And now, 
 therefore, be it knowTi to you all, that I have 
 dedicated my life to God, to govern my kingdoms 
 with justice, and to observe the right in all things. 
 If, in the time that is passed, and in the violence 
 and cai-elessness of youth, I have violated justice, 
 it is my intention, by the help of God, to make 
 full compensation. Therefore I beg and command 
 those unto whom I have intrusted the govern- 
 ment, as they wish to preserve my good-will, and 
 save their own souls, to do no injustice either to 
 rich or poor. Let those who are noble, and those 
 who ai'e not, equally obtain their rights, accord- 
 ing to the laws, from wliich no deviation shall be 
 allowed, either from fear of me, or through favour 
 to the powerful, or for the pm-pose of sujjplying 
 my treasury. / u-ant no money raised by injus- 
 tice." The last clause of this remarkable and 
 characteristic epistle had reference to the clergy. 
 " I entreat and order you all, the bishops, sheriffs, 
 and officers of my kingdom of England, by the 
 faith which you owe to God and to me, so to take 
 measm-es that before my retm-n among you all 
 our debts to the chm-ch be paid up; to wit, the 
 
 plough alma, the tithes on cattle of the present 
 year, the Peter-pence duo by each liouse in all 
 towns and villages, the tithes of fruit in the 
 mid<lle August, and the kirk-shot at the fc;ust of 
 St. Martin to the pai-ish church. And if, at my 
 return, these dues are not \xholly discharged, I 
 will punish the delinquents according to the 
 rigour of the laws, and without any grace. So 
 fare ye well."' 
 
 It does not clearly appear whether the old 
 writere refer the following often-repeated in- 
 cident to a period preceding or one subsequent 
 to this Roman pilgi-image. When at the height 
 of his power, and when all things seemed to bend 
 to his lordly will (so goes the story), Canute, dis- 
 gusted one day with the extravagiuit flatteries of 
 his courtiers, determined to read them a jiractical 
 lesson. He caused his throne to be jjlaced on 
 the verge of the sands on the sea-shore, as the 
 tide was rolling in with its resistless might, autl, 
 seating himself, he addressed the ocean, and said 
 — "Ocean! the land on which I sit is mine, and 
 thou art a part of my dominion — therefore rise 
 not— obey my commands, nor presume to wet 
 the edge of my robe." He sat for some time, as 
 if expecting obedience, but the sea rolled on in 
 its immutable course ; succeeding waves broke 
 nearer and nearer to his feet, till, at length the 
 sku'ts of his garments and his legs were bathed 
 by the watei's. Then, turning to his courtiers 
 and captains, Canute said, "Confess ye now how 
 frivolous and vain is the might of an eai'thly 
 king compared to that gi-eat Power who rules the 
 elements, and can say unto the ocean, ' Thus far 
 slialt thou go, and no farther.' " The chroniclers 
 conclude the apologue by adding that he imme- 
 diately took ofl' his cro\\T), and depositing it in 
 the cathedral of Winchester, never wore it again. 
 
 This gi-eat Danish sovereign died in A.D. 1035, 
 at Shaftesbury, about three years after his return 
 from Rome, and was buried at Winchester. The 
 churches and abbeys he erected have long since 
 disappeared, or theii- fragments have been imbed- 
 ded in later edifices erected on their sites; but 
 the great public work called the Kind's Del/, a 
 causeway coiniecting Peterborough and Ramsey, 
 and carried through the marshes by Canute's 
 command, is still serviceable. - 
 
 On his demise there was the usual difficulty 
 and contention respecting the succession. Ca- 
 nute left but one legitimate son, Hardicanute, 
 
 * Matnus?t.; Ftorcnt. Wifjorn. Tlie substance of the letter is 
 nlso found in Torfa-i Hist. Nonrg., and in DUmari. Script. Rev. 
 Vanicar. 
 
 - " Tiie northerns have transmitted to vis the portrait of Canute. 
 He was large in stature, and very powerful ; he was fair, and 
 distinguished for his beauty; liis nose was thin, eminent, and 
 aquiline ; liis hair was profuse ; his eyes bright and fierce. 
 
 "He was chosen king by general assent; for who could resist 
 liis power? Ilia nieasiues to secure his crown were sanguinary 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 and tyrannical; but the wholo of Canute's character breathes an 
 uir of barbaric grandeur. He was formed by nature to tower 
 over his contemporaries ; but liis counti"y and his education in- 
 termixed liis greatness with a ferocity that compels us to tremble 
 even wliile we admire. In one r&tpcct he was fortunate — his 
 mind and his manners refined as hi3 age matured. The firet 
 part of his reign was cruel and despotic. If is latter days shone 
 witli a glory more unclouded." — Turner's IliMoiy 0/ the jirifflo- 
 Saxoiut, vol. iii. 
 
 15
 
 Hi 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 wliom he had by Etheh-ed's widow, the Lady 
 Emma of Normandy. He had two illoj^ithnate 
 sons, Sweyn and Harold. In royal families bas- 
 tardy was none, or a very slight objection in 
 those days; but according to the contemporary 
 writers, it was the prevalent belief, or popular 
 scandal, that these two young men were not the 
 eliildreu of Canute, even illegitimately, but were 
 imposed upon him as such by liis acknowledged 
 concubine Alfgiva, daughter of the Eolderman of 
 Southampton, who, according to this gossip, Icnew 
 full well that Sweyn was the son of a priest by 
 another woman, and Hai'old the offs2:iring of a 
 cobbler a,nd his wife. Whoever were their fa- 
 thers and mothers, it is certain that Canute in- 
 tended that his dominions should be divided 
 among the thi'ee young men, and this without any 
 apparent prejudice in favour of legitimacy; for 
 Harold, and not Hardicanute (the lawfid son), 
 was to have England, which was esteemed by far 
 the best portion. Denmark was to fall to Har- 
 dicanute, and Norway to Sweyn. Both these 
 prmccs wei-e in the north of Europe, and appa- 
 rently in possession of power there, when Canute 
 died. The powerful Earl Godwin, and the Sax- 
 ons of the south generally, wished rather to 
 choose for King of England eitlier one of the sons 
 of Etheh'ed, who were still in Normandy, or 
 Hardicanute, the son of Emma, who was at least 
 connected with the old Saxon line. But Earl 
 Leofi'ic of Mercia, with the thanes north of the 
 Thames, and all the Danes, supported the claims 
 of tlie illegitimate Harold; and when the influ- 
 ential city of London took this side, the cause of 
 Hardicanute seemed almost hopeless. But still 
 all the men of the south and the great Earl God- 
 win adhered to the latter, and a civil war was 
 imminent (to escape the horroi-s of which many 
 families had already lied to the morasses and 
 forests), when it was wisely determined to effect 
 a compromise by means of the witenagemot. 
 This assembly met at Oxfoi-d, and there decided 
 that Harold should have all the provinces north 
 of the Thames, with London for his capital, 
 while all the country south of that river should 
 remain to his real or fictitious half-brother, Har- 
 dicanute. 
 
 Hardicanute, showing no anxiety for his do- 
 minions in England, lingered in Denmark, where 
 the habits of the Scandinavian chiefs, and theii' 
 hard drinking, were to his taste; but his mother, 
 Emma, and Earl Godwin, governed in the south 
 on his behalf, and held a court at Winchester, 
 Harold, however, who saw his superiority over 
 his absent half-brother, took liis measures for 
 attaching the provinces of the south to his do- 
 minions, and two fruitless invasions from Nor- 
 mandy only tended to increa.se his power and 
 facilitate that aggrandizement. 
 
 Soon after the newa of Canute's death reached 
 Normandy, Edwai-d, the eldest of the surviving 
 sons of Ethelred by Emma, and who eventually 
 became King of England under the title of Ed- 
 ward the Confessor, made sail for England with 
 a few ships, and lauded at Southampton, in the 
 intention of claiming the crown. He threw him- 
 self in the midst of his mother's retainers, and 
 was within a few miles of her residence at Win- 
 chester, But Emma had no aflection for her 
 children by Ethelred ; she was at the moment 
 making every exertion to secure the English 
 throne for her sou by Canute, and, instead of 
 aiding Edwai'd, she set the whole country in 
 hostile array against him. He escaped witli some 
 dilliculty, from a fonnidable force, and fled back 
 to Normandy, detennined, it is said, never again 
 to touch the sod of his fathers. 
 
 The second invasion from Normandy was at- 
 tended with more tragical results, and pai-t of the 
 history of it is enveloped in an impenetrable mys- 
 tery. 
 
 An aflfectionate letter,' purporting to be -m-it- 
 ten by the queen-mother, Emma, was conveyed 
 to her sons Edward and Alfred, reproaching them 
 with their apathy, and urging that one of them 
 at least should return to England, and assert his 
 right against the tyrant Harold. This letter is 
 pronounced a forgery by the old wi'iter who pre- 
 serves it ; but those who ai-e disposed to take the 
 darkest view of Emma's character, may object 
 that this wi'iter was a paid encomiast of that 
 queen (and paid by lier living self), and therefore 
 not likely to confess her guilty of being a partici- 
 pator in her own son's murder, even if such were 
 the fact. The same authority, indeed, even 
 jjraises her for her ill-assorted, shameful marriage 
 with Canute, which undeniably alienated her 
 from her children by the former union. For 
 ourselves, although she did not escajje the strong 
 suspicion of her contemporaries, any more than 
 Earl Godwin, who was then in close alliance with 
 her, we rather incline to tlie belief that the letter 
 was forged by the order of Harold, though, again, 
 there is a possibility that it may have been actu- 
 ally the jiroduction of the queen, who may have 
 meant no hai-m to her son, and that the harm he 
 suft'ered may have fallen ujion him through God- 
 win, on that chiefs seeing how he came attended. 
 However this may be, Alfred, the younger of the 
 two brothers, accepted the invitation. The in- 
 structions of Emma's letter were to come without 
 any armament;' but he raised a considerable 
 force {milites nonjiani 7iumcriy in Normandy and 
 Boulogne. When he appeared off Sandwich there 
 was a far sujjerior force there, which rendered 
 
 ' Encom. Emm. 
 
 2 Rogo un\is vestnim acl me velociter et private veni.nt. — 
 Eiicom. Emm, ^ GuiU. Gem£ticcnsis,
 
 A.D. 901—1012.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 I 1.5 
 
 his landing hopeless. He therefore bore round 
 the North Foreland, and disembarked " opposite 
 to Canterbury," probably aliovit Ilerno Bay, be- 
 tween the Trioulvcrs and the Isle of Shepjicy. 
 Having advanced some distance up the country 
 without any opposition, he was met by Earl 
 Godwin, who is said to have sworn faith to him, 
 and to have undertaken to conduct liim to his 
 mother Emma. Avoiding London, where the 
 party of Harold Wiis predominant, they marched 
 to Guildford, where Godwin billeted the stnm- 
 gers, in small parties of tens and scores, in dif- 
 ferent houses of the town. There was plenty of 
 meat and drink prepared in every lodging, and 
 Earl Godwin, taking his leave for the night, pro- 
 mised his dutiful attendance on Alfred for the 
 following morning. Tii-ed with the day's jour- 
 nej', and filled with meat and wine, the separated 
 company went to bed suspecting no wrong; but 
 ni the dead of night, when disarmed and buried 
 in sleep, they were suddenly set upon by King 
 Harold's forces, who seized and bomid them all 
 with chains and gyres. On the following morn- 
 ing they were ranged in a line before the execu- 
 tioners. There are said to have been 600 victims, 
 and, with the exception of every tenth man, they 
 ■wei-e all barbarously tortured and massacred. 
 Prince Alfred was reserved for a still more cruel 
 fate. He was hurried away to London, where, 
 it should seem, Harold pei-sonally insulted his 
 misfortunes ; and from London he was sent to 
 the Isle of Ely, in the heart of the country of the 
 D;mes. He made the sad journey moimted on a 
 wi-etched horse, naked, and with his feet -tied 
 beneath the animal's belly. At Ely he was ar- 
 raigned before a mock com-t of Danish miscreants 
 as a disturber of the eoimtry's peace, and was 
 condemned to lose his eyes. His eyes were in- 
 stantly toi'n out by main force, and he died a few 
 days after, in exquisite anguish, Some believe 
 that Earl Godwin was guilty of betraying, or at 
 least deserting the prince after he had landed in 
 England, without having premeditated treachery 
 in inviting him over ; and they say his change of 
 sentiment took place the instant lie saw that 
 Alfred, instead of coming alone to tlu'ow himself 
 on the atfections of the Saxon people, had sm-- 
 rounded himself with a host of ambitious fo- 
 reigners, all eager to shai'e in the wealth and 
 honours of the land. Hem-y of Huntingdon, a 
 writer of the twelfth ccntuiy, supports this not 
 irrational view of the case, and says that God- 
 win told his Saxon followers that Alfred came 
 escorted by too many Normans, tliat he had pro- 
 mised these Normans rich possessions in England, 
 and that it would be an act of imprudence in 
 them (the Saxons) to permit this race of fo- 
 reigners, known through the world for their 
 audacity and cunning, to gain a footing in Eng- 
 
 land. Sliortly after the murder of Alfred, Emma 
 was either sent out of England by Harold, or 
 retired a vohuitary exile. It is to be remarked 
 that she did not fix her residence in Normandy, 
 wliere her son Eilward, brother of Alfred, was 
 living, but went to the court of Baldwin, Earl of 
 Flanders. 
 
 HAUOLD had now little dilVu-ulty in getting 
 himself proclaimed "fuU king" over all the 
 island. The election, indeed, was not sanctioned 
 by legislative authority ; but this authority, al- 
 ways fluctuating and uncertain, waa at present 
 almost worthless. A more important opposition 
 was that offered by the church, in whose ranks 
 the Saxons were far more numerous than the 
 Danes, or priests of Danish descent; and in all 
 these contentions the two hostile races must be 
 considered, and not merely the quarrels or am- 
 bition of the rival princes. The question at issue 
 was, whether the Danes or the Saxons sliouKl 
 have the upper hand. Etholnoth, the Aixhbishop 
 of Canterbury, who was a Saxon, refused to per- 
 foi-m the ceremonies of the coronation. Taking 
 the crown and sceptre, which it appears had been 
 intrusted to his charge by Canute, he laid them 
 on the altai-, and said, " Hai-old ! I will nei- 
 ther give them to thee, nor prevent thee from 
 taking the ensigns of royalty ; but I will not 
 bless thee, nor shall any bishop consecrate thee 
 on the throne." It is said that oh this, like a 
 modern conqueror, the Dane put the crown on his 
 head with his own hands. According to some 
 accounts, he subsequently won over the arch- 
 bishop, and was solemnly crowned. His chief 
 amusement was hunting; and, from the fleetness 
 with which he could follow the game on foot, he 
 acquired the name of " Harold Harefoot." Little 
 more is known about him, except that he died 
 after a short reign of four years, in a.d. 1040, 
 and was buried at Westminster. 
 
 HAKDICANUTE, his half-brother, w.as at 
 Bruges, and on the point of invading England, 
 when Harold died. After long delays in Den- 
 mark he listened to the urgent calls of his exiled 
 mother, the stiU stirring and ambitious Emma ; 
 and, leaving a greater force ready at the mouth of 
 the Baltic, he sailed to Flanders with nine ships 
 to consult his pai-ent. He had been but a short 
 time at Bruges when a deputation of English 
 and Danish thanes arrived tliere to invite him to 
 ascend the most brilliant of his fatlicr's thrones 
 in peace. The two great factions in England had 
 come to this agi-eement, but, according to the 
 chroniclers, they were soon made to rejient of it 
 by the exactions and ra])acity of Ilardicanute. 
 Relying more on the Danes, among whom lie had 
 lived so long, than on the English, and being 
 averse to part with the companions of his revels 
 and drinking-bouts, he brought with him a gi'eat
 
 116 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militakv. 
 
 number of Danish chiefs and courtiers, and re- 
 tained an expensive Danish army and navy. Thia 
 obliged him to liave frequent recoiu'se to " Dane- 
 gelds," the arbitrary levying of ■which by his 
 " huscarles," or household troops, who were all 
 Danes, caused frequent insurrections or commo- 
 tions. The people of Worcester resisted the 
 huscarles with arras in their hands, and slew 
 Feaderand Turstane, two of the king's collectors. 
 In revenge for this contempt that city was burned 
 to the ground, a great part of the sm-roundiug 
 counti-y laid desolate, and the goods of the citi- 
 zens put to the spoil " by such power of lords and 
 men-of-war as the king sent against them." It 
 should appear that not even the church was ex- 
 empted from these oppressive levies of Danegeld, 
 for a monkish writer complains that the clei-gy 
 were forced to sell the very chalices from the al- 
 tar in order to pay their assessments. 
 
 On his first arriving in England, Hardicanute 
 showed his horror of Prince Alfred's murder, and 
 his revenge for the injury done by Harold to 
 himself and his relatives, in a truly barbarous 
 manner. By his order the body of Harold was 
 dug up from the grave, its head was struck oft', 
 and then both body and head were thrown into 
 the Thames. To increase the di-amatio interest of 
 the story, some of the old writers, who maintain 
 that the gi-eat earl had murdered Alfred to serve 
 Harold, say that Godwin was obliged to assist at 
 the disinterment and decapitation of the corpse, 
 the mutilated remains of which were soon after 
 drawn out of the river by some Danish fishermen, 
 wdio secretly interred them in the church-yard of 
 St. Clement Danes, " without Temple Bar at Lou- 
 don." Earl Godwin, indeed, a very short time 
 after, was formally accused of Alfred's murder, 
 but he cleared himself in law by his own oath, 
 and the oaths of many of his peers, and a rich 
 and splendid present is generally supposed to 
 h.ave set the question at rest between him and 
 Hardicanute, though it failed to quit him in 
 popular opinion. This present was a ship of the 
 first class, covered with gilded metal, and bearing 
 a figure-head in solid gold; the crew, which 
 formed an intrinsic part of the gift, were four- 
 score picked warriors, and each warrior was fur- 
 nished with dress and appointments of the most 
 costly description— a gilded helmet was on his 
 head, a triple hauberk on his body, a sword with 
 a hilt of gold hung by his side, a Danish battle- 
 axe, damasked with silver, was on his shoulder, a 
 
 gold-studded shield on his left arm, and in his 
 right hand a gilded alet/ar.' 
 
 During the remain- 
 der of Hardicanute's 
 short reign. Earl God- 
 win and Emma, the 
 queen-mother, who 
 wore again in friendly 
 alliance, divided near- 
 ly all the authority of 
 government between 
 tliem, leaving the king 
 to the trancpiil enjoy- 
 ment of the things he 
 most prized in life — his 
 banquets, which were 
 spread four times a-day, 
 and his carousals at 
 night. From many in- 
 cidental passages in the 
 old writers, we should 
 conclude that the Sax- 
 ons themselves were 
 sufficiently addicted to 
 diinking and the plea- 
 sures of the table, and requii-ed no instructors in 
 those particulars; yet it is pretty generally stated 
 that hard drinking became fashionable under the 
 Danes, and more than one chronicler laments 
 that Englishmen learned from the example of 
 Hardicanute "their excessive gormandizing and 
 unmeasuralile filling of their bellies with meats 
 and drinks." 
 
 This king's death was in keeping with the 
 tenor of his life. When he had reigned two 
 years all but ten days, he took part, with his 
 usual zest, in the raaniage feast of one of his 
 Danish thanes, which was held at Lambeth, or, 
 more probably, at Clapham.^ At a late hour of 
 the night, as he stood up to pledge that jovial 
 company, he suddenly fell down speechless, with 
 the wine-cup in his hand : he was removed to an 
 inner chamber, but he spoke no more; and thus 
 the last Danish king in England died di-imk. 
 He was buried in the church of Winchester, near 
 his father Canute. 
 
 Danish Soldier of the period. 
 From Strutt. 
 
 I The same scythe-shaped weapon as the Moorish "assagai," 
 the Turkish "yataghan," &c. It was a common weapon witli 
 the Danes, and is still so in the East. 
 
 - The name of the bride's father, in whose house the feast is 
 supposed to h.ave been held, was Osgod Clajia; and Clapahaw, 
 the hame or Itomc of Clapa, is taken as the etymology of our sub- 
 urban village— ralgrave, Hist. ch. .\iii.
 
 A.D. 1042— 106C1.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 17 
 
 CHAPTER IV.- CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. 
 
 EDWARD THE CONFESSOR TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST. — A.D. 1042— lOIW. 
 
 Uarilicanute succeeded by Edward the Confessor — Edward's beli.iviour to Ijij wife and mother — His favour towards 
 tlie Norm.aiis — Visit of Eustace, Count of Uoulogue, and its consequences — Quarrels between the Confessor and 
 Earl Godwin — "William. Duke of Normandy, visits England — His gracious reception by Edward tho Confessor 
 —Earl Godwin drives the Normans out of England — I'oindar character and achievements of his son, Harold 
 
 Death of Edward the Atheling in London — Harold's journey to Normandy — Ho falls into tho hands of 
 
 "William, Duke of Normandy — I'roinises and oatlis exacted of him by William — Unpopular j'roccedings of 
 Tostig, the brother of Harold — Last illness of E»lward the Confessor — Question of the succession to the tlirone. 
 Harold proclaimed king — William of Normandy asserts his right to tho throne of England — His prepara- 
 tions to maintain it — Hardrada, King of Norway, invades England — Is defeated and slain at Stamford liridgo 
 
 Hostile arrival ot William, Duke of Normandy — His proposals to Harold— Uattlo of Hastings — Defeat and 
 
 death of Harolil. 
 
 DWAED THE CONTESSOR. Ilai'di- 
 canute was scarcely in his gi-ave, 
 when his half-brother Edward, who 
 was many j'ears his senior, ascended 
 the throne (.A..D. 104i2) with no op- 
 position, except such as lie found 
 from his own fears and scruples, wliich, had he 
 been left to himself, would probably have in- 
 duced him to prefer a monastery, or some other 
 quiet retirement in Normandy. During his very 
 brief reign, Hardicanute had recalled the exile 
 to England, had received him with honour and 
 affection, granted him a handsome allowance, 
 and even proposed, it is said, to associate him 
 in his government. Edward was, tliei-efore, at 
 liaud, and in a favourable position at the mo- 
 ment of crisis ; nor, according to the modern 
 laws of hereditary succession, could any one 
 have established so good a right; for his half- 
 nephew Edward, who was still fai' away in Hun- 
 gaiy, was only illegitimately descended from 
 the royal line of Cerdic and Alfred, his father, 
 Edmund Ironside, though older than Edwai'd, 
 being a natural son of their common father Ethel- 
 i-ed. But, in truth, rules of succession had little 
 to do with the settlement of the crown, which 
 was affected by a vaa-iety of other and more 
 potent agencies. The connection between tlie 
 Danish and English crowns was evidently break- 
 ing off; there was a prosjject that the two parties 
 in England would soon be left to decide their 
 contest without any intervention from Denmark ; 
 for some time the Saxon party had been gaining 
 ground, and, before Hardicanute's death, formi- 
 dable associations had been made, and more than 
 one successful battle fought against the Danes. 
 On their side, the Danes, having no descendant 
 of the gi'eat Canute around whom to rally, be- 
 came less vehement for the e.xinilsion of tlie 
 Saxon line, while many of them settled in the 
 
 soutli of the island were won over by the reputed 
 virtue and sanctity of Edwai'd. If we may judge 
 by the imcertain light of some of tlie chronicles, 
 many leading Danes quitted England on Hardi- 
 canute's decease; ami it seems quite certain that 
 when the nobles and prelates of the Saxons (were 
 tliere not D.anes among these?) assembled in Lon- 
 don, with the resolution of electing Edward, they 
 encountered no opposition from any Danish fac- 
 tion. But the great Earl Godwin, the still sus- 
 pected mm-derer of the new king's brother, Alfred, 
 had by far the greatest share in Edward's eleva- 
 tion. This veteran politician, of an age considered 
 barbai'ons, and of a race (the Saxon) generally 
 noted rather for stu])idity and dulness than for 
 acuteness and adroitness, trimmed his sails ac- 
 cording to the winds that predominated, with a 
 degree of skill and remorsclessncsa whicli would 
 stand a comparison with the manmuvTes of the 
 most celebrated political intriguers of the most 
 modern and civilized times. In all the struggles 
 that had taken place since the death of Canute, 
 he had changed sides with astonishing facility 
 and rapidity — going back more than once to the 
 party he had deserted, then changing again, and 
 always causing the faction he embraced to tri- 
 umph just so long as he adhered to it, and no 
 longer. Changes, ruinous to others, only brouglit 
 him an accession of strength. At llie death of 
 Hardicanute, he was Eai'l of allWessc.x and Kent; 
 and by his alliances and intrigues, he controlled 
 ueai'ly the whole of the southern and more Saxon 
 pai't of England. His abilities were proved by 
 the station he had attained; for he had begun life 
 as a cow-herd. He was a fluent speaker; but liis 
 eloquence, no doubt, owed much of its faculty of 
 conveying conviction, to the power or material 
 means he had always at liand to enforce his argu- 
 ments. "Wlien \te rose in the assenil ily of tlianos 
 and bishops, and gave it as his opinion that Ed-
 
 118 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 ■n-.inl tlie Atheliiig, tlie only surviving son of 
 Etlielred, slioulj be their king, there were but 
 very few dissentient voices; and the earl care- 
 fully marked the weak minority, who seem all 
 to have been Saxons, and drove them into e.xile 
 shortly after. It is jiretty generally stated that 
 his relation, William, Duke of Normandy (after- 
 wards the Conqueror), materially aided Edwai'd 
 by his influence, having firmly announced to the 
 Saxons, that if they failed in their duty to the 
 sons of Emma, they should feel the weight of his 
 vengeance; but we more tlian doubt the authen- 
 ticity of this fact, from the sunple circumstances 
 of Duke William's being only fifteen years old at 
 the time, and his states being in mo.st lamentable 
 confusion and anarchy, pressed from without by 
 the French king, and troubled within by factious 
 nobles, who all wished to take advantage of his 
 youth and inexperience. 
 
 The case, perhaps, is not very rare, hut it must 
 always be a painful and perplexing one. Edward 
 hated the man who was sei-ving him; and while 
 Godwin was placing him on the throne, he could 
 not detach his eyes from the bloody gi'ave to 
 which, in his conviction, the earl had sent his 
 brother Alfred. Godwin was perfectly well aware 
 of these feelings, and, like a practised politician, 
 before he stirred in Edwai-d's cause, and when 
 the fate of that prince, even to his life or death, 
 was in his hands, he made such stipulations as 
 were best calculated to secure him against their 
 effects. He obtained an extension of territories, 
 honours, and commands for himself and his sons; 
 a solemn assiu-ance that the past was forgiven ; 
 and, as a pledge for future afl'ection and family 
 union, he made Edward consent to marry his 
 daughter. The fan- Editha, the daughter of the 
 fortunate earl, became Queen of England; b'.it the 
 heart was not to be controlled, and Edward was 
 never a husband to her. Yet, fi'om contemporai-y 
 accounts, Editha was deserving of love, and pos- 
 sessed of such a union of good qualities as ought 
 to have removed the deep-rooted antipathies of 
 the king to herself and her race. Her person was 
 beautiful; her manners graceful; her disposition 
 cheerful, meek, pious, and generous, without a 
 taint of her father's or brothers' pride and aiTO- 
 gance. Her mental accomplishments far sur- 
 passed the standard of that age; she was fond of 
 reading, and had read many books. 
 
 If Edward neglected, and afterwards perse- 
 cuted his wife, he behaved in a still harsher and 
 more summary manner to his mother Emma, 
 who, though she has few claims on our sym- 
 pathy, was, in spite of all her faults, entitled to 
 some consideration from him. But he could not 
 forgive past injuries; he could not forget that, 
 while she lavished her affections .and ill-gotten 
 treasures on her children by Canute, she had left 
 
 him and his brother to languish in poverty in 
 Normandy, where they were forced to eat the 
 bitter bread of other people; and he seems never 
 to have relieved her from the honld suspicion of 
 having had part in Alfred's murder. These feel- 
 ings were jtrobably exasperated by her refusing 
 to advance him money at a moment of need, just 
 before or at the date of his coronation. Shortly 
 after his coronation he held a council at Glou- 
 cester, whence, accompanied by Earls Godwin, 
 Leofric, and Siward, he hun-ied to Winchester, 
 where Emma had again established a sort of court, 
 seized her treasures, and all the cattle, the corn, 
 and the forage on the lands which she possessed 
 as a dower, and behaved otherwise to her with 
 gi-eat harshness. Some say she was committed 
 to close custody in the abbey of Wearwell ; but, 
 according to the more generally received account, 
 she was pei-mitted to retain her lands, and to 
 reside at large at Winchester, where, it appears, 
 she died in 1052, the tenth year of Edward's reig-n. 
 In the second year of Edward's reign (a.d. 104.3) 
 a faint demonstration to re-establish the Scandi- 
 navian supremacy in England was made by Mag- 
 nus, King of Norway and Denmark; but the 
 Saxons assembled a great fleet at Sandwich; the 
 Danes in the land remained quiet; and, his last 
 hopes expiring, Magnus was soon induced to de- 
 clare that he thought it " right and most conve- 
 nient " that he should let Edward enjoy his crown, 
 and content himself with the kingdoms which 
 God had given him. But though undisturbed by 
 foreign invasions, or the internal wars of a com- 
 petitor for the crown, Edward was little moi-e 
 than a king in name. This abject condition ai-ose 
 in part, but certainly not wholly, from his easy, 
 pacific disposition; for he not unfrequently showed 
 himself capable of energy, and firm and sudden 
 decisions; and although superstitious and monk- 
 ridden, he was, when roused, neither deficient in 
 talent nor in moral comage. A wider and deeper 
 spiing, that sapped the roj^al authority, was the 
 enormous power of which Godwin and other earls 
 had possessed themselves before his accession; 
 and this power, be it remembered, he himself was 
 obliged to augment before he could put his foot 
 on the lowest step of the throne. When he had 
 kept his promises with the "gi-eat carl" — and he 
 could not possibly evade them — what with the 
 territories and commands of Godwin, .and of his 
 six sons, Harold, Sweyn, Wulnot, Tostig, Gurth, 
 and Leof\vin, the whole of the south of England, 
 from Lincolnshire to the end of Devonshu-e, was 
 in the hands of one family. Nor had Edward's 
 authority a better basis elsewhere, for the whole 
 of the north was unequally divided between Leo- 
 fric and the gi-eater Earl Siward, whose dominions 
 extended from the Humber to the Scottish bor- 
 der. These earls possessed all that was valuable
 
 A.D. 1042- lOCC] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 113 
 
 iMrr.ESSION; 
 
 iu sovereignty within the territories tlicy hekl. 
 They appointed their own judges, received fines, 
 and levied what troops they chose. Tlie chief 
 security of the king lay in the clashing interests 
 and jealousies of these mighty v.issals. As the 
 king endeared himself to his people by reducing 
 taxation and removing the odious Danegeld alto- 
 gether, by reviving the old Saxon laws, and ad- 
 ministering them with justice and proni|ititude — 
 as he gained their reverence by his mild vii-tucs, 
 and still more by his ascetic devotion, which 
 eventually caused his canonization, he miglit have 
 been enabled to curb the family of Godwin and 
 the rest, and raise his depressed throne by means 
 of the popular will and aflection; but unfortu- 
 nately there were cir- 
 cumstances interwov- 
 en which neutralized 
 Edward's advantages, 
 and gave the favoui-- 
 able colour of nation- 
 ality and patriotism 
 to the cause of God- 
 win, whenever he 
 chose to quarrel with 
 the king. It was per- 
 fectly natural — and 
 it would have been as 
 excusable as natm-al, if the imprudence of a king 
 ever admitted of an excuse — that Edw;u'd should 
 have an aflection for the Normans, among whom 
 the best years of his life had been passed, and who 
 gave him food and shelter when abandoned by all 
 the rest of the world. He was only thii-teen years 
 old when he was first sent into Normandy; he 
 was somewhat past forty when he ascended the 
 English tlirone, so that fortwenty-seven yeai'S, com- 
 mencing with a period when the young mind is not 
 formed, but ductile, and most susceptible of impres- 
 sions, he had been accustomed to foreign manners 
 and habits, and to convey all his thoughts and feel- 
 ings through the medium of a foreign language. 
 He was accused of a predilection for the Erench 
 or " Komance," which by this time had superseded 
 theii- Scandina\'ian dialect, and become the ver- 
 nacular language of the Normans; but it is more 
 than probable he had forgotten his Saxon. Be- 
 lying on Edward's gi'atitude and friendship, seve- 
 ral Normans came over with him when he was 
 invited to England by Uardicanute ; this number 
 was augmented after his accession to the throne; 
 and as the king provided for them all, or gave 
 them constant entertainment at his court, fresh 
 adventm-ers continued to cross the Channel. It 
 should appear it was chiefly in the church that 
 Edward provided for his foreign favom-ites. Ro- 
 bert, a Noi-man, and, like most of his race, a per- 
 sonal enemy to Earl Godwin, was promoted to 
 be Ai-chbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all 
 
 FROM THE Great Skai. nt Edw.\rd the CosrEssor.. ' 
 British lliiseam. 
 
 England; Ulf and William, two other Normans, 
 ■were made Bisliops of Dorchester and London; 
 and crosiei-3 and abbots' stalls were liberally dis- 
 tributed to the king's exotic chaplains and house- 
 clerks, who ai-e said to have closed all the avenuea 
 of access to his person and favour against the 
 English-born. Those Saxon nobles who yet hojjed 
 to prosper at court, learned to speak Fi'cnch, ami 
 imitated the dress, fashions, and manner of living 
 of the Normans Edwai-d ailoptcd, in all docu- 
 ments and chartera, the handwriting of the Nor- 
 mans, which he thought liandsomer tlian that of 
 the English; ho introduced the use of the "gi-eat 
 seal," which he ajipended to his parchments, in 
 addition to the simple mark of the cross, which 
 had been used by the 
 Anglo-Saxon kings ; 
 and as his chancellor, 
 secretaries of state, 
 and legal advisera 
 were all foreigners, 
 and, no doubt, like 
 the natives of France 
 of all ages, singulai"- 
 ly neglectful of the 
 tongue of the jjeople 
 among whom they 
 were settled, the Eng- 
 lish lawyers were obliged to study French, and 
 to employ a foreign language in their deeds and 
 papers. Even in those rude ages fashion had her 
 influence and her votai'ies. The study of the French 
 language, to the neglect of the Saxon, became very 
 general; and the rich, the young, and the gay of 
 both sexes were not satisfied unless their tunics, 
 their chawssL-s, their streamera, and mufflers were 
 cut after the latest Norman pattern. Not one of 
 these things was trifling in its influence — united, 
 their efl"ect must have been most important; and 
 it seems to us that historians in general have not 
 sufficiently borne them in mind, as a j^rclude to 
 the gi-eat di-ama of the Norman conquest. 
 
 All this, however, was distasteful to the gi'cat 
 body of the Saxon people, and highly irritating 
 to Earl Godwin, who is said to have exacted an 
 express and soleimi promise from the king not to 
 inundate the land with Normans, ere he consented 
 to raise him to the throne. The carl could scai'cely 
 take up a more pojiular ground; and he made his 
 more private wrongs — the king's treatment of his 
 daughter, and disinclination to the society of him- 
 self and his sons — aU close and revolve round this 
 centre. Even personally the symiKithy of the 
 people went with him. " Is it astonishing," they 
 said, " that the author and supporter of Edward's 
 reign should be wroth to see new men, of a foreign 
 nation, prefeiTcd to himself?"'' 
 
 * This seal measiires 3 in. in diameter. 
 
 ' Matmab.
 
 120 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil aud Military. 
 
 In 1044 a ci-ime, committetl by a iiicniber of 
 liis family, somewhat clouded Godwin's popula- 
 rity. Sweyn, the earl's second son, and a maiTied 
 man, violated an abbess, and was exiled by the 
 king — for this, of all others, was the crime Ed- 
 ward was least likely to overlook. After keeping 
 the sea.s for some time as a pirate, Sweyn i-eturned 
 to England, on the promise of a royal pardon. 
 Some delay occurred in passing this act of grace ; 
 and it is said that Beorn, his cousin, and even 
 Harold, the brother of Sweyn, pleaded strongly 
 against him at court. The fury of the outlaw 
 knew no bounds; but, pretending to be reconciled 
 with his cousin Beorn, he won his confidence, got 
 possession of his person, and then caused him to 
 be murdered. In spite of this accumulated guilt, 
 Edward was fain to gi-ant a pardon to the son of 
 the powerful earl; and Sweyn, tliough he had 
 rendered himself odious, and injured the popula- 
 rity of his family, was restored to his government. 
 
 But in IOjI an event occuii-ed which exaspe- 
 rated the whole nation against tlie Normans, and 
 gave Godwin the opportunity of recovering all his 
 reputation and influence with the Saxon people. 
 Among the many foreigners that came over to 
 visit the king was Eustace, Count of Boulogne, 
 who had married the Lady Goda, a daughter of 
 Etheb-ed, and sister to Edward. This Eustace 
 was a prince of considerable power, and moi'e 
 pretension. He governed hereditarily, under the 
 supremacy of the French crown, the city of Bou- 
 logne and the contiguous territory on the shores 
 of the Channel; and as a sign of his dignity as 
 chief of a maritime country, when he ai-med for 
 war he attached two long aigrettes, made of 
 whalebone, to his helmet. This loving brother- 
 in-law, w'ith rather a numerous retinue of war- 
 riors and men-at-arms, was hospitably entertained 
 at the com-t of Edward, where he saw Frenchmen, 
 and Normans, and everything that was French 
 and foreign, so completely in the ascendant, that 
 he was led to despise the Saxons as a people 
 already conquered. On his return homewards 
 Eustace slept one night at Cantei-bury. The next 
 morning he continued his route for Dover, and 
 when he was within a mile of that town he ordered 
 a halt, left his travelling palfrey, and mounted 
 his war-horse, which a page led in his right hand. 
 He also put on his coat of mail; all his people 
 did the same; and in this warlike harness they 
 entered Dover. The foreigners marched inso- 
 lently tlu-ough the town, choosing the best houses 
 in which to pass the night, and taking free quar- 
 ters on the citizens without asking permission, 
 which was contrary to the laws and customs of 
 the Saxons. One of the townsmen boldly repelled 
 from Ills thi-eshold a retainer who pretended to 
 take up his quarters in his house. The stranger 
 drew his sword, and wounded the Englishman; 
 
 the Euglishman armed in ha.ste, and he, or one 
 of his house, slew the Frenchman. At this intel- 
 ligence. Count Eustace and all his troo]) mounted 
 on horseback, and, surrounding the liouse of the 
 Englishman, some of them forced tlieir way in, 
 and murdered him on his own hearth-stone. Th is 
 done, they g.aUoped through the streets witli their 
 luiked swords in their hands, striking men and 
 women, and crushing several children under their 
 horses' hoofs. This outrage roused the spirit of 
 the bm'ghers, who ai-med themselves with such 
 weapons as they had, and met the mailed war- 
 riors in a mass. After a fierce conflict, in which 
 nineteen of the foreigners were slain and many 
 more wounded, Eustace, with the rest, being im- 
 able to reach the port and embark, retreated out 
 of Dover, and then galloped with loose rein to- 
 wards Gloucester, to lay his complaints before the 
 king. Edward, who was, as usual, suiTOundcd 
 by his Norman favom-ites, gave his peace to Eus- 
 tace and his companions; and believing, on the 
 simple assertion of his bi-other-in-law, that the 
 inhabitants of Dover were in the wi-ong, .and had 
 begun the affray, he sent immediately to Earl 
 Godwin, in whose government the city lay. "Set 
 out forthwith," said the king's order;' "go and 
 chastise with a militar.y execution those who at- 
 tack my relations with the sword, and trouble the 
 peace of the countiy." " It Ul becomes you," re- 
 plied Godwin, "to condemn, without a hearing, 
 the men whom it is your duty to protect."- The 
 ch'cumstances of the fight at Dover were now 
 known all over the country; the assault evidently 
 had begun by a Frenchman's daring to viol.ate 
 the sanctity of an Englishman's house, and, right 
 or wTong, the Saxon people would n.aturally 
 es])0use the cause of their countrymen. Instead, 
 therefore, of chastising the burghers, the earl 
 sided with them. Before proceeding to extremi- 
 ties, Godwin proposed that, instead of exercising 
 that indiscriminate vengeance on all the inhabi- 
 tants which was implied by a military execution, 
 the magistrates of Dover should be cited in a legal 
 manner to appear before the king and the royal 
 judges, to give an account of their conduct. It 
 should seem that, transported by the indignation 
 of his brother-in-law, the Earl Eustace, and con- 
 founded by the clamours of his Norman favour- 
 ites, Edward would not listen to this just antl 
 reasonable proposition, but summoned God-n-in to 
 appear before his /orei^a court at Gloucester; and 
 on his hesitating to put himself in so much jeo- 
 pardy, tlu-eatened him and his family with ba- 
 nishment and confiscation. Then the gi-eat earl 
 armed; and though some of the chi'oniclers assert 
 it was only to redj-ess the popular gi-ievauces, and 
 to make an ajipeal to the English against the 
 
 ' Chron. Sax. 
 
 ' Malmesb.
 
 AD. lOliJ— lOGG. 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 courtiers from boyoiul soa, and Uiat nothing was 
 farther from his thoughts than to otVer insult or 
 violence to the king of his owni creation, we are 
 far from being convinced of the entire purity of 
 his motives, or the moderation of his objects. 
 
 Godwin, who ruled the country south of the 
 Thames, from one end to the other, gathered his 
 forces together, and was joined by a large body 
 of the people, who vohmtarily took up arms. 
 Ilarold, the eldest of his sons, collected many 
 men all along the eastern coast between the 
 Thames and the AVash; and Sweyn, his second 
 son, whose guilt was forgotten in the pop\dar 
 excitement, arrayed his soldiers, and formed a 
 ]iatriotic association among the Saxou.s who dwelt 
 on the banks of the Severn and along the fron- 
 tiers of Wales. These three columns soon con- 
 centrated near Gloucester, then the royal resi- 
 dence; and, with means adequate to enforce his 
 wish, Godwin demanded that the Count Eustace, 
 his companions, and many other Normans and 
 Frenchmen, should be given up to the justice of 
 the nation. Edward, knowing he was wholly at 
 the mercy of his irritated father-in-law, was still 
 firm. To gain time he opened a negotiation; and 
 so much was he still esteemed by the people, that 
 Godwin was obliged to save ap]ieara.nces, and to 
 grant him that delay which, for a while, wholly 
 overcast the earl's fortunes. Edward had secui-ed 
 the good-will of Godwin's gi-eat rivals — Siward, 
 Earl of Northumbria, and Leofric, Eaad of IMer- 
 cia; to these cliiefs he now applied for pi-otection, 
 summoning to his aid at the same time Kanulf 
 or Ealph, a Norman knight, whom he had made 
 Earl of "Worcestershire. When tliese forces united 
 and marched to the king's rescue, they were 
 equal or superior in number to those of Godwin, 
 who had thus lost his moment. The peojde, 
 however, had improved in wisdom; and on the 
 two ai-mies coming in front of each other, it was 
 presently seen, by their respective leaders, that 
 old animosities had in a gi-eat measure died away 
 — that the Anglo-Danes from the north were by 
 no means anxious to engage their brethren of the 
 south for the cause of Normans, and men equally 
 alien to them both — and that the Saxons of the 
 south were averse to shedding the blood of the 
 Anglo-Danes of the north. The whispers of in- 
 dividual ambition — the mutterings of mutual re- 
 venge — the aspirations of the great were mute, 
 for once, at the loud and universal voice of the 
 people. An annistice was concluded between 
 the king and Godwin, and it wa-s agreed to refer 
 all differences to an assembly of the legislature, 
 to be held at London in the following autumn. 
 Hostages and oaths were exchanged — botli king 
 and eai-1 swearing "God's peace and full friend- 
 ship" for one another. Edward employed the 
 interval between the armistice and tlie meeting 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 of the witenagemot in p>d)lishing a ban for the 
 levying of a royal army all over the kingdom, in 
 engaging troops, both foreign and domestic, and 
 in strengthening liimself by all the means lie 
 could command. In the same time the forces of 
 Harold, which consisted in chief ])art of burghers 
 and yeomen, who had armed under the fii-st ex- 
 citement of a i)o]ndar quarrel, and who had neither 
 pay nor quai'tei-s in the held, dwindled rapidly 
 away. According to the Saxon Chronicle, the 
 king's army, wliich was cantoned witliin and 
 about Loudon, soon became the most numei'ous 
 that had been seen in this reign. The chief, and 
 many of the subordinate commands in it, were 
 given to Norman favourites, who thirated for the 
 blood of Earl Godwin. At the appointed time 
 the earl and his sons were summoned to appear 
 before the witenagemot, without any military 
 escort whatsoever, and that, too, in the midst of 
 a most formidable army and of deadly enemies, 
 who would not have spared their persons, even 
 if the king and the legislative assembly had been 
 that way inclined. Godwin, who before now had 
 frequently both suffered and practised treachery, 
 refused to attend tlie assembly unless proper se- 
 curities were given that he and his sons should 
 go thither and depai-t thence in safety. This 
 reasonable demand was repeated, and twice re- 
 fused; and then Edward and the gi-eat covmcil 
 pronoimced a sentence of banishment, decreeing 
 that the earl and all his family should quit the 
 land for ever within five days. There was no 
 ajipeal; and Godwin and his sons, who, it aj)- 
 peai's, had marched to Southwark, on finding th;it 
 even the small force they had brought with them 
 was thinned by hourly desertion, lied by night 
 for their lives. The sudden fall of this great fa- 
 mily confounded and stupified the popular mind. 
 " Wonderful would it have been thought," says 
 the Saxon Chronicle, " if any one had said before 
 that matters would come to such a pass." Befoi-e 
 the expu'ation of the five days' grace a troop of 
 horsemen was sent to jiursue and seize the earl 
 and his family; but these soldiers were wholly or 
 chiefly Saxons, and either coidd not or wouUl not 
 overtake them. Godwin, with his wife and his 
 three sous, Sweyn, Tostig, and Gurth, and a ship 
 well stored with money and treasures, embarked 
 on the east coast, and sailed to Elanders, where 
 he was well received by Earl Baldwin; Harold 
 and his brother Leofwin fled westward, and, em- 
 barking at Bristol, crossed the sea to Ireland. 
 Then- property, their broad lands, and houses, 
 with everything upon them and within them, were 
 confiscated; theu- governments and honours dis- 
 tributed, in ]iart among foreigners; i.nd scarcely 
 a trace was left in the country of the warlike earl 
 or his bold sons. But a fan- daughter of that house 
 remained; Editlia was still Queen of England, 
 13
 
 J 22 
 
 niSTOUY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil. AND Mll.ITAr.T 
 
 and on her l'>lwanl determinetl to pour out tho 
 last \'ialof his wl-ath, and conijiletehis vrngeanoe 
 on the ol)no.\ious race tliat had given him the 
 throne. He seized her dower, lie took from her 
 her jewels and her money, "even to the utter- 
 most farthing," and allowing her only the attend- 
 ance of one maiden, he closely confined his vir- 
 gin wife in the nionsistery of Wearwell, of which 
 one of his sisters was lady abbess; and in this 
 cheerless captivity she, in the language of one of 
 the old chroniclers, " in tears and prayers expected 
 the day of her release and comfort." 
 
 Delivered from the awe and timidity he had 
 always felt in Earl Godwin's presence, the king 
 now put no restraint on his af- 
 fection for the Normans, who 
 flocked over in greater shoals 
 than ever to make their for- 
 tunes in England. A few months 
 after Godwin's exile he ex- 
 pressed his anxious desire to 
 have William, Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, for his guest; and that 
 ambitious and most crafty 
 prince, who already began to 
 entertain projects on England, 
 readily accepted the invitation, 
 and came over with a numerous 
 retinue, in the fixed pm-pose of 
 turning the visit to the best ac- 
 count, by pereonally informing 
 himself of the strength and con- 
 dition of the country, and by in- 
 fluencing the councils of the 
 king, who had no childi-en to succeed him, and 
 was said to be labouring imder a vow of per- 
 petual chastity, even as if he had been a clois- 
 tered monk. 
 
 William was the natural son of Robert, Duke 
 of Normandy, the younger brother of Duke Kieh- 
 ard III., and the son of Duke Kichard II., who 
 was brother to Queen Emma, the mother of King 
 Edward, and of the miu'dered Alfred, by Ethel- 
 red, as also of the preceding kings, Harold and 
 Hardicanute, by her second husband, Canute the 
 Great. On the mother's side William's descent 
 was sufficiently obscm-e. One day, as the Duke 
 Robert was returning from the chase, he met a 
 fair gu-1, who, with comiiauions of her own age, 
 was washing clothes in a brook. Struck by her 
 surpassing beauty, he sent one of his discreetest 
 knights to make proposals to her family. Such 
 a mode of proceeding is stai'tling enough in our 
 days, but in that age of bai-barism and the licen.se 
 of power, the wonder is he did not seize the lowly 
 maiden by force, without treaty or negotiation. 
 The father of the maiden, who was a cm-rier or 
 tanner, of the town of Falaise, at fii'st received the 
 proposals of Robert's love-ambassador with in- 
 
 dignation ; but, on second thoughts, he went to 
 consult one of his brothera, a hermit in a neigh- 
 bouring forest, and a man enjoying a gi'cat re- 
 ligious rei)utation; and this religious man gave 
 it as his ojiinion that one ought, in all things, to 
 conform to the will -of the powerful man. The 
 name of the maid of Falaise was A rlete,IIarlotta, 
 or Herleva, for she is indiscriminately called by 
 these different ajijiellations, which all seem to 
 come from the old Norman or Danish compound, 
 Ilcr-leve, " the much-loved." And the duke con- 
 tinued to love her dearly; and he brought up the 
 boy William, he had by her, with as much care 
 and honour as if he had been the son of a lawful 
 
 The Castle of Falaise.' — From Cotmau's Antiquities of Noi-ruaiiily. 
 
 spouse. Although — or perhaps it will be more 
 correct to s.iy because — their conversion was of a 
 compai'atively recent date, no people in Em-ope 
 surpassed the Normans in their devotion, or their 
 passion for distant pilgi-images. When William 
 was only seven years old, his father, Duke Robert-, 
 resolved to go to Jerus.aleni as a jiilgTim, to ob- 
 tain the remission of his sins. As he had go- 
 verned his states wisely, his peoj)le heard of his 
 intention with alarm and regret; but his worldly 
 advantage could not be put in the balance against 
 his spiritual welfare. The Norman chiefs, still 
 anxious to retain him among them, i-epresented 
 that it would be a bad thing for them to be left 
 without a head. The native chroniclers put the 
 following naive reply into the mouth of Duke Ro- 
 bert — " By my faiih, Sirs, I will not leave you 
 without a seigneur. I have a little bastard, who 
 will gi-ow big, if it pleases God ! Choose him 
 from this moment, and, before you all, I will put 
 
 ^ The keep of the castle was built in the year 1000, or prior to 
 that date. The lofty circular tower was added in the year 1430, 
 by tlie English general Talbot, then governor of tlie town, and 
 to the present day it bears his name. A room in the keep is still 
 shown, in which, according to tradition, WiUi.im the Couiiueror 
 was bom. — Dawson Tui"ner, in Cotmau's Nonnandy.
 
 A.D. 1042— lOCC] 
 
 BAXON PERIOD. 
 
 123 
 
 liim iu possession of tins duchy as my successor." 
 The Normaus did what the Duke Robert pro- 
 posed, " because," says the chronicle, " it suited 
 them so to do." According to the feudal practice 
 they, one by one, placed their luuida within his 
 hands, and swore fidelity to the child. Kobert 
 had a presentiment that he should not return; 
 and he never did; he died about a year after 
 (A.D. 1034), on his road home. He had scarcely 
 donned his pilgrim's weeds and departed from 
 Normandy, when several of the chiefs, and above 
 all the relations of the old duke, protested against 
 the election of William, alleging that a bastard 
 was not worthy of commanding the children of 
 the Scandinavians. A civil war ensued, in which 
 the party of William was decidedly victorious. 
 As the boy advanced in years he showed an in- 
 domitable sjjirit, and a wonderful aptitude in 
 learning those knightly and warlike exercises 
 which then constituted the principal part of edu- 
 cation. This endeared him to his partizans; and 
 the important day on which he fii-st put on ar- 
 mom-, and mounted his battle-steed without the 
 aid of stirrup, was held as a festal day in Nor- 
 mandy. Occasions were not wanting for the 
 practice of w-ar and battles, but were, on the con- 
 trary, frequently presented both by his own tur- 
 bulent subjects and his ambitious neighbours. 
 Fi'om his tender youth upwards, William was 
 habituated to warfare and bloodshed, and to the 
 exercise of policy and craft, by which he often suc- 
 ceeded when force and arms failed. His contem- 
 porai'ies tell us that he was passionately fond of 
 fine horses, and caused them to be brought to him 
 from Gascony, Auvergne, and Spain, preferring 
 above all those steeds •which bore proper names, 
 by which their genealogy was distinguished. His 
 disposition was revengeful and pitiless in the ex- 
 treme. At an after period of life, when he had 
 imposed respect or dread upon the world, he 
 scoraed the distinctions between legitimate and 
 illegitimate birth, and more than once bravingly 
 put "We, William the Bastard," to. his charters 
 and declarations;' but at the commencement of 
 his career he was exceedingly susceptible and 
 sore on this point, and often took sanguinary ven- 
 geance on those who scofl'ed at the stain of his bu'th. 
 The fame of William's doings had long pre- 
 ceded him to this island, where they created very 
 ilifferent emotions, according to men's disposi- 
 tions and interests. But when he arrived himself 
 in England, with a numerous and splendid train, 
 it is said that the Duke of Normandy might luive 
 doubted, from the evidence of his senses, whether 
 he had quitted his own country. Noi-maus com- 
 manded the Saxon fleet he met at Dover, Nor- 
 mans garrisoned the castle and a fortress on a 
 
 ' In Olio of his English ch.arter3, prcserveil in Hickes, he styles 
 himself, with less truth, " Rex Uereditariua." 
 
 hiU at Canterbur}'; and as he advanced on the 
 jom-ney, Norman knights, bishops, abbots, and 
 burgesses met him at every relay to bid him wel- 
 come. At the court of Edward, in the midst of 
 Norman clerks, priests, and nobles, who looked >ip 
 to him as their " natural lord," he was more a 
 king tlian the king himself; and every day he 
 spent iu England must have convej-ed additional 
 conviction of the extent of Norman influence, 
 and of the weakness and disorganization of the 
 country. 
 
 It is recorded by the old writers that King 
 Edward gave a most affectionate welcome to his 
 good cousin Duke William, that he lived lovingly 
 with him while he was here, and fJiat at his de- 
 parture he gave him a most roj'al gift of arms, 
 horees, hoimds, and hawks." But what passed in 
 the private and confidential intercourse of the 
 two princes these writers knew not, and atteni])ted 
 not to divine; and the only evident fact is that, 
 after William's visit, the Normans in England 
 carried their assumirtion of sujieriority still higher 
 than before. 
 
 But preparations were in progress for the in- 
 terrupting of this domination. Ever since his 
 flight into Flanders, Godwin had been actively 
 engaged in devising means for his triumphant 
 return, and in corresponding with and keeping 
 up the spirits of the Saxon party at home. In 
 the following summer (a.d. 1052), the great earl 
 having well employed the money and treasure he 
 took with him, got together a number of shijis, 
 and, eluding the vigilance of the royal fleet, wliich 
 was commanded by two Normans, his ])ersonal 
 and deadly enemies, he fell upon our southei-n 
 coast, where many Saxons gave him a hearty 
 welcome. He had previously won over the Saxon 
 garrison and the mariners of Hastings, and he 
 now sent secret emissaries all over the country, at 
 whose representations hosts of people took up 
 arms, binding themselves by oath to the cause 
 of the exiled chief, and " promising, all with one 
 voiced says Roger of Hoveden, " to live or die 
 with Godwin." Sailing along the Sussex coast to 
 the Isle of Wight, he was met there by his sons 
 Harold and Leofwin, wdio had brought over a 
 considerable force in men and shijis from Ireland. 
 From the Isle of Wight the Saxon chiefs sailed 
 to Sandwich, where they landed paa-t of their 
 forces without opposition, and then, with the 
 rest, boldly doubled the North Foreland, and 
 sailed up the Thames towards London. As they 
 advanced, the popularity of their cause was ma- 
 nifestly dis]ilayed; the Saxon and Anglo-Danish 
 troops of the king, and all the royal ahi|)S they 
 met, went over to them ; the burghers and pea- 
 sants hastened to supply them witli jii-ovisions, 
 
 2 Maistre Waco, Rtman dv. Row.
 
 121. 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militai;t. 
 
 anil to join tlie cry itgainst the Noi-nians. In this 
 easy and triumphant manner did the exiles reach 
 the suburb of Southwavk, where thej' anchored, 
 and landed without being obliged to draw a 
 sword or bend a single bow. Their presence 
 threw everj'tlung into confusion; and the court 
 party soon saw that the citizens of London were 
 as well affected to Godwin as the rest of the 
 people had shown themselves. The earl sent a 
 respectfvd message to the king, requesting for 
 himself and family the revision of the iiTegular 
 sentence of exile, the restoration of their former 
 territories, honours, and employments, promising, 
 on these conditions, a dutiful and entire submis- 
 sion. Though he must have known the critical 
 state of his ailairs, Edward was firm or obstin- 
 ate, and sternly refused the conditions. Godwin 
 despatched other messengers, but they returned 
 with an equally positive refusal, and then the old 
 eai-1 had the greatest difficulty in restraining his 
 irritated partizaus. But the game was in his 
 hand, and his moderation and aversion to the 
 spilling of kindred blood greatly strengthened 
 his party. On the opposite side of the river a 
 royal fleet of fifty sail was moored, and a consi- 
 derable army was drawn up on the bank, but it 
 was soou found there was no relying either on the 
 mariners or the soldiers, who, for the most part, 
 if not won over to the cause of Godwin, were 
 averse to civil war. Still, while most of his 
 party were trembling around him, and not a few 
 seeking safety in flight or concealment, the king 
 remained inflexible, and, to all appearance, devoid 
 of fear. The boldest of his Norman favoiu-ites, 
 who foresaw that peace between the Saxons 
 would be their ruin, ventured to press him to 
 give the signal for attack ; but the now openly 
 expi-essed sentiments of the royal troops, and the 
 arguments of the priest Stigand and many of tlie 
 Saxon nobles, finally induced Edward to yield, 
 and give his reluctant consent to the opening of 
 negotiations with his detested father-in-law. At 
 the first report of this prospect of a speedy recon- 
 ciliation, there was a hm-ried gathering together 
 of property or spoils, and a shoeing and saddling 
 of horses for flight. No Norman or Frenchman 
 of any consequence thought his life safe. Ro- 
 bert, the Archbishop of Canterbm-y, and Wil- 
 liam, Bishop of Loudon, having armed their re- 
 tainers, took horse, and fought their way, sword 
 in hand, through the city, where many English 
 were killed or wounded. They escaped thi-ough 
 the eastern gate of Loudon, and galloped with 
 headlong .speed to Ness, in Essex. So gi-eat was 
 the danger or the panic of these two prelates, 
 that they threw themselves into an ill-condi- 
 tioned, small, open fishing-boat, and thus, with 
 gi-eat sufiering and at imminent hazard, crossed 
 the Channel to France. The rest of the foreigu 
 
 favourites fled in all directions, some taking re- 
 fuge in the castles or fortresses comm.-mded by 
 their countrymen, and others making for the 
 shores of the British Chaimel, where they lay 
 concealed until favourable opportunities oUiered 
 for passing over to the Continent. 
 
 In the meantime the witenagemot was sum- 
 moned, and when Godwin, in plenitude of might, 
 appeared before it, after having visited the hum- 
 bled king, the "earls" and "all the best men of 
 the land" agreed in the proposition that the 
 Normans were guilty of the late dissensions, and 
 Godwin and his sons innooeut of the crimes of 
 which they had been accused. With the excep- 
 tion of four or five obscure men, a sentence of 
 outlawry was hurled against all the Normans and 
 French; and, after he had given hostages to Ed- 
 ward, Godwin and his sons, with the exception 
 only of Sweyn, received full restitution; and, as 
 a completion of his triumph, his daughter Editha 
 was removed from her monastic prison to court, 
 and restored to all her honours as queen. The 
 hostages gi-anted were Wulnot, the youngest son, 
 and Haco, a grandson of Godwin. Edward had 
 no sooner got them into his hands than, for safer 
 custody, he sent them over to his cousin, William 
 of Normandy, and from this circumstance there 
 arose a curious episode, or under-act, in the ti-ea- 
 cherous and sanguinary drama. The exclusion 
 of Sweyn from pardon, and a nominal restoration 
 to the king's friendship, did not arise from the 
 active part he had taken in the Norman quarrel, 
 but was based in his old crimes, and more par- 
 ticularly the treacherous murder of his cousin 
 Eeorn. It seems that his family acquiesced in 
 the justice of his sentence of banishment, and 
 that Sweyn himself, now humble and penitent, 
 submitted without a struggle. He threw aside 
 his costljr mantle and his chains of gold, his ar- 
 mour, his sword, and all that marked the noble 
 and the warrior; he assiuned the lowly gai-b of a 
 pilgrim, and, setting out from Flanders, walked 
 barefoot to Jerusalem — that gi-eat pool of moral 
 purification, which, according to the notion of the 
 times, could wash out the stains of all guilt. He 
 reached the Holy City in safety, he wept and 
 prayed at all the holiest places there; but, re- 
 turning through Asia Minor, he died in the pro- 
 vince of Lycia. 
 
 Godwin did not long survive the re- establish- 
 ment of Saxon supremacy, and his complete vic- 
 tory over the king. According to Heni-y of 
 Himtiugdon, and other chroniclers, a very short 
 time after their feigned reconciliation, as Godwin 
 sat at table with the king at Windsor, Edwai"d 
 again reproached the earl with his brother Al- 
 fred's murder. "O, king!" Godwin is made to 
 say, " whence comes it that, at the lea.st remem- 
 brance of yom- brother, you show me a bad coun-
 
 A.D. 1042-1000.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 12; 
 
 tpnance ? If I liave contributed, even indirectly, 
 to his cruel fate, may tlie God of heaven cause 
 this moi-sel of bread to choice me !" He put the 
 bread to Ids mouth, and, of course, according to 
 this story, was choked, and died instantly. But 
 it appears, from better authority, that Godwin's 
 death was by no means so sudden and dramatic; 
 that though he fell spceoldess from the king's 
 table on Easter Monday (most probably from 
 apoplexy), he was taken up and can-ied into an 
 inner chamber by liis two sons, Tostig and Gurth, 
 and did not die till tlie followmg Thursday. Ha- 
 rold, the eldest, the handsomest, the most accom- 
 plished, and in every resj^ect the best of all the 
 sous of Godwin, succeeded to his father's terri- 
 tories and command, and to even more tlum 
 Godwin's authority in the nation; for, while the 
 people equally considered him as the great cham- 
 pion of the Saxon cause, he was far less obnoxious 
 than his father to the king; and whereas his fa- 
 ther's iron frame was sinking under the weight 
 of years, he was in the prime and vigour of life. 
 The spirit of Edward, moreover, was subdued by 
 misfortune, the fast-coming infirmities of age, and 
 a stiU increasing devotion, that taught him all 
 worldly dominion was a bauble not worth con- 
 tending for. He was also conciliated by the per- 
 mission to retain some of his foreign bishops, 
 abbots, and clerks, and to recal a few other fa- 
 vourites from Normandy. 
 
 The extent of Harold's power was soon made 
 manifest. On succeeding to Godwin's earldom 
 lie had vacated his own command of East Anglia, 
 which was bestowed by the com't on Algar, the 
 son of Earl Leofric, the hereditary enemy of the 
 house of Godwin, who had held it dui'ing Harold's 
 disgrace and exile. As soon as ho felt confident of 
 his strength, Harold caused Algar to be expelled 
 his government and banished tlie land, upon an 
 accusation of treason; and, however unjust the 
 sentence may have been, it appears to have been 
 passed with the sanction and concuiTence of the 
 witenagemot. Algar, who had mai-ried a Welsh 
 princess, the daughter of King Griffith, fled into 
 Wales, whence, relying on the power and influ- 
 ence possessed by his father, the Earl Leofric, 
 and by his other family connections and allies, he 
 shortly after issued with a considerable force, and 
 fell upon the county and city of Hereford, in 
 which latter place he did much harm, burning 
 the minster and slaying seven canons, besides 
 a multitude of laymen. Eulpli or Eadulf, the 
 Earl of Hereford, wlio was a Norman, and ne- 
 phew of the king's, made him a feeble resistance; 
 and it is said he destx-oyed the efficiency of the 
 Saxon troops by making them fight the Welsh on 
 horseback, "against the custom of their country." 
 Harold soon hastened to tlie aceiie of action, and 
 advancing from Gloucester with a well-a]ipoiuted 
 
 army, defeated Algar, ajid followed him in his 
 retreat through the mountain defiles, and across 
 the moors and morasses of Wales. Algar, how- 
 ever, still .sliowed himself so powerful that Harold 
 was obliged to treat with him. By these nego- 
 tiations he was restored to his former possessions 
 and honours; and when, very sliortly after, his 
 fatlier Leofric died, Algar w;is allowed to take 
 possession of his vast earldoms. The king seems 
 to have wished that Algar should have been a 
 counterpoise to Harohl, as Leofric had once been 
 to Godwin; but, both in council and camp, Harold 
 caiTJed everything before him, and his jealousy 
 being agam excited, lie again drove Algar into 
 banishment. Algai-, indeed, was no mean rival. 
 Both in boldness of chai-acter, and in the nature 
 of his adventm'os, he bore some resemblance to 
 Hai'old. This time lie fled into Ireland, whence 
 he soon returned with a small fleet and an army, 
 chiefly raised among the Northmen who liad 
 settled on the Irish coasts, and who thence made 
 repeated attacks upon England. With this force, 
 and the i\ssistance of the Welsh mider his father- 
 in-law. King Griflith, he recovered his e;U'ldonis 
 by force of arms, and held them in defiance of 
 the decrees of the king, who, whatever were liis 
 secret wishes, was obliged openly to denounce 
 these proceedings as illegal and treasonable. Af- 
 ter enjoying this triumph little more than a year, 
 Algar died (a.d. 1059), and left two sons, Morcar 
 and Edwin, who divided between them part of 
 his territories and commands. 
 
 WliUe these events were in progress, other cir- 
 cumstances had occurred in the north of Eng- 
 land which materially augmented the power of 
 Harold. Siward, the great Earl of Northumbria, 
 another of Godwin's most formidable rivals, had 
 died, after an expedition into Scotland, and as 
 his elder son Osberne had been slain, and his 
 younger son Waltheof was too young to succeed 
 to his father's government, the extensive north- 
 ern earldom was given to Tostig, the brother of 
 Harold. Siward, as wiU be presently related 
 more at length, had proceeded to Scotland to 
 assist in seating his relation. Prince Malcolm, the 
 son of the late King Duncan, upon the throne of 
 that country, which had been usurped by Dun- 
 can's murderer, Macbeth. It was in this en- 
 terprise, and before it was crowned with final 
 success, that, as has just been mentioned, Os- 
 berne, the pride of his father's heart, was slain. 
 He appears to have fallen in the fii^st battle 
 fought with Macbeth (a.d. 1054), near the hill of 
 Dunsiimaue. 
 
 Siwaixl, who was a Dane, eitlu^r by birtli or 
 near descent, was much beloved by the North- 
 umbrians, who were themselves chiefly of Dan- 
 ish extraction. They called him Sigward-Digr, 
 or Siward the Strong; and many years after his
 
 126 
 
 IirSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 death tlicy showed, with pride, a rock of polid 
 gi-anite whicli they pretended he liad si)lit in tw.-) 
 with a single blow of his liattle-axe. To his ir- 
 regular successor, Tostig, the brother of Harold, 
 they showed a strong dislike from the first, and 
 this aversion was subsequently increased by acts 
 of tjTanny on the part of the new eai-1. In an- 
 other direction the populai-ity of Ilarold was in- 
 creased by a most successful campaign against 
 the Welsli, who had inflamed the hatred of the 
 Saxon people by their recent foi-ays and cruel 
 murders. Their great leader, King Griflith, had 
 been weakened and exposed by the death of his 
 son-in-law and Harold's rival, the Earl Algar, in 
 1059; and after some minor ojierations, in one of 
 which Eees, the brother of Griflith, was taken 
 prisoner and put to death, by the order of King 
 Edward, as a robber and mm-derer, Harold was 
 commissioned, in 10C3, to cany extreme measures 
 into effect against the ever-turbulent Welsh. 
 The gi-eat earl displayed his usual ability, brav- 
 ery, and activity ; and by skilfully combined 
 movements, in which his brother Tostig and the 
 Northumbrians acted in concert with him — by 
 employing i;he fleet along the coast, by accoutring 
 his troops with light helmets, targets, and breast- 
 pieces made of leather (instead of their usual 
 heavy armour), in order that they might be the 
 better able to follow the fleet-footed Welsh — he 
 gained a succession of victories, and finally re- 
 duced the mountaineers to such despair that they 
 decapitated their king, Griflith, and sent his 
 bleeding head to Harold, as a peace-offering and 
 token of submission. The two half-brothers of 
 Griffith swore fealty and gave hostages to King 
 Edward and Harold. They also engaged to pay 
 the ancient tribute; and a law was passed, that 
 every Welshman found in arms to the east of 
 Offa's Dyke should lose his right hand. From 
 this memorable expedition, tlie good eflects of 
 which were felt in England, through the tran- 
 quillity of the Welsh, for many j'eai's after, 
 Harold returned in a sort of a Roman triumph to 
 the mild and peaceable Edward, to whom he pre- 
 sented the ghastly head of Griifith, together with 
 the rosti-um or beak of that king's chief war-ship. 
 The king's devotion still kept increasing with 
 his yeara, and now, forgetful of his bodily infir- 
 mities, w-hich, in all probability, would have 
 caused his death on the road, and indifferent to 
 the temporal good of his people, he expressed his 
 intention of going in pilgi-image to Rome, assert- 
 ing that he was bound thereto by a solemn vow. 
 The Witan objected that, as he had no children, 
 his absence and death would expose the nation 
 to the dangers of a disputed succession ; and then 
 the king, for the firet time, tm-ned his thoughts 
 to his nephew and namesake, Edward, the son of 
 his half-brother, Edmund Ironside. The long 
 
 neglect of this prince of the old race of Cerdic 
 and Alfred, which, counting from the time of 
 King Edward's accession, had extended over a 
 period of more than twenty years, shows but 
 slight affection for that Saxon family; and, as the 
 king had never expected any children of his own 
 to succeed him, it seems to confirm the statement 
 of those old writers who say he had all along in- 
 tended to bequeath his crown to his cousin, Wil- 
 liam of Normandy. But at this moment Norman 
 interest and influence, though not dried up, were 
 at a low ebb; be his wishes what they might, 
 Edward durst not propose the succession of 
 William, and being pressed by the Witan, and 
 his own eager desire of travelling to Rome, he 
 sent an embassy to the German emperor, Henry 
 HI., whose relative the young prince had mar- 
 ried, requesting he might be restored to the 
 wishes of the English nation. Edward the Ath- 
 eling, or Edward the Outlaw, as he is more com- 
 monly called, obeyed the summons with alacrity, 
 and soon an-ived in Loudon, with his wife Agatha 
 and his three yoimg chikh-en — Edgar, Margaret, 
 an<l Christina. The race of theu- old kings was 
 still dear to them; Edmund Ironside was a na- 
 tional hero, inferior only to the gi-eat Alfred; his 
 gallantry, his bi-avery, his victoi-ies over the 
 Danes, were simg in popular songs, and still 
 formed the subject of daily conversation among 
 the Saxon people, who therefore received his son 
 and gi'andchildren with the most heai'ty welcome 
 and enthusiastic joy. But though King Edward 
 had invited over his nephew with the ]5rofessed 
 intention of proclaiming him his heir to the 
 crown, that prince was never admitted into his 
 presence. This circumstance could not fail of 
 creating gi-eat disgust; but this and all other sen- 
 timents in the popular mind were speedily ab- 
 sorbed by the deep and universal grief and de- 
 spondence caused by Prince Edward's death, who 
 expu-ed in London shortly after his arrival in 
 that city, and was bm-ied in the cathedral of St. 
 Paul's. This sudden catastrophe, and the volun- 
 tary or constrained coyness of the king towards 
 his nephew, awakened homd suspicions of foul 
 play. The more generally received opinion seems 
 to have been that the prince was kept at a dis- 
 tance, by the machinations and contrivances of 
 the jealous Harold, and that that earl caused him 
 to be poisoned, in order to remove what he con- 
 sidered the gi-eatest obstacle to his own future 
 plans. In justice, however, the memory of Ha- 
 rold ought not to be loaded with a crime which, 
 possibly, after all, was never committed; for the 
 prince might very well have died a natural death, 
 although his demise tallied with the views and 
 interests of Harold. There is no proof, nor 
 shadow of pi'oof, that Harold circumvented and 
 then destroyed the prince. It is merely presumed
 
 A.D. 1042— lOGC] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 127 
 
 that, because the eai-1 gained most by his death, 
 he caused hiui to be killed. But William of Nor- 
 mandy gained as much as Hnrold by the removal 
 of the prince, and was, at the very least, as ca- 
 pable of extreme and ti'cacherous measures. Dm-- 
 ing his visit in England, the king may have j)ro- 
 mised the duke that lie would never receive his 
 nephew Edward; and while this circumstance 
 would of itself account for the king's shyness, 
 the coming of the prince would excite the jea- 
 lousy and alarm of William, who had emissaries 
 in the laud, and frieud.s and partizans about the 
 com-t. Suiiposing, therefore. Prince Eilward to 
 have been murdered (and there is no proof that 
 he was), (he crime was as likely to have been 
 committed by the orders of the duke as by those 
 of the earl. 
 
 The demise of Edward the Outlaw certainly 
 cut oti" the national hope of a continuance of the 
 old S;ixon dynasty; for though he left a sou, 
 called Edgar the Atheling, that prince was very 
 young, feeble in body, and in intellect not far re- 
 moved from idiotcy. The latter circumstance 
 forbade all exertion in his favour; but had he 
 been the most promising of youths, it is very 
 doubtful whether a minor woulil not have been 
 crushed by one or other of two such bold and 
 skilful competitors as William and Harold. As 
 matters stood, the king, whose journey to Rome 
 could be no more talked of, turned his eyes to 
 Normandy, while many of the Saxons began to 
 look up to Harold, the brother of the cpieen, as 
 the best and most national successor to the 
 throne. 
 
 That Harold went to Normandy at this time 
 is certain, but it is said that his sole object in 
 going was to obtain the i-elease of his brother 
 Wulnot and his nephew llaco, the two hostages 
 for the Godwin family, whom Edward had com- 
 mitted to the custody of Duke William, but 
 whom he was now willing to restore. Another 
 opinion is, that Harold's going at all was wholly 
 accidental. According to this version, being one 
 day at his manor of Bosenham, or Bosham, on 
 the Sussex coast, he went into a fishing-boat for 
 recreation, with but few attendants, and those 
 not very expert mariners; and scarcely was he 
 launched into the deep, when a violent storm 
 suddenly ;u'Ose, and di'ove the ill-managed boat 
 upon the opjiosite coast of Fiance; but whether 
 he went by accident or design, or whatever were 
 the motives of the voyage, the following facts 
 seem to be pretty generally acbnitted. 
 
 Harold was wi-eckcd or sti-anded near the 
 m )uth of the river Somme, in the territory of 
 Guy, Count of Ponthieu, who, according to a 
 barbarous practice, not uncommon, and held as 
 good law in the middle ages, seized the wreck as 
 his right, and made the passengers his prisonei-s 
 
 until they should pay a heavy ransom for their 
 release. Eroni the castle of Beli-am, now Bean- 
 rain, near Montreuil, where the earl ami his re- 
 tinue were shut >i]), after they had been despoiled 
 of the best part of their baggage, Harold made 
 his condition knowTi to Duke William, and en- 
 treated his good otficcs. The duke could not be 
 blind to the adv.antages that might be derived 
 from this accident, and he instantly and earnestly 
 demanded that Harold should be relejised, and 
 sent to his court. Careful of his money, AVilliain 
 at first employed threats, without talking of ran- 
 som. The Count of Ponthieu, who knew the 
 rank of his captive, was deaf to these menaces, 
 and only yielded on the oiler of a large sum of 
 money from the duke, and a fine estate on the 
 river d'Eaune. Harold then went to Rouen ; ani I 
 the Bastard of Normandy had the gratification 
 of having in his court, and in his power, antl 
 bound to him by this recent obligation, the son 
 of the great enemy of the Normans, one of the 
 chiefs of the league that had banished from Eng- 
 land the foreign courtiers — the friends and rela- 
 tions of William — those on wdiora his hopes rested 
 — the intriguers in his favour for the royalty of 
 that kingdom. Although received with much 
 magnificence, and treated with great I'espect and 
 even a semblance of alFection, Harold soon per- 
 ceived he was in a more dangerous prison at 
 Rouen than he had been in the castle of Belram. 
 His aspirations to the English crown could be no 
 secret to himself, and his inward conscience would 
 make him believe they were well known to AVil- 
 liam, who could not be ignorant of his past life 
 and present power in the island. If he was in- 
 deed uninformed as yet as to William's intentions, 
 that haiijiy ignorance was soon removed, and the 
 whole peril of his present situation placed full be- 
 fore him by the duke, who said to liiin one day, 
 as they wei-e riding side by side — "When Edward 
 and I lived together, like bi-others, under the 
 same roof, he promised me that, if ever he be- 
 came King of England, he would make me his 
 successor. Hai'old! I would, right well, that 
 you helped me in the fulfilment of this promise; 
 and be assiu-ed that if I obtain the kingdom by 
 your aid, whatever you choose to ask shall be 
 granted on the instant." The liberty and life of 
 the earl were in the hands of the proposer, and 
 so Harold promised to do what he could. Wil- 
 liam was not to be satisfied with vague promises. 
 "Since you consent to seiwe me," he continued, 
 "you must engage to fortify Dover Castle, to dig 
 a well of good water there, and to give it up to 
 my men-at-arms; you must also give me j'our 
 sister, that I may marry her to one of my chiefs; 
 and you yourself must marry my daughter Adelo. 
 Moreover, I wish you, at your dejiarture, to 
 leave me, in pledge of youi- promises, one of the
 
 128 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil. AND MiLlTAUT. 
 
 lioatajcos wliose liberty yo« now rccluim; lie will 
 -stay vuuler my guard, ami I will lestore liiiii to 
 you in England when I arrive there as king." 
 Harold felt that to refii.se or object would be not 
 only to expose himself, but his brother and ne- 
 jihew, also, to ruin; and the champion of the Sax- 
 on cause, hiding his heart's abhorrence, pledged 
 liimself verbally to deliver the principal fortress 
 of his country to the Normans, and to fulfil all 
 the other engagements, which were as much 
 forced u]5on him as though WiDiam had held the 
 knife to hia defenceless throat. But the ambi- 
 tions, crafty, and suspicious Norman was not yet 
 satisfied. 
 
 In the towai of Avi-anches, or, according to 
 other authorities, in the town of Bayeux, William 
 summoned a grand council of the barons and 
 lieadmen of Noiinandy, to be witnesses to the 
 oaths he should exact from the English earl. 
 The sanctity of an oath was so frequently dis- 
 regarded in these devout ages, that men had be- 
 gun to consider it not enough to sw-ear by the 
 majesty of heaven and the hopes of eternal sal- 
 vation; and had invented sundry plans, such as 
 swearing upon tlie host or consecrated wafer, 
 
 ami uiion the relics of saints and inartyw, which, 
 in their dull concejjtiou, were things far more 
 awful and binding. But William determined to 
 gain this additional guai'antee by a trick. On 
 the eve of the day fixed for the assemlily, he 
 caused all the bones and relics of saints jire.served 
 in all the chiu'ches and monasteries in the coun- 
 try, to be collected and deposited in a large tub, 
 which was placed in the council-chamber, and 
 covered and concealed under a cloth of gold. At 
 the appointed meeting, when William was seated 
 on his chair of state, with a rich sword in his 
 hand, a golden diadem on his head, and all his 
 Norman chieftains round about him, the missal 
 was brought in, and being opened at the evan- 
 gelists, was laid upon the cloth of gold wliicli 
 covex'cd the tub, and gave it the appearance of a 
 rich table or altar. Then Duke William I'ose and 
 said, "Earl Ilarold, I require you, before this 
 noble assembly, to confirm by oath the jn-omises 
 you have made me — to wit, to assist me in ob- 
 taining the kingdom of England after King Ed- 
 ward's death, to marry my daughter Adele, and 
 to send me your sister, that I may give lier in 
 marriage to one of mine." Harold, who, it is said, 
 
 IIap.old Sweabiko on the Relics.'— From the B-iyeux Tapestry. 
 
 was thus publicly taken by surprise, durst not 
 retract; he stepped forwai-d witli a troubled and 
 confused air, laid his hand upon the book, and 
 swore. As soon as the oath was taken, at a sig- 
 nal from the duke the missal was removed, the 
 cloth of gold was taken off, and the large tub was 
 
 1 The Bayeux Tapestry is a long piece of embroidery, worked 
 with coloured worsted thread, on a tissue of linen, about 233 ft. 
 (71 mHres) long, and 20 in. {52 centimetres) broad. It was dis- 
 covered in the tomihaU of Bayeux, in Normandy, whence its 
 name. Tradition a.ssign8 the work to Matilda, queen of William 
 the Conqueror, and her maids of honour. It is certainly a pro- 
 duct of the eleventh centm-y, though still iii the fi-eshest condi- 
 tion, and was probably sewed by some high-born chtitclaine of 
 the time, .and her ladies. It is a pictorial representation of the 
 conquest of England by the Normans, in seventy-two distinct 
 compartments, every leading incident immediately preceiling. 
 during, and following wliich, is depicted in the most expressive 
 manner, accompanied by all the accessories of ai"chitectm-e, fixed 
 and floating, costume, armoiu-, itc. Every compartment has a 
 auperseription in Latin, indicating its subject. The pantomime 
 
 discovered, filled to the very brim with dead 
 men's bones and dried-up bodies of saints, over 
 which the son of Godwin had sworn without 
 knowing it. According to the Norman chroni- 
 clers, Harold shuddered at the sight." 
 
 Having, in iiis apprehension, thus made surety 
 
 of the actors in the successive scenes is singulai-ly eloquent; and 
 the apparent movement of the figm-es — allowance made for the 
 imperfect ai-t of the time — is really spirited. This fine relic of 
 the olden time — really an historical document of the utmost 
 value — has had several locations, but is at present reposited in 
 the hutd-de-vitlt of Bayeux, where it is kept coiled romid a roller, 
 from wliich it is unwound for inspection. 
 
 ~ Mem. de V Acad, des ]nscripiioris; Roman du Rouer : Eadmer; 
 Glilidmus J'ictaviensis, or William of l*oitou. William of 
 Poitou received the particulars from i^ersons who were presout 
 at this extraordinary scene. 
 
 Among the chief objects of attr.action to the Anglo-Siixons, 
 both at home and in their pilgrimages, were relics. In findijig 
 this supei-stition so extremely prevalent among them, we are 
 .almost led to the supposition that it did not originate in the
 
 A.D. 1042- 106C.] 
 
 SAXON IM;1!I0D. 
 
 120 
 
 doubly sure, William loaded Ilai-old with \ire- 
 seuts, and perniitlcd liiiii to depart. Liberty 
 was restored to young JI;ieo, who returned to 
 England with his uncle, but the politic duke re- 
 tained the other hostage, Wulnot, as a further 
 seciu-ity for the faith of his brother the eai-l. 
 
 Harold had scarcely set foot in England when 
 he was called to the field by circumstances which, 
 for the present, gave liim an opportunity of show- 
 ing his justice and impai-tiality, or his wise 
 policy, but which soon afterwai-ds tended to 
 complicate the difficulties of his situation. ITia 
 brother Tostig, who had been intrusted with the 
 government of Northumbria on good Siward's 
 death, behaved with so much rapacity, tyranny, 
 and cruelty, as to provoke a general rising against 
 his authority and person. The insurgents — the 
 hardiest and most warlike men of the land — 
 mai'ched ujion York, where their obnoxious go- 
 vernor resided. Tostig fled ; his treasm-y and 
 armoury were pillaged, and 200 of his body- 
 guai'd were massacred on the baidcs of the Ouse. 
 The Northumbrians then, despising the weak 
 authority of the king, determined to choose an 
 e;\rl for themselves ; and their choice fell on 
 Morcar, one of the sons of Earl Algar, the old 
 enemy of IlaroUl and his family. Morcar, whose 
 ])ower and inlliience w-ere extensive in Lincoln, 
 Nottingham, and Derbj-shire, readily accepted 
 the authority offered him, and gathering to- 
 gether an ai-med host, and secui-ing the services 
 of a body of Welsh auxiliaries, he not only took 
 ]iossession of the great northern earldom, but ad- 
 vanced to Northamjitou, with an evident inten- 
 tion of extending his power towards the south 
 of England; but here he was met by the active 
 aud intrepid Uai'old, who had never yet retm-ned 
 vanquished from a field of battle. Before draw- 
 ing the sword against his own countrymen, the 
 son of Godwin jiroposed a conference. This was 
 accepted by the Northumbrians, who, at the 
 meeting, exposed the wrongs they had suffered 
 from Tostig, aud the motives of their insiuTection. 
 Harold endeavom-ed to palliate the faidts of his 
 brother, and promised, iu his name, better con- 
 duct for the future, if they would i-eceive him 
 back as then- earl lawfully appointed by the king. 
 Bufi the Northumbrians imanimously protested 
 against any reconciliation with the chief who had 
 tyi-annized over them. "We were bora free- 
 
 t'R.) Catholic faith, but w.is rattier, if not entirely jiroduced, at 
 least gre.atiy promoted by the belief of the Ueriiiamc nations, 
 who Bolemnly buried the bones of the dead iu barrows, threw 
 up vast moimds over them, raised monuments of rude work- 
 manship, and thought to conquer in battle with tho aid of the 
 coi-pses of their dead cliieftains. Tlie judicial euiJerstition, 
 brought to Britain by the Saxons, tliat tlie lifeless body of a 
 murdered person would begin to bleed on the approach of tho 
 mTirderer, also supposes the presence of su])Bniatm"al powera in 
 the corpse. — Lapiitnberg. 
 Vol. I. 
 
 men," saitl they, "and were brought u]i iu free- 
 dom; a ])roud chief is to us unbeai-able — for we 
 have learned from our ancestors to live free or 
 die." 
 
 The crimes of Tostig were proved, and Harold, 
 giving up his brothers cause as lost, agi-eed to 
 the demands of the Northumbrians, that the ap- 
 pointment of Morcar as earl should be confirmed. 
 A truce bemg concluded, he hastened to obtain 
 the consent of the king, which was little more 
 than a matter of form, and granted immediately. 
 The Northumbrians then withdrew with their 
 new earl, Morcar, from Northampton; but diu-- 
 ing Harold's short absence at court, to complete 
 the treaty of i>acitication, and at their dejjarture, 
 they plundered and burned the neighbouring 
 towns and villages, and carried oil" some hundreds 
 of the inhabitants, whom they kept for the sake 
 of ransom. As for the expelled Tostig, he fled 
 to Bruges, the court of Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, 
 whose daughter he had married, and, burning 
 with rage and revenge, and considering himself 
 betrayed or unjustly abandoned by his brother 
 Harold, he opened a corres]jondenee, and sought 
 friendship aud supjiort, with William of Nor- 
 mandy. 
 
 The childless and now childi.';h Edward was 
 dying. Harold arrived in London on the last 
 day of November; the king grew worse and 
 worse ; and in the first days of January it was 
 evident that the hand of death was ujion him. 
 The veil of mystery and doubt again thickens 
 round the royal deathbed. The wiiters who go 
 upon the authority of those who were hi the in- 
 terest of the Norman, positively affirm that Ed- 
 ward repeated the clauses of his will, aud named 
 William his successor ; and that when Harold 
 and his kinsmen forced their way into his cham- 
 ber to obtain a diflerent decision, he said to them 
 with his dying voice, " Ye know right well, my 
 lords, that I have bequeathed my kingdom to 
 the Duke of Normandy; and are there not those 
 here who have pi ighted oaths to secure William's 
 succession ?" On the other side it is maintained, 
 with equal confidence, that he named Hm-old his 
 successor, and told the chiefs and churchmen that 
 no one was so worthy of the crown its the great 
 son of Godwin. 
 
 The Norman duke, whose best light (if (jood 
 or right can be in it) was the sword of conquest, 
 always insisted on the intentions and last will of 
 Edward. But although the will of a jiojiular 
 king was occasionally allowed much weight in 
 the decision, it was not imperative or binding to 
 tho Saxon people without the consent and con- 
 currence of the witenageniot — the j)arliar:ienf or 
 great council of the nation — to which source of 
 right the Norn)ati, very naturally, never thought 
 of apjilying. The English crown was in great 
 17
 
 130 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militahy. 
 
 measure an elective crown. This fact is sufli- 
 ciently proved by the irregularity in tlie succes- 
 sion, wliicli is not reconcilable with aiiv 
 laws of lieirsLi]) and j:)riiuogeniture, for 
 we frequently see the brother of a do- 
 ceased king preferred to all the sons of 
 that king, or a younger son put over the 
 head of the eldest. As the royal rac 
 ended in Edward, or only survived in 
 an imbecile boy, it became imperative to 
 look elsewhere for a successor, and upon 
 whom could the eyes of the nation son.i 
 turally fall as upon the experienced, skil- 
 ful, and brave Harold, tlie defender o 
 the Saxon cause, and the near relatiuh 
 by marriage of their last king? Harold, 
 therefore, derived his authority from 
 what ought alwaj'3 to be considered its 
 most legitimate source, and which was 
 actually acknowledged to be so in the age 
 and country in which he lived. William, 
 a foreigner of an obnoxious race, rested 
 his claim on Edward's dying declaration, 
 and on a will that the king had no faculty 
 to make or enforce without the consent 
 and ratification of the states of the king- 
 dom; and, strange to say, this will, 
 which was held by some to give a plausible, | 
 or even a just title (which it did not), was 
 never produced, whence people concluded it had 
 never existed. The chroniclers agree in stating 
 that Edward was visited by frightful visions — 
 that he repeated the most menacing passages of 
 the Bible, which came to his memory involunta- 
 rily, and in a confused manner — and that the day 
 before his death he pronounced a fearful pr02jheoy 
 of woe and judgment to the Saxon people. At 
 these words there was " dole and sorrow enough ;" 
 but Stigaud, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 could not refrain from laughing at the general 
 alarm, and said the old man was only dreaming 
 and raving, as sick old men are wont to do. 
 
 During these his last days, however, the anxi- 
 ous mind of the king was in good part absorbed 
 by the care for his own sepulture, aud his ear- 
 nest wish that Westminster Abbey, which he had 
 rebuilt from the foundation, should be comjileted 
 aud consecrated before he departed this life. 
 The woi-ks, to which he had devoted a tenth part 
 of his revenue, were pressed — they were finished ; 
 but on the festival of the Innocents, the day 
 fixed for the consecration, he could not leave his 
 chamber; and the grand ceremony was performed 
 in presence of Queen Editha, who represented 
 her dying husband, and of a great concourse of 
 nobles and priests, who had been bidden m un- 
 usual numbers to the Christmas festival, that 
 tliey might jjartake in this solemn celebration. 
 He expired on the 5th of January, 1066; and, on 
 
 the very next day, the festival of the Epijihaiiy, 
 all that ix-maincd of the Lust Saxon king of the 
 
 Chatei and Shkine of Edward the Oojtfkssor. 
 
 race of Cerdic and Alfred was interred, with 
 great pomp and solemnity, within the walls of 
 the sacred edifice he had just lived time enough 
 to complete. He was in his sixty-fiftli or sixty- 
 sixth year, and had reigned over England nearly 
 twenty-four years. 
 
 The body of laws he compiled, and which were 
 so fondly remembered in after times, when the 
 Saxons were ground to the dust by Norman 
 tyranny, were selected from the codes or collec- 
 tions of his predecessors, Ethelbert, Ina, and Al- 
 fred, few or none of them originating in himself, 
 although the gi-atitude of the n.ation long con- 
 tinued to attribute them all to him. In his jier- 
 sonal character pious, humane, and temperate, but 
 infirm and easily persuaded, his whole life showed 
 that he was better fitted to be a monk than a king. 
 
 HAROLD was proclaimed king in a vastassem- 
 bly of the chiefs and nobles, and of the citizens 
 of London, almost as soon as the body of Edward 
 was deposited in the tomb, and the same evening 
 witnessed his solemn coronation, only a few hours 
 intervening between the two ceremonies. The 
 common account is that Stigand, the Ai'chbishop 
 of Canterbury, who, in right of his office, should 
 have crowned the king, having quarrelled with 
 
 ' The chapel in Westminster Abbey, and the shrine which con- 
 1.11 ns the ashes of tht- Confessor, were erected by direction of 
 Henry III., the latter being the work of the Italian artist Ca- 
 vallini. The coifin containing the king's remains is suspended 
 by iron rods firmly inserted in the stone-work, at about half the 
 depth of the shrine.
 
 A.D. 10-12- lOGG.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 131 
 
 tlie court of Rome, and then lying under a son- 
 tenee of susi>eusioii, the ccolesiivstic next in dig- 
 nity, Aldred, Archliisliop of Yorlc, olliciated iu liis 
 stead; other authorities affirm that Harold put 
 the crown on his head with his own hands: hut 
 both William of Poitiers, a ountenijiorary WTiter, 
 and Ordericus Vitalis, who lived in the next cen- 
 tiuy, assert that the act was performed by Sti- 
 gand. This account seems to be confirmed by 
 the representation of the ceremony on the Bayeux 
 Tapestry, where Hai-old appears seated on the 
 thi'oue, with Stigaud staudint; on his left. In this 
 
 moment of excitement the strong mind of the 
 Saxon, though not destitute of superstition, may 
 h.ave risen superior to the terrors of the dead 
 men's bones, and the oaths that h.ad been extorted 
 from him most foully and by force in Norm.andy ; 
 but the circumstances, no doubt, made an unfa- 
 voural lie impression on the minds of most of such 
 of his countiymen as were acquainted with them. 
 Still all the southern coimties of England hailed 
 his accession with joy; nor was he wanting to him- 
 self in exertions to increase his well-established 
 pojHilarity. " He studied by all means which wa) 
 R A ,P. 
 
 Tna Ceown offered to Harold, and the Coronation of Harold. — From the B.iyetix Tapestiy. 
 
 to win the people's favour, and omitted no occasion 
 whereby he might show any token of bounteous 
 liberality, gentleness, and courteous behaviour 
 towards them. The grievous customs, also, and 
 taxes which his predecessors had raised, he either 
 abolished or diminished; the ordinary wages of 
 his servants and men of-war he increased, and 
 furthei- showed himself very well bent to all vir- 
 tue and goodness."' A wi-iter who lived near the 
 time adds that, from the moment of his accession, 
 he showed himself jjious, humble, and affable, 
 and that he spared himself no fatigue, either by 
 land or by sea, for the defence of his countiy.^ 
 
 The court was effectually cleared of the un- 
 popidar foreign favourites, but their property was 
 respected; they were left in the enjoyment of 
 their civil rights, and not a few retained their 
 employments. Some of these Normans were the 
 first to announce the death of Rihvanl and the 
 coronation of Harold to Duke William. At the 
 moment when he received this great news he 
 was in his hunting-grounds near Kouen, hold- 
 ing a bow in his hand, with some new arrows 
 that he was trying. On a sudden he was ob- 
 served to be very pensive; and giving hLs bow- 
 to one of his people, he threw himself into a 
 skiff, crossed the river Seine, and then hurried 
 
 on to his palace of Rouen, without saying a word 
 to any one. He stopped in the gi-eat hall, and 
 strode uj) and down that apartment, now sit- 
 ting down, now rising, changing his seat au<l his 
 posture, as if unable to find rest in any. None of 
 his attendants durst approach, he looked so fierce 
 and agitated.' Recovering from his reverie, Wil- 
 liam agi'eed that ambassadors should be imme- 
 diately sent to England. When these envoys 
 appeared before Harold, they said, " William, 
 Dulie of the Normans, reminds thee of the oath 
 thou hast sworn him with thy mouth, and with 
 thy hand on good and holy relics." " It is true," 
 replied the Saxon king, " that I made an oath to 
 William, but I made it imder the influence of 
 force; I jjromised what did not belong to me, 
 and engaged to do what I never coidd do; for 
 my royalty does not belong to me, nor can I dis- 
 pose of it without the consent of my country. 
 In the like manner I cannot, without the consent 
 of my country, espouse a foreign wife. As for my 
 sister, whom the duke claims, iu order that he 
 may many her to one of his chiefs, she has been 
 dead some time — will he that I send him her 
 corpse V A second embassy terminated in mu- 
 tual reproaches; and then William, swearing 
 that, in the course of the year, he would come to 
 
 * Holinshed. 
 
 2 Rnger of Hovedtn. ' Thierry, Hist. <U la. Conqucle de VAngktem: Cliron. <U Norm.
 
 132 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and ^Tii-itaut. 
 
 exact all that was due to him, aiul pursue the 
 perjured Harold even unto the places where he 
 believed his footing (he most sure and fii'm, 
 pressed those preparations for war which he had 
 begun almost as soon as he learned the course 
 events had taken in England. 
 
 On the Continent the opinion of most men was 
 in favoiu- of William, and Harold was regarded 
 in the light of a sacrilegious oath-breaker, with 
 whom no terms were to be kept. The habitual 
 love of war, and the hopes of obtaining copious 
 plunder and rich settlements in England, were 
 not without their effect. In the cabinet council 
 which the duke assembled, there v.-aa not one dis- 
 sentient voice; all the great Norman lords were of 
 opinion that the island ought to be invaded; and 
 knowing the magnitude of the enterprise, they 
 engaged to serve him with their body and goods, 
 even to the selling or mortgaging their inherit- 
 ance. Some subscribed for ships, others to fur- 
 nish men-at-arms, others engaged to march in 
 person; the priests gave their gold and silver, 
 the merchants their stuifs, and the farmers their 
 corn and provender. A clerk stood near the 
 duke, with a large book open before him; and as 
 the vassals made their promises, he wrote them 
 all down in his register. The ambitious William 
 looked far beyond the confines of Normandy for 
 soldiers of fortune to assist him in his enterprise. 
 He had his ban of war published in all the 
 neighbom-ing countries; he oft'ered good pay to 
 every tall, robust man who would serve him with 
 the lance, the sword, or the cross-bow. A mul- 
 titude flocked to him from all pai-ts — from far 
 and near — from the north and the south. They 
 came from Maine and Anjou: from Poitou and 
 Bretagne ; from the country of the French king and 
 from Flanders; from Aquitaiue and from Bur- 
 gundy ; from Piedmont beyond the Alps and from 
 the banks of the Rhine. Adventurers by profes- 
 sion, the idle, the dissipated, the profligate, the 
 enfans pcrdus of Europe hurried at the sum- 
 mons.' Of these some were kniglits and chiefs in 
 war, others simple f oot-soldiei-s ; some demanded 
 regular pay in money, others mer-ely their passage 
 across the Channel, and all the booty they might 
 make. Some demanded teiritory in England — 
 a domain, a castle, a town; while others, again, 
 simply wished to secure some rich Saxon lady in 
 maiTiage. All the wild wishes, all the preten- 
 sions of human avarice were wakened into acti- 
 vity. "William," says the Norman Chronicle, 
 "repulsed no one; but promised and pleased all 
 as much as he could." He even sold, beforehand, 
 a bishopric in England to a certain Remi of Fes- 
 camp (afterwards canonized as St. Remigius), for 
 a ship and twenty men-at-arms. 
 
 ^ Tliierry, Chron. de Normandie. 
 
 When the pope's bull arrived, justifying the 
 expedition, and with it the consecrated banner 
 that was to float over it, the matrons of Norniandv 
 sent their sons to enrol themselves for the health 
 of their soids; and the national eagerness for war 
 was increased twofold. Three chm-ohmen — the 
 celebrated Lanfranc, Robert of JumiSges (Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, who had been expelled by 
 Earl Godwin and his sons), and a deacon of Li- 
 sieux — had been sent on an embassy to Rome, 
 where they urged the cause of William with 
 entire success, and obtained from Alexander III. 
 a holy license to invade England, on the condi- 
 tion, however, that the Norman duke, when he 
 had conquered our island, should hold it as a fief 
 of the church. This measure was not carried 
 through the consistory without opposition. The 
 man who combated most warmly in its favour 
 was the fiery HUdebrand, then archdeacon of the 
 Church of Rome, and afterwards the celebrated 
 Pope Gregory VII. The most valid reasons 
 William or his ambassadors could present to the 
 pope were — the will of King Edward the Con- 
 fessor (which was never produced), the perjury 
 and sacrilege of Harold, the forcible expulsion 
 from England of the Norman prelates, and the 
 old massacre of the Danes on St. Brice's Day by 
 King Ethelred. But if there was any want of 
 plausibility in the ai'gumentative statement of 
 his case, WilUam, as already intimated, was most 
 liberal and convincing in his promises to the 
 pope. 
 
 A pontifical diploma, signed with the cross, 
 and sealed, according to the Roman usage, with 
 a seal in lead, of a round form," was sent to the 
 Norman duke; and, in order to give him still 
 more confidence and security in his invasion, a 
 consecrated banner, and a ring of gi-eat price, 
 containing one of the hairs of St. Peter, were 
 added to the bull. William repaii-ed in per.son 
 to St. Germain, in order to solicit the aid of 
 Philip I., King of the French. This sovereign, 
 though tempted by flattering promises, thouglit 
 fit to refuse any direct assistance; but he per- 
 mitted (what he probably could not prevent) that 
 many hundreds of his subjects should join the 
 expedition. William's father in-law, Baldwin of 
 Flanders, gave some assistance in men, ships, and 
 stores; and the other continental princes pretty 
 generally encouraged William, in the politic hope 
 that a formidable neighbour might be kept at a 
 distance for the rest of his life if the expedition 
 succeeded, or so weakened as to be no longer for- 
 midable if it failed. But there was one state, 
 whose history in old times had been singularly 
 mixed and interwoven with that of Britain, which 
 might have jjroved an impediment. Armorica, 
 
 • C.illed in Latin bulla; hence the common name, " buU," for 
 I the pope's letters, &c.
 
 A.D. 1042-1066." 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 133 
 
 now called Bref agiie or Brittany, hiul become a 
 sort of fief to NormaiKly; but Conan, the I'eign- 
 iug chief or Duke of the Bretons, sent a message 
 to William, requiring that, since he wa.s going to 
 be King of England, he should deliver up hi.4 
 Norman duchy to the legitimate descendants of 
 Rollo the Ganger,' from whom the Breton said 
 he issued by the female line. Conan did not long 
 smwive this indiscreet demand; and his sudden 
 death, by poison, was generally, and above all in 
 Brittany, imputed to ^Yilliam the Bastard. Eudes 
 or Eudo, the successor of Conan, raised no pre- 
 tensions ; but voluntarily yielding to the influ- 
 ence of William, sent him two of his sons (which 
 he was not boimd to do) to serve him in his 
 wars against the English. These two young 
 Bretons, named Brian and Allan,^ came to the 
 rendezvous, accompanied by a troop of men of 
 their own counti-y, who g.ave them the title of 
 Mac Tierns (the sons of the chief), while the Nor- 
 mans styled them Counts. Other rich Bretons — 
 as Robert de Vitry, Bertrand de Dinan, and 
 Raoul de Gael — flocked to William's standard, to 
 offer their services as volunteers or as sokbers 
 of fortune. 
 
 From early spring all through the summer 
 months the most active preparations had been 
 carried on in all the seaports of Normandy. 
 Workmen of all classes were emploj'ed in build- 
 ing and equipping ships; smitba and ai-mourers 
 
 Norman Saip.— Restored from the Bayeui Tapestiy, by C. Jal, 
 
 forged lances, and made coats of mail; and por- 
 ters passed incessantly to and fro, carrjdng the 
 arms from the workshops to the ships. These 
 notes of preparation soon sounded across the 
 Channel, and gave warning of the coming inva- 
 sion. The first storm of war that burst upon Eng- 
 land did not, however, proceed from Normandy, 
 but from Harold's own unnatural brother. It 
 will be remembered how this brother, Tostig, 
 
 ' The founder of the duchy of Normamly. 
 ' This Allan is supjiosed by some to Lave been the original 
 stock of the royal bouse of Stuait. 
 
 expelled from Norlhumbria, fled with treache- 
 rous intentions to the court of the Earl of Flan- 
 ders, and opened communications with the Duke 
 of Normandy. Soon after Harold's coronation 
 Tostig repaired in person to Rouen, where he 
 boasted to William that he had more credit and 
 real jiower in England than Lis brother, and pro- 
 mised him the sure possession of that country if 
 he wouhl only unite with him for its conquest. 
 AVilliam was no doubt too well informed to credit 
 this assertion; but he saw the advantage which 
 might be derived from this fraternal hate; and 
 gave Tostig a few shijjs, with which that mis- 
 creant ravaged the Isle of Wight and the country 
 about Sandwich. Retreating before the naval 
 force of his brother, Tostig then went to the 
 coast of Lincolnshire, where he did gi-eat harm. 
 He next sailed up the Humber, but was presently 
 driven thence by the advance of Morcar, Earl of 
 Northumbria, and his brother Edwin, which two 
 powerful chiefs were now living in friendship 
 with Harold, who had espoused theii- sister, Al- 
 githa, and made her Queen of England. Fi'om 
 the Humber, Tostig fled with only twelve small 
 vessels to the north of Scotland, whence, forgetful 
 of his alliance with the Norman duke, he sailed 
 to the Baltic, to invite Sweyn, the King of Den- 
 mark, to the conquest of oui* islaml. Sweyn 
 wisely declined the dangerous invitation ; and 
 then, caring little what rival he raised to his 
 brother, he went to Norway, 
 and pressed Harold Hardrada, 
 the king of that country, to in- 
 vade England. Hardrada could 
 not resist the temptation; and, 
 early in autumn, he set sail with 
 a formidable fleet, consisting of 
 ifi 200 war-ships, and 300 store- 
 
 ships and vessels of smaller size. 
 Having touched at the Orkneys, 
 where he left his queen, and 
 procured a large reinforcement 
 of pirates and adventurers, Har- 
 drada made for England, and 
 sailed up the Tyiie, taking and 
 . , , . ,. , plundering several to-\vns. He 
 
 Arcbajotogie ^avaIe * ^ 
 
 then continued his course south- 
 wards, and, being joined by Tostig, sailed up the 
 Humber and the Ouse. The Norwegian king 
 and the Saxon traitor landed their united forces 
 at Riccall or Rlch;de, not far from the city of 
 York. Notwithstanding his former infamous 
 conduct, Tostig had still some friends and re- 
 tainers in that country; these now rallied round 
 his standard, and many others were won over 
 or reduced to an unjiatriotic neutrality by the 
 imposing display of force on the part of the 
 invaders. The Earls Morcar and Edwin, true 
 to Harold and their trust, mai-ched boldly out
 
 134. 
 
 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 from York; but they were defeated, after a des- 
 perate conflict, and compelled to flee. The citi- 
 zens of York then opened thcii- gates to the 
 Norwegian conqueror, who made himself the 
 
 Saxon Ship— IIarold a biiic— Ucsttiea tujin tlit Iiaycux Taiwstrj, u) 11 
 
 more formidalile to Harold by the wisdom and 
 moderation of his conduct. 
 
 Through all the summer months the last of 
 the Saxon monarchs had been busily engaged 
 watching the southern coast, where he expected 
 William to land; but noTO( giving up for the 
 moment every thought of the Noi-mans, he united 
 nearly all his forces, and marched most rapidly 
 to the north, to face his brother and the King of 
 Norway. This march was so skilfully managed, 
 that the invaders had no notion of the advance; 
 and they were taken by surprise, when Harold 
 bm-st upon them like a thunderbolt, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of York, a very few days after then- 
 landing. Hardrada drew up his forces as best 
 he could, at Stamford Bridge; as he rode round 
 them his hoi-se stumbled, and he fell to the 
 gi-ound; but he presently sprang up unhurt, and, 
 in order to stop a contraiy augury, exclaimed 
 that this was a good omen. Harold saw what 
 had happened, and inquired who that Norwegian 
 chief was in the sky-blue mantle and with the 
 splendid helmet. He was told that it was the 
 King of Norway; upon which he added, " He is 
 a large and strong person, but I augm- that for- 
 tune has forsaken him." Before joining battle, 
 Harold detached twenty mail-clad horsemen to 
 parley with that wing of the enemy where the 
 standard of Tostig was seen; and one of these 
 warriors asked if Earl Tostig was there. Tostig 
 answered for himself, and said, " You know he 
 is here." The horsemen then, in the name of his 
 brother, King Harold, ofi"ered him peace and the 
 whole of Northumbria, or, if that were too little, 
 the thh-d part of the realm of England. " And 
 what territory would Harold give in compen- 
 sation to my ally Hardrada, King of Norway ?" 
 
 The horsemen replied, " Seven feet of English 
 gi-ound for a gi-ave; or a little more, seeing that 
 Hardrada is taller than most men." " Ride 
 back, ride back," cried Tostig, "and bid King Ha- 
 rold make ready for the fight. 
 When the Northmen tell the 
 story of this day, they shall 
 never say that Earl Tostig for- 
 sook King Hardrada, the son 
 of Sigurd. He and I have one 
 mind and one resolve, and that 
 is, either to die in battle or 
 to possess all England." Soon 
 after, the action commenced; it 
 was long, fierce, and bloody, but 
 the victory was decisive, and in 
 favom- of Hai-old. Hardrada 
 fell, with nearly eveiy one of 
 his chiefs, and the greater part 
 of the Norwegians pei-ished. 
 Tostig, the cause of the war, 
 was slain soon after Hardrada. 
 Even the Norwegian fleet fell into the hands of 
 the conqueror, who had the generosity to permit 
 Olave, the son of Hardrada, to depart, with all 
 the survivors, in twenty-four ships, after that 
 prince had sworn that he would for ever main- 
 tain faith and friendship to England. 
 
 Only three days after this signal victory, the 
 Normans landed in the south. Harold received 
 this news as he was sitting joyfully at table in 
 the good city of York; but, taking his measures 
 with his usual rapidity, he instantly began bis 
 march towards London. Upon his way, his 
 forces, which had sufiered tremendously in the 
 battle against the Norwegians, were weakened 
 by discontents and desertion; and not a few men 
 were left behind by the speed of his mai'ch, from 
 the effects of their wounds and from sheer fatigue. 
 In numlter, sjiirit, discipline, appointment, and 
 in all other essentials, the enemies he had now 
 to encounter were most formidable. They have 
 well been called " the most remai-kable and for- 
 midable armament which the Western nations 
 had seen, since some degi-ee of regularity and 
 order had been introduced into their civil and 
 military arrangements."' 
 
 By the middle of August, the whole of Wil- 
 liam's fleet, with the land-troops on board, had 
 assembled at the mouth of the Dive, a small 
 river, which falls into the sea between the Seine 
 and the Orne. The total number of vessels 
 amounted to about 3000, of which 600 or 700 
 were of a superior order. During a whole 
 month the winds were contrary, and kept the 
 Noi-man fleet in that port. Then a breeze 
 sprang up from the south, and cari-ied the ships 
 
 ' Sir J. Mackintosh, Hist. Eng,
 
 A.D. 1042-1060.' 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 1 :r, 
 
 as f;ir as St. Valery, ne.ar Dieppe; but tliero 
 the weather changed; a storiu set in, and they 
 were obliged to cast anchor, and wait for several 
 days. During tliis delay some of tlie sliips were 
 wTecked, and their crews drowned on tiie coast. 
 lu consequence of all this, not a few of the dis- 
 coiu'aged adventurei-s broke their engagements, 
 and withdrew from the army; and the rest were 
 iuolmed to believe that Providence had declared 
 against the war. To checlv these feelings, whicli 
 might have proved fatal to his projects, AVilliam 
 caused the bodies of the shipwrecked to be pri- 
 vately buried as soon as they were found, and 
 increased the rations both of food and strong 
 drink. Eat this inactivity still brought back 
 the same sad and discouraging ideas. " He is 
 mad!" murmured the soldiers, ''that man is very 
 mad who seeks to take possession of auothei's 
 country ! God is offended at such designs, and 
 this he shows now by refusing us a fair wind." 
 The duke then had recourse to 
 something more potent than bread 
 and wine. He caused the body of 
 St. Valery, the patron of that 
 place, where a town had grown up 
 ai'ound his cell, to be taken from 
 liis shrine, and carried in proces- 
 sion through the camp, the knights, 
 soldiers, camp-followers, and sail- 
 ors, all devoutly kneeling as it 
 pa-ssed, and praying for the saint's 
 intercession. In the course of the 
 ensuing night the weather changed, 
 and the wind blew fair from the 
 Norman to the English coast. The 
 troops reijairod to their several 
 ships, and at an early hour the 
 next morning the whole fleet set 
 sail. "William led the van, in a 
 vessel which had been presented 
 to him for the occasion by his 
 wife Matilda, and which was distinguished by 
 its .splendid decorations in the day, and in the 
 darkness of night by a brilliant light at its mast- 
 head. The vanes of the ship were gilded; its 
 sails were of different bright colours; the three 
 lions, the arms of Nomiandy, were painted in 
 several places; and its sculptured figure-head 
 was a child with a drawm bow, the arrow ready 
 to fly against the hostile laud. The consecrated 
 banner, sent from Home by the pope, floated at 
 the main-top mast, and the invader had put a 
 cross upon his flag, in testimony of the holiness 
 of his undertaking. This ship sailed faster than 
 all the rest, and, in his impatience, William ne- 
 glected to order the taking in of sail to lessen its 
 speed. In the course of the night he left the 
 whole fleet far astern. Early in the morning he 
 ordered a sailor to the mast-head, to see if the 
 
 other ships were coming up. " I can see nothing 
 but the sea and sky," said the mariner; and then 
 they lay-to. To keep the crew in good heart, 
 AVilliam ordered them a sumptuous breakfast, 
 with wines strongly spiced. The sailor was 
 again sent aloft, and this time he said he could 
 make out four vessels in the distance; but mount- 
 ing a third time shortly after, he shouted, "Now 
 I see a forest of masts and sails !° A few houra 
 after this tlie united Norman fleet came to an- 
 chor on the Susse.x coast, without meeting with 
 any resistance; for Harold's ships, which so long 
 had cruised on that coast, had been called else, 
 wliere, or had returned into port through want 
 of pay and jirovisious.' It was on the 28th of 
 Septembei-, 106(>, that the Normans laniled un- 
 opposed at a place called Bulverhithe, between 
 Pevensey and Hastings. The archers landed 
 first; they wore short dresses, and their hah' was 
 shaved off"; then the horsemen landed, wearing 
 
 iron casques and tunics and chausses (or defences 
 for the thighs) of mail, being armed with long 
 and strong lances, and straiglit, double-edged 
 swords. After them descended the workmen of 
 the army, pioneers, cai-penters, and smiths, who 
 carried on shore, piece by piece, three wooden 
 castles, which had been cut and prepared before- 
 hand in Normandy. The duke was the last man 
 to land; and as his foot touched the sand, he 
 made a false step, and fell upon his face. A 
 muriviur instantly succeeded this trilling mishap, 
 and the soldiery cried out, "God keep us! but 
 here is a bad sign ! " In those days the Con- 
 queror's presence of mind never forsook him, 
 and, leaping gayly to his feet, and showing them 
 his hand full of En glish eai-th or sand, he ex- 
 
 ' Thierry, IIUl. de la ConqtUte; Southej's Naml Hist, of Eng.: 
 Chron. de Norrmmd.; Old. PictAv.
 
 36 
 
 ITISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 clainiej, " What now ? What astonishes you ? 
 I have taken seisin of this land with my liands, 
 and, by the splendour of God ! as far as it ex- 
 tends it is mine — it is yours!" 
 
 rEVENSET Bay. —From a drawing on the spot, by U. G Hine 
 From the landing-place the army marched to I hoping to 
 
 Hastings, near to which town 
 tified camp, and set up two of 
 the wooden castles or towers 
 that he had brought with him 
 from Normandy, and thei-e 
 placed his provisions. De- 
 tached corps of Normans then 
 overran all the neighbom^ing 
 country, pillaging and burning 
 the houses. The English fled 
 from their abodes, concealed 
 their goods and their cattle, 
 and repau'ed in crowds to the 
 sacred protection of then- in- 
 land churches. William per- 
 sonally sm-veyed all the neigh- 
 boiu'ing country, and occupied 
 the old Roman castle of Peven- 
 sey with a strong detachment. 
 It should appear that he was 
 presently welcomed into England by several 
 foreigners, the remnant of the old Norman court 
 pai'ty which had been so predominant in the days 
 of the late king. One Ilobert, a Norman thane, 
 who was settled in the neighbourhood of Hast- 
 ings, is pai-ticularly mentioned as giving him 
 advice immediately after his landing. It is pro- 
 bable that the disembarking the army, horse 
 an<l foot, and the landing of the provisions and 
 militaiy stores, would occupy two or three days; 
 
 but sixteen days ela])sed between their arrival and 
 the battle, and in all that time William made 
 no advance into the country, but lingered within 
 a 'ew miles of the coast where he had lauded. 
 
 On reaching London, where 
 he appeai-s to have been well 
 received by the people, Hai-old 
 manned 700 vessels, and sent 
 them round to hinder Wil- 
 liam's escape; for he made no 
 doubt of vanquishing the Nor- 
 mans, even as he had so re- 
 cently vanquished the Nor- 
 wegians. Eeinforcements of 
 troops came in from ail quar- 
 ters except from the north ; 
 and another of his Norman 
 spies and advisers, who w;is 
 residing in the capital, in- 
 formed the duke there were 
 grounds for apjn-ehending 
 that in a few days the Saxon 
 army would be swelled to 
 100,000 men. But Harold 
 was iiTitated by the ravages 
 committed in the country by 
 the invaders; he was impa- 
 tient to meet them ; and, 
 profit a second time by a sudden 
 
 le traced a for- I and unexpected attack, he marched off foi- the 
 
 * 
 
 i5T*s 
 
 Pevensey Castle.!— H G. Hine, from his drawln- on the spot. 
 
 Sussex coast by night, only six days after his 
 
 ' The remains of Koman masonry visible in Pevensey Castle 
 indicate an origin prior to the times both of Saxons and Nor- 
 mans. The outer walls, the most ancient pai-t of tlie biiilding, 
 inclose an area of 7 ac. , and stand from 20 ft. to 25 ft. high. The 
 moat on the south is wide and deep. Works of more modem 
 character stand within the walls, consisting of a fortification of 
 pentagonal form, with five circular towers. It is entered from 
 the outer court by a drawbridge on the west side, between two 
 towers. The principal barbican or watch-tower is towards the 
 north-east comer. The walls are -J ft. tliiok; the towel's are two 
 and three stories high.
 
 A.D. 1U42— 1066.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 137 
 
 arrhal iu LoiiJou, auil with forces iuferior in 
 uumbei'3 to those of \Villi;mi. The c;imi) of 
 William was well guarded, aiiJ, to prevent all 
 siu-prise, he had thrown out advanced posts to a 
 considerable distance. These posts, composed of 
 good cavalry, fell back as tlie Saxons approached, 
 and told William that Harold was rushing on 
 with the speed and fury of a madman. On his 
 side llarold despatched some spies, wlio spoke 
 the French language, to ascertain the position 
 and state of prejjaratiou of the Noriuans. Both 
 these the retiu-ning spies reported to be formi- 
 dable, and they addeil, with astonishment, that 
 tliere were more priests iu William's camp than 
 there were soldiers in the English army. These 
 men had mistaken for priests all the Norman 
 soldiers that had short hair and sliaven upper 
 lips; for it was then the fashion of the English 
 to let both tlieir liair and tlieir moustaches gi'ow 
 long. llarold smiled at their mistake, and said, 
 " Those whom you have found iu such great 
 numbers are not priests, but brave men of war, 
 who will soon sliow us what they ai-e wortli." 
 He then halted liis army at Soilac, since called 
 Battle, and changing his plan, surrounded his 
 camp with ditches and palisades, and waited the 
 attack of his rival in that well-chosen position. 
 One whole day was passed in fruitless negotia- 
 tions, the nature of which is differently reported 
 by the old chroniclers. Accordiug to William 
 of Poitiei-3, who was chaplain to the Conqueror, 
 and had the best means of information, and the 
 writer or writers of the Chronicle of Normandu, 
 a mouk named Hugh Maigrot was despatched to 
 demand from Plarold, in the name of William, 
 that he would do one of three things — resign his 
 crown in favour of the Norman; submit to the 
 arbitration of the pope; or decide the quarrel by 
 single combat. H;u'old sent a refusal to each of 
 these proposals, upon which William cliarged the 
 monk witli this last message: — "Go, and tell 
 Harold, that if he will keep his old bargain with 
 me, I will leave hiui all the couutry beyond the 
 river Humber, and will give his brother Gurth 
 all the lands of his father, Earl Godwin; but if 
 he obstinately refuse what I olfer him, thou wilt 
 teU him, before all his people, that he is per- 
 jured, and a liar; that he and all those who shall 
 support him are excommunicated by the pope, 
 and that I carry a bull to that effect." The 
 Norman Chronicle says that the monk Hugh 
 pronounced this message in a solemn tone, and 
 at the word "excommunication," the English 
 chiefs gazed upon one another in great dismay; 
 but that, nevertheless, they all resolved to fight 
 to the last, well knowing that the Norman had 
 promised their lauds to his nobles, his captains, 
 and his knights, who had ah-eady done homage 
 for them. 
 Vol. I. 
 
 The Normans quitted Hastings, and occu)jicJ 
 an eminence opposite to llie English, plainly 
 showing that they intended to give battle on the 
 morrow. Several reasons had been pressed upon 
 Harold by his followew, and were now repeated, 
 why he shouhl decline the combat, or absent 
 himself from its jjerilous chances. It was urged 
 that the des])erate situation of the Duke of Nor- 
 mandy forceil him to brijig matters to a sjjeedy 
 decision, and put his whole fortune on the issue 
 of a battle, for his provisions were already ex- 
 hausted, and his supplies from beyond sea would 
 be rendered precarious both by the storms of the 
 coming winter, and tlie ojjerations of the English 
 fleet, which had already blockaded all tlie ships 
 William kept with him in the ports of Pevensey 
 and Hastings ; but that he, the King of England, 
 in his own country, and well provided with pro- 
 visions, miglit bide his own time, and harass with 
 skirmishes a decreasing enemy, who would be 
 exposed to all the discomforts of an inclement 
 seixson and tlcep miry roads ; that if a general 
 action were now avoided, the whole mass of the 
 English people, made sensible of the danger that 
 threatened their property, their honour, and their 
 liberties, would reinforce his army from all quai-- 
 ters, and by degi-ees render it invincible. As lie 
 turned a deaf ear to all these arguments, his 
 bi-other Gurth, who was greatly attached to him, 
 and a man of bravery and good counsel, endea- 
 voured to persuade him not to be jireseut at the 
 action, but to set out for London, and bring up 
 the levies, wliile his be.st friemls should sustain 
 the attack of the Normans. " O ! llarold," said 
 the young man, "thou canst not deny that, either 
 by force or free-will, thou hast made Duke 
 William an oath upon the body of saints ; why, 
 then, adventure thyself in the dangers of the 
 combat witli a perjury against thee 1 To us, 
 who have sworn nothing, this wai- is proper and 
 just, for we defend our country. Leave us, then, 
 alone to fight this battle — thou wilt succour us if 
 we are forced to retreat, and if we die thou wilt 
 avenge us." To this touching appeal Harold an- 
 swered, that his duty forbade him to keep at a 
 distance whilst others risked their lives ; and, 
 determined to fight, and full of confidence in the 
 justice of his cause, he waited the morrow with 
 his usual courage. The night was cold and 
 clear; it was spent very differently by the hostile 
 armies ; the English feasted and rejoiced, singing, 
 with a gi-eat noise, their old national songs, and 
 emptying their horn-ciqis, whicli were well filled 
 with beer and wine: the Normans having looked 
 to their arms and to their horses, listened to their 
 |)riests and monks, who prayed and sang litanies; 
 and tliat over, the soldiers confessed themselves, 
 and took the sacrament tiy tliou.sands at a time. 
 
 The day of trial— Saturday, tlie Hth of Octo- 
 13
 
 138 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 ber — was come. As Jay dawned, Odo, the Bishop 
 of Bayeux, a half-brother of Duke William, cele- 
 brated mass, and gave his benediction to the 
 troops, being armed the while in a coat of mail, 
 which he wore under his episcopal rochet; and 
 when the mass and the blessing were over, he 
 mounted a war-horse, which the old chi-oniclers, 
 with their interesting minuteness of detail, tell 
 us was large and white, took a lance in his hand, 
 and marshalled his brigade of cavalry. The whole 
 army was divided into three columns of attack; 
 the third column, composed of nalive Normans, 
 and including many great lords and the choicest 
 of the knights, being headed by the duke in per- 
 son. William rode a fine Spanish horse, which 
 a rich Norman had brought him on his return 
 from a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. lago of 
 Galicia: he wore suspended round his neck some 
 of those revered relics upon wliieh Harold had 
 sworn, and the standard blessed by the pope was 
 carried at his side, by one Tonstain, sm'uamed 
 "the White," or "the Fail-,"' who accepted the 
 honourable but dangerous office, after two Nor- 
 man bai'ons had declined it. Just before giving 
 the word to advance, he briefly addressed his col- 
 lected host — " Make up your minds to fight vali- 
 antly, and slay yo\ir enemies. A great booty is 
 before us ; for if we conquer we shall all be rich; 
 what I gain you will gain ; if I take this land, 
 you will have it in lots among you. Know ye, 
 however, that I am not come hither solely to take 
 what is my due, but also to avenge om* whole 
 nation, for the felonies, perjuries, and treachery 
 of these English. They massacred our kinsmen 
 the Danes — men, women, and children — on the 
 night of St. Brice ; they murdered the knights 
 and good men who accompanied Prince Alfred 
 from Normandy, and made my cousin Alfred 
 expire in tortui-e. Before you is the son of that 
 Earl Godwin who was charged with these mur- 
 ders. Let us forwai'd, and punish him, with God 
 to our aid I " 
 
 A gigantic Norman, called Taillefer, who united 
 the different qualities of champion, minstrel, and 
 juggler, spurred his horse to the front of the 
 van, and sung, with a loud voice, the popular 
 ballads which immortalized the valom' of Char- 
 lemagne, and Roland, and all that iiower of chi- 
 valry that fought in the gi-eat fight of Ronces- 
 valles. As he sang he performed feats with his 
 sword, throwing it into the air with great force 
 with one hand, and catching it again with the 
 other. The Normans repeated the burden of his 
 song, or cried Dieu aide! Dieu aide! This 
 accomplished bravo craved permission to strike 
 the first blow : he ran one Englishman through 
 
 * The readers of Mttrmion will remember the bi-ave bearing of 
 "Btainless Tuastall's banuer white," loug after in the fight of 
 Flodden. 
 
 the body, and felled a second to the ground ; but 
 in attacking a third cavalier he Vfas himself mor- 
 tally wounded. The English, who, in rejdy to 
 the Dieu aide! or "God is our help!" of the 
 Normans, shouted " Chi-ist's rood ! — the holy 
 rood!" remained in their position on the ridge 
 of a hill fortified by trenches and palisades; and 
 within these defences they were marshalled 
 after the fashion of the Danes, shield against 
 shield, presenting an impenetrable front to the 
 enemy. According to old privilege, the men of 
 Kent were in the first line, and the burgesses of 
 London had the honour of being the body-guard, 
 and were di'awn up close round the royal stan- 
 dard. At the foot of this banner stood Hai-old, 
 with his two brothers, Gurth and Leofwin, and 
 a body of the bravest thanes of England. The 
 Normans attacked along the line with their bow- 
 men and cross-bowmen, who produced no impres- 
 sion; and when their cavalry charged, the Eng- 
 lish, in a compact body, received the assailants 
 with battle-axes, with which they broke the 
 lances and cut the coats of mail on which the Nor- 
 mans relied. The Normans, despairing of forcing 
 the English palisades and ranks, retired in some 
 disorder to the division where William com- 
 manded in person. The duke then threw forward 
 all his archers, and supported them by a charge 
 of cavalry, who shouted, as they couched their 
 Lances, " JVutre Dame ! Notre Dame! Dieu aide! 
 Dieu aide ! " Some of this cavalry broke tlu'ough 
 the English line, but presently they were all 
 driven back to a deep trench, artfully covered 
 over with brushes and grass, where horses and 
 riders fell in pe'le-mc'le, and jierished in great 
 numbers. According to some accounts, more Nor- 
 mans fell here than in any other part of the field. 
 For a moment there was a general panic; a cry 
 spread that the duke was killed, and at this re- 
 port a flight commenced. William threw himself 
 before the fugitives, and stopjied then- passage, 
 threatening them, and striking them with his 
 lance; then, imcovering his face and head, he 
 cried, " Here I am ! look at me ! I am still alive, 
 and I will conquer by God's help." In another 
 part of the field the rout was stopped by the 
 fierce Bishop of Bayeux, and the attacks on the 
 English line were renewed and multiplied. From 
 nine in the morning till three in the afternoon 
 the successes were nearly balanced, or, if any- 
 thing, seemed rather to preponderate on the Eng- 
 lish side. William had expected the gi-eatest 
 advantage from the charges of his numerous and 
 brilliant cavah-y; but the English foot stood firm 
 (a thing which infantiy seldom did in those days 
 under such cii'cumstances), ;ind they were so well 
 defended by their closed shields, that the arrows 
 of the Normans had little efl'ect upon them. The 
 duke then ordered his bowmen to alter the du-ec-
 
 A.D. 1042- lOCC] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 ir?!) 
 
 tiou of their shafts, and, insteail of ahootinj; |ioint- 
 M:ink, to <lh-ect their arrows u]i\var(l, so tliat tlie 
 piiiuts should ooii\e down like hail from above 
 upon the heads of the enemy. The manoeuvre took 
 effect, and many of the I'^ngli-sh wei-e wounded, 
 most of them in the face ; but still they stood 
 firm, and the Normans, almost disheartened, had 
 recourse to a stratagem. William ordered 1000 
 hoi-se to advance, and then turn and flee; at 
 the view of this pretended rout the Engli.sh lost 
 their coolness, and leaving their positions, a part 
 of the line gave pursuit, with their battle-axes 
 slung round their necks. At a certain distance 
 a fresh corps of Normans joined the 1000 horse, 
 who drew rein and faced about; and then the 
 English, surprised in their disorder, were as- 
 sailed on every side by lances and swords. Here 
 many hundreds of the English fell; for, encom- 
 passed by horse and foot, they could not retreat, 
 and they would not sm-render. The latter word, 
 indeed, is never once used in any of the old ac- 
 counts of the battle of Ilastings. The Norman 
 writers speak with admiration of the valour of 
 several of Harold's thanes, who fought single- 
 handed against a host of foes, as though each of 
 them thouglit to save his country by his indi- 
 vidual exertions. They have not preserved his 
 name, but they make particular mention of one 
 English thane, armed with a battle-axe, who 
 S2)read dismay among the invaders. The battle- 
 axe appears to have been the arm chiefly used 
 by the English. This ponderous weapon had its 
 advantages and its disadvantages ; wielded by 
 nervous men, it bi'oke in pieces the coats of mail, 
 and cleft the steel casques of the Normans, as no 
 swords could have done; but from its weight and 
 size it required both hands to wield it, and was 
 awkward and difticult to manage in close combat. 
 The feint flight, which had sr.cceeded so well, 
 was repeated by the Normans in another part of 
 the field, and, owing to the impetuosity of the 
 English, with equal success. But still the main 
 body maintained its position behind its stakes 
 and palisades on the ridge of the hill; and such 
 was their unshaken courage, that the Normans 
 were obliged to try the same stratagem a tliird 
 time — and a third time the lirave but imprudent 
 victims fell into tlie snare. Then' the Norman 
 horse and foot burst into the long-defended in- 
 closure, and broke the English line in several 
 points. But even now the English closed again 
 I'ound Harold, who, throughout the day, had 
 shown the gi'eatest activity and bravery. At this 
 juncture he was struck b\' an arrow, shot at ran- 
 dom, which entered his left eye, and penetrated 
 into his brain. The English then gave way, but 
 they retreated no further than their standard, 
 which they still sought to defend. The Normans 
 hemmed them in, making the most desperate 
 
 eflbrts to seize the banner. Robert Fitz-Krnest 
 had almost graajied it, when a b.attle-axe laid him 
 low for ever. Twenty Norman knight.s then un- 
 dertook the task,and this attempt succeeded, after 
 ten of their number had jierished. The standard 
 of England was then lowered, and the consecrated 
 lianner, sent from Rome, raised in its stead, in 
 sign of victory. Gurth and Leofwin, the brave 
 brothere of Hai-old, died at that last rallying 
 jioint. The combat had lasted nine lioin-s, for it 
 was now six o'clock in the evening, and the sim 
 was setting. After a des])erate attempt at rally- 
 ing made by the men of Kent and the East An- 
 gles, which cost the lives of many of the victors, 
 the English troops, broken and dispirited by the 
 loss of their leader, dispersed through the woods 
 which lay in the rear of their jiosition; the enemy 
 followed them by the light of the moon; but, as 
 they were ignorant of the country, which was in 
 some places intersected by ditches, and as tlie 
 English tm-ned and made a stand wherever they 
 could, they sufl'ered severely in this i>nrsuit, and 
 soon gave it uj). In every clause of their naira- 
 tive the Norman writers express their admiration 
 of the valoiu- of the foe; and most of them confess 
 that the gi-eat sujieriority of his forces alone en- 
 abled AVilliam to obtain the victoiy. Dm-ing the 
 sang-uiuary conflict the fortunate duke liad tlu-ee 
 horses killed under him, and at one moment he 
 was nearly laid prostrate by a blow struck upon 
 his helmet by an English cavalier. The proud band 
 of lords and knights that followed him from the 
 Continent was fearfully thinned, as was well 
 proved on the morrow, when the muster-roll he 
 had prepared before leaving the port of St. Valery 
 was called over. He lost one-fom-th of his ai-my, 
 and he did not gain by the battle of Hastings a 
 fourth part of the kingdom of England; for many 
 an after-field was fought, and his wai'S for the 
 conquest of the west, the north, and the east, 
 were protracted for seven long years. The con- 
 quest effected by the Normans w.;is a slow, and 
 not a sudden one.' " Thus," to use the energetic 
 language of an old ^VTiter," " was tried, by the great 
 ai3.size of God's judgment in battle, the right of 
 power between the English and Norman nations; 
 a battle the most memorable of all othere; and 
 howsoever miserably lost, yet most nobly fought 
 on the part of England."^ 
 
 ' Sir J. W.afikiiitosli, IliH. '■' Daniel. 
 
 3 It lias not been sufficiently noticed by bistoi-inns, tliat the 
 s.ime mistaken views of CliriatLan perfection which, by witli- 
 drawing the most moral part of the popniation into convents 
 and solitudes, weakened the social system of the Roman empii-c 
 in the fourth and fifth centuries, and tlnzs insured its overtlirow 
 by the barbari.ins of the North, weakened Anglo-Saxon society 
 in tlio eleventh century, and thus insured the triumph of the 
 Konnans. Dis.'^ipatiou in one part of the people, .iiid luiceticism 
 in another, tended to the same restilt. Christianity became 
 cither qtiito \inknowii, or did not bear on the ordinary relations 
 of civil and domestic life. Retrcatijig from the world it should
 
 no 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Scotland and Ireland. 
 
 CHAPTER v.- SCOTTISH AND IRISH ANNALS. 
 
 A.B. 300-lOCG. 
 
 Different occnpants of Britain— The Picts — The Scots — Tliey are uniteil into one nation — History of the Scottish 
 kings to Malcolm III. — Annals of Ireland— Its early populations— Conversion of the Irish to Christian'ty 
 by St. Patrick— Their contests with the Danes — State of Ireland at the period of the Norman Conquest of 
 England. 
 
 URING the course of the preced- 
 ing narrative, we have seen the 
 Saxons frequently engaged in wars, 
 and occasionally also connected by 
 alliances, with various other na- 
 tions dwelling around thcni in the 
 same island. The largest as well as the fairest 
 portion of Britain was conquered and occui)ied, 
 diu'ing the period we have been reviewing, by 
 these Germanic invaders; but much of it still 
 remained in the possession of the races of other 
 lineage, by whom it had been earlier colonized, 
 or was seized upon by invaders like themselves, 
 but from a different quarter. All the east and 
 south, from the Channel to the Tweed, was Saxon; 
 in the west, along tlie whole extent of the Saxon 
 dominion, were the alien and generally hostile 
 tribes of Cornwall and Wales ; on the noi-th-west 
 were the independent sovereignties of Cumbria 
 and Strathclyde (if these were really two distinct 
 kingdoms); and to the east and north of these 
 
 was the powerful and extensive kingdom of the 
 Picts, originally, it should seem, embracing the 
 whole of the rest of modern Scotland. Behind 
 the Picts, however, in the north-west, a colony of 
 Scots from Ireland, not long after the ain-ival of 
 the Saxons in the south, founded another new 
 power of foreign origin, destined in like manner, 
 in course of time, to bear down l)efore it the elder 
 thrones of its own part of the island. 
 
 The doubtful and confused annals of the seve- 
 ral Cornish and Welsh principalities of those 
 times offer notliing to detain the historian. Corn- 
 wail appeal's to have usually formed one king- 
 dom, South AVales another, and North Wales a 
 third. But the subjects of these several states, 
 and also those of Cumbria and Strathclyde, fai*- 
 ther to the north, may be regarded as having been, 
 in the main, one people. It seems not impro- 
 bable that they may have been a mixture of the 
 old Celtic Britons who fled before the Saxons, or 
 were the original inhabitants of this strip of 
 
 have pmifieJ, it left it to perish from its o^vn coTTuptions. 
 William of Malmesbury gives a graphic picture of both excesses. 
 The whole passage is instnictive : — "This was a fatal day to Eng- 
 land — a melancholy havock of our dear couiitiy, through its 
 change of masters. For it had long since adopted the manners 
 of the Angles, which had been very various according to the 
 times; for in the fii-st years of their arrival they were barbarians 
 in their look and maimers, warlike in their usages, heathen in 
 their rites ; but after embracing the faith of Clirist, by degrees 
 and in process of time, from the peace they enjoyed, regarding 
 arms only in a secondary light, they gave their whole attention 
 to religion. I say nothing of the poor, the meanness of whose 
 fortmie often restrains them from overstepping the bounds of 
 justice. I omit men of ecclesiastical rank, whom sometimes 
 respect to their profession, and sometimes the fear of shame, 
 suffer not to stray from the truth. I speak of princes, who, 
 from the greatness of their power, might have full liberty to 
 indulge in pleasure; some of whom in their own countiy, and 
 others at Rome, changing their habit [that is, becoming monks], 
 obtained a heavenly kingdom and a saintly intercoui-se. Many 
 during theii* whole lives in outward appearance only embraced 
 the present world, in order that they might exhaust their trea- 
 sui'es on the poor, or divide them among mouasteiies. What 
 shall I say of the multitudes of bishops, hermits, and abbots? 
 Does not the whole island blaze with such numerous relics of 
 its natives, that you can scarcely pass a village of any conse- 
 quence but you hear the name of some new saint, besides the 
 numbers of whom aU notices have perished, from the want of 
 records?" 
 
 Anglo-Saxon England had evidently become much like the 
 Roman provinces in the days of Sidpicius Severus. Social, 
 domestic, and military life had not received those pm'ifyiug 
 
 and invigorating Christian influences that make a people dis- 
 posed to peace, yet iri'esistible against foreign attack. On the 
 contrary, monkish superstition and asceticism, by leading the 
 conscientious and pious away fi-ora the world they should have 
 puiified and preserved, left vice and ignorance, profligacy and 
 moral cowardice, to usurp their place. Wo need not wonder, 
 therel'ore, at what follows, from the same author; — 
 
 "Nevertheless, in process of time, the desii'e after Hterature 
 and religion liad decayed, for several years before the arrival of 
 the Normans. The clergy, contented with a very slight degree 
 of learning, could scarcely stammer out the words of the sacra- 
 ments ; and a person who imdei"stootl grammar was an object 
 of wonder and astonishment. The monks mocked the rule of 
 tlieir order by fine vestments and the use of every kind of food. 
 The nobility, given up to luxury and wantonness, went not to 
 church in the morning, after the manner of Christians, but 
 merely, in a cai-elesg manner, heard matins and masses from a 
 hurrjiiig priest in their chambers, amid the blandishments of 
 their wives. The commonalty, left unprotected, became a prey 
 to the most powerful, who amassed fortimes by either seizing on 
 their property, or by selling their persons into foreign comitries; 
 although it be an innate quality of this people to be more in- 
 clined to revelling than to the accumulation of wealth. There 
 was one custom repugnant to lumian nature wliich they adopted, 
 namely, to sell their female servants, when pregnant by them, 
 and after they had satisfied their lusts, either to public prostitu- 
 tion, or to foreign slavery. Drinking in parties was an universal 
 practice, in which occupation they passed entire nights as well 
 as days. They consumed their whole substance in mean and 
 despicable houses, imlike the Normans and French, who, in 
 noble and splendid ho\ise3, lived with frugality." — William of 
 Malmesbury, book iii.
 
 A.Ti. 300-1006.] 
 
 SAXON PEUTOD. 
 
 m 
 
 country, anil of Cirabrians, originally from the 
 north of Germany and Uenniarlc, the proper i>ro- 
 genitors of the present Welsh. At what date 
 these Cimbrians first found their way from the 
 east coast of Scotland, where tliey seem to have 
 earliest settled, to the west coast of England, and 
 there mixed with and established a dominion 
 over the native British occupants, no chronicles 
 have told us. But some ancient relation between 
 the Welsh aud the Picts seems to be indicated by 
 the strong evidence of language ; and the close 
 connection that subsisted between Wales and the 
 Scottish kingdom of Strathclyde, down to the 
 extinction of the latter, is establi died by abun- 
 dance of historic testimony. If, in the mixture 
 of the two races, the ascendency remained witli 
 the Celtic Britous anywhere, it was most probably 
 in Cornwall. Everj'where else both the govern- 
 ment and the language appear to have become 
 chiefly Cimbrian, the national denomination of 
 the Welsh in their vernacular tongue to this day. 
 One of the northern Welsh kingdoms was actu- 
 ally called the kingdom of Cumbria, whence our 
 modern county of Cumberland ; and if tlie king- 
 dom of Strathclyde was a dilTereut state from 
 this (which is doubtful), we know at least that 
 in that district of Scotland also, the native land 
 aud residence of Merlin and Anem-in, and many 
 other personages famous in Cumbrian song and 
 story, the language, and government, and all 
 things else were Welsh.' 
 
 At what time the various tribes of the north, 
 
 ^ This 13 not the place to discuss the genealogy of the Picts ; 
 but if we adopt the theoi-y of their Germanic origin, the enigma 
 (of the passing away of the Romano-British population), if not 
 m.'Ule quite plain, will appear less diihcult than before. 
 
 "The supposition i3 not destitute of support. Tlie migi-a- 
 tory tendencies of the Gotliic tribes have always been conspi- 
 cuous. From the earliest periods of our history, tlie inhabitants 
 of Jutland and its neighbouring provinces were in the habit of 
 making descents on the coasts of Britain. After the departure 
 of the Ilomaiis, their attempts were probably more bold and 
 frequent ; but they ilid not then for the first time commence 
 The Norfolli and Suffolk coast was, from its position, peculiarly 
 exposed to these incursions; and as early as the close of the tliird 
 century, was placed under the command of a militaiy count, 
 called Comes titoris S'.lj:onici This district was called the Saxon 
 shore, as Sir Francis Palgrave observes, not merely because it 
 was open to tlie incm-sion of the Saxons, but, most probably, 
 because they had succeeded in fixing themselves in some por- 
 tions of it. The weak hold which the Romans, at aU times, had 
 of Scotland, would render it an easier prey than EngLand to the 
 Franks and Saxons. Tacitus informs us that tlie ruddy hair 
 and lusty limbs of tlie Caledonians indicate a Germanic extrac- 
 tion. Richard of Cirencester tells lis, that a little before the 
 coming of Sevenis, the Picts landed in Scotland ; from which wc 
 are entitled to infer, that the Picts were not the original inha- 
 bitants of North Britain ; and probably the statement is sub 
 Btantially correct, inasmuch as large reinforcements landed in 
 Scotland at this period, as previously observed. The Scots — the 
 other branch of the people classed under the general term Cale- 
 donians—are confessedly of Irish origin. When St. Columba, 
 whose mother-tongue was the Irish Gaelic, preached to the 
 Picts. he used an interpreter. Fordun, the father of Scottish 
 liistorj', tells us : ' The manners of the Scots are various ,xs to thei r 
 languages ; for they use two tongues— the Scottish and the Ton- 
 tonic. The last is spoken by those on the sea-coasts and in t!ic 
 
 often .spoken of under the general appellation of 
 the Caledonians, although that name was ])ro])erly 
 applicable only to the occujiants of the woody 
 and mountainous regions of the west and north- 
 west, came to be united in the single monarchy 
 of the Picts, it is impossible to ascertain. The 
 Picts are first mentioned about the beginning of 
 the fourth century, at which time the name ap- 
 pears to liave been understood to comprehend all 
 the northern tribes. Antiquaries are generally 
 agreed that a kingdom, under the name of the 
 kingdom of the Picts — whicli, in pretension at 
 least, extended over the whole of what is now 
 called Scotland, with the exception of the district 
 of Strathclyde in the south-west- had been estab- 
 lished some considerable lime before the evacua- 
 tion of South Britain by the Romans in the middle 
 of the fifth century. Records, the authenticity 
 of which docs not admit of any reasonable doubt, 
 make the Pictish sovereign, when this event took 
 place, to have been Durst, the son of Erp, for 
 wliom his warlike achievements against the pro- 
 vincialized Britons of the south, and the length 
 of his reign, have obtained from the Irish annal- 
 ists the poetic title of King of a Hvmdred Years 
 and a Hundred Battles. The Picts came into 
 collision with the Saxons of Northumberland not 
 long after the establishment of the two kingdoms 
 of Deh-a and Bernicia, the princes of the latter 
 of which appear to have claimed, as within their 
 boundaries, the whole of the territoiy along the 
 east coast, as far as to the Frith of Forth. For 
 
 low countries, wliile the Scottish is the speech of the mountain- 
 eers and the remote isl.anders.' Tlie proper Scots Camden de- 
 scribes as those commonly called Highlandmen; 'for the rest,' ho 
 adds, ' more civilized, and inliabiting the eastern part, though 
 comprehended under the name of Scots, are the farthest in the 
 world from being Scots, but are of the same Gennan origin \vith 
 us English.' Dr. Jamieson, who.=!e researches in physiology are 
 well known, is decidedly of opinion that the Picts and Saxons 
 had a common origin. Upon what other theoiy, he .irgues, 
 can the prevalence of the Saxon tongue in the Lowl.ands of .Scot- 
 laud be .accounted for? William the Conqueror could not change 
 the language of South Britain. Was it likely that a few Saxon 
 fugitives at the Scottish com-t could supplant that of their 
 benefactor 1 
 
 "The theory of the Germanic origin of the Picts i"omove3 an- 
 other difficulty. How is the disappearance of the Celtic tongue 
 from England to be accflmited for? The Saxons, on seizing the 
 soil, would not extenuinate the iidiabitants, but retain them aa 
 bondsmen. Had the majority of the original occup<ant3 of Eng- 
 land been the original Britons or Romanized Celts, we should 
 have found in our daily speech, and in the names of our towns 
 and villages, a large intennixture of Gaelic and Latin; but such 
 is not the case. Grant that the Picts were a branch of the great 
 Gothic family, and that successive waves of tlieni li.ad, long 
 before the time of Cerdic, poured from the Lowlands of Scotland 
 over the plains of England, .and the almost entire extermluatlon 
 of the ancient Britons is easily .accounted for. 
 
 " If tlie theory here advocated cannot be Rustainod, it must 
 at least be allowed tli.at the population of Nortli Brit.ain was 
 Largely leavened with individuals of the Saxon race. These 
 strangers would, doul,tless, obtain that supremacy over tho 
 natives which the Franks did in G.aul; so that, even upon this 
 limited view of the question, tho influence of the Germanic race 
 in fixing tho destinies of Britain .at this critical period, is appa- 
 rent." — The KoTiian Wall, by the Rev. John C. Bruce, M.A.
 
 U2 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 rScuTLAKD AND ICELAND. 
 
 some tiiiK^, accoriliiigly, all tliis tlistrict formed u 
 sort of dutuiteablc laiul, alternati-ly subject to the 
 Northumbrian Saxons and to the Piets. The 
 Saxons are believed to have l)Ogun to settle in 
 the territory as early as the niieldle of the fifth 
 century, and probably from this date the popu- 
 lation continued to be mainly Saxon ; but after 
 the gi'eat battle of Dunnechtan (supposed to be 
 Dunnichen in Angus), fought in 085 between the 
 Pictish king Bridei, the son of Beli, and the Nor- 
 thumbrian Egfrid, it became permanently a part 
 of the Pictish dominions. This is the tract of 
 country which, in a later age, came to be called 
 by the name of Lodonia or Laodonia, .=;till sur- 
 viving in the Lothians, the modern designation 
 of the greater part of it. 
 
 In the earliest times of the Pictish monarchy, 
 its cajiital appears to have stood near the jjresent 
 town of Inverness. It was here that King Bridei 
 or Brude, son of Merlothon, was visited, soon 
 after the middle of the sixth centmy, by St. Co- 
 lumba. Afterwards, on the extension of then- 
 power towards the south, the Kings of the Picts 
 transferred their residence to Forteviot in Perth- 
 shire, and here they seem to have fixed themselves 
 so long as the mouai-chy subsisted. The history 
 of the state, so far as it has been preserved, is 
 made up of little else than a long succession of 
 hostilities, sometimes with the SaxOns, some- 
 times wiLh the neighbouring kingdom of Stratli- 
 clyde, sometimes with the Scots from Ireland, 
 who from the commencement of the sixth centm-y 
 continued to encroach upon the teri'itories of the 
 Picts, and the pressure from whom perhaps had 
 some share in inducing the latter eventually to 
 remove the chief seat of their sovereignty from 
 ils ancient position in the heart of the true Cale- 
 donia. The meagre narrative is also varied by 
 some domestic wars, principally arising out of 
 the competition of various claimants for the 
 crown, to which there seems to have been no de- 
 finitely settled rule of succession. In the end of 
 the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century, 
 the Piets found a new enemy in the northern 
 pirates or sea-kings, the same marauders who in 
 the same age ravaged the neighbouring coasts of 
 England and France, and indeed it may be said 
 genei-ally of all the north-west of Em'opc. The 
 dissolution of tlie ancient Pictish royalty, how- 
 ever, and the extinction of the name of the Piets 
 as that of an independent people, wei'e now at 
 hand. 
 
 The earliest colony of Irish, or Soots, as they 
 were called, is said to have settled on the west 
 coast of North Britain about the middle of the 
 third centm-y. They were led by Carbiy Eiada, 
 prince or sub-regiilus of a district called Dalriada 
 in Ulster; and they were long known by the 
 name of the Dalriadians. from this their native 
 
 seat. The Dalriadians, liowever, do not appeal' 
 to have set up any pretences to an independent 
 sovereignty in the country of then- adoption 
 until after the begintiing of the sixth century, 
 when then- nmnbei-s were gi-eatly augmented by 
 an immigi-ationof their Irish kmdred, under the 
 conduct of Lorn, Fergus, and Angus, the three 
 sons of Erck, the then prince of Dalriada. This 
 new colonization seems to have amounted to an 
 actual invasion of North Britain, and the design 
 of its leaders probably was from the fii-st to 
 wrest the country or a part of it from its actual 
 jjossessors. Very soon after this we find the 
 Picts and Scots meeting each other in arms. A 
 still more decided proof of the growing strength 
 of the latter nation is, in coiu'se of time, afforded 
 by a matrimonial alliance between the King of 
 the Dalriadians and the Pictish royal house. 
 This connection took place in the reign of Achaius, 
 who is reckoned the twenty-seventh of the Scot- 
 tish kings from Fergus, in whose line and in that 
 of the descendants of his elder brother, Lorn, the 
 sovereign power had been all along preserved. 
 Achaius married LTrgusia, the sister of the Pict- 
 ish kings Constantine and Ungus, who reigned 
 in succession from a.d. 791 to 830. Tlie issue of 
 this marriage, and the successor of Achaius, was 
 Alpin, and his son and successor Wiis Kenneth II., 
 who mounted the thi-one of his ancestors in the 
 year 836. Three yeai-s after, the Pictish king 
 Uven, the son and successor of Ungus, fell in 
 battle with the Danes. Kemieth, as the near 
 relation of its deceased occupier, immediately 
 claimed the vacant throne : a contest of arms be- 
 tween the two nations appears to have ensued ; 
 but at last, in a.d. 843, Kenneth, having subdued 
 all opposition, was acknowledged king, both of 
 the Scots and the Picts. There is no reason to 
 suppose, as is asserted by some of the Scottish 
 chroniclei-s who wrote in a comparatively recent 
 age, that the Pictish people were upon this event 
 either destroyed or driven from their country; 
 it is probable enough that the chiefs of the fac- 
 tion that had resisted the claim of Kenneth, and 
 also perha]is many of their followers, may have 
 fled from the vengeance of the conqueror, and 
 taken refuge in the Orkney Islands and elsewhere; 
 but the great body of the inhabitants, no doubt, 
 remained the subjects of the new Idng. It ap- 
 pears that Kenneth and his immediate successors 
 styled themselves, not Kings of Scotland and of 
 Pictavia or Pictland, but Kings of the Scots and 
 the Picts ; and the Picts are spoken of as a dis- 
 tinct people for a century after they thus ceased 
 to form an independent state.' 
 
 * The account here given is that which is now generally re- 
 ceived ; but it 13 pi-oper to notice that the whole story of the 
 conquest of the Picts by Kenneth, and also Kenneth's extraction 
 from the old royal line of the Irish Scots, have been called in
 
 A.D. 300~10CG.] 
 
 SAXON TERIOD. 
 
 IK} 
 
 Meanwhile the kingdom of StratLelyJe, tlie 
 capital of which was Alcliiyd, the modern Dum- 
 barton, still subsisted, and witldield a large por- 
 tion of the present Scotland from the sway of tlie 
 Dalriadian prince. There is some appearance of 
 Kenneth Mac Alpin having attempted to possess 
 himself of that additional throne by the same 
 combination of policy and force by which he had 
 acquired the dominion of the Picts. After long 
 fighting, he concluded a peace with Cu or Caw, 
 the King of Strathclyde, and gave him his daugh- 
 ter in man-iage. No opportunity, however, was 
 found of tm-uing this arrangement to aocoimt in 
 the manner which its projector probably contem- 
 plated; and the kingdom of Strathclyde, though 
 distressed and weakened, both by tlie joressure of 
 its powerful neighbom-, and the frequent preda- 
 tory and devastating attacks of the Danes from 
 beyond seas, continued to maintain a nominal in- 
 dependence till the native governnjent was finally 
 subverted, and the countiy incorporated with the 
 rest of the Scottish dominions, by the defeat of 
 its last king, Dunwallon, by Kenneth III., the 
 King of the Scots (the great-great-gi-andson of 
 Kenneth Mae Alpin), at the battle of Vacornar, 
 in A.D. 973. Even before this event, however. 
 North Britain had begun to be known, after its 
 Irish conquerors, by the name of Scotland. It 
 is so called for the first time in the Saxon Chro- 
 nicle under the year 934. 
 
 Meanwhile, the united Scottish kingdom, 
 founded by Kenneth Mac Aljiin, continued to 
 consolidate and strengthen itself under the sway 
 of his descendants. Kenneth himself, in the re- 
 maining pai't of his reign, had to make good his 
 position by his sword, sometimes in defensive, 
 sometimes in aggressive contests, both with the 
 Danes, the Saxons, and his neiglibom-s of Strath- 
 clyde; but lie died at last in bed, at his capital of 
 Forteviot, a.d. 859. He was succeeded by his 
 brother, Donald III., who reigned till a.d. 8G3. 
 Constantine II., the son of Kenneth, followed, 
 and, during a reign of eighteen years, was engaged 
 in almost uninterrupted warfare with the Danes, 
 who harassed him both from Ireland and from 
 the Continent, and penetrated into the heart of 
 the kingdom by all its maritime inlets. It is 
 asserted by the old historians, that these invaders 
 were first called in by the fugitive or subjugated 
 Plots, a fact which may be taken as some confir- 
 mation of the common Northern origin of both. 
 
 question and denied by Pinkerfcon, in hia Inquiry into the History 
 of Scotland preceding the Rtif/n of Malcolm III., a work of mucli 
 learning and acnteness, and also of great value for the quantity 
 of materials collected in it from previously unexplored sources, 
 but disfigured by many precipitate assertions, and a pervading 
 spirit of prejudice and pai-adox. In our abstract we have prin- 
 cipally adhered to the dates and order of events as settled by the 
 latest invc>atigator of this part of our national iiistory, Chalmers, 
 in his CaUlonia, vol. i. pp. 374-42S. 
 
 The enemy, therefore, witli whom Constantine 
 had to contend, had friends and siip]iorters in 
 the heart of his dominions ; and while he endea- 
 voured to repel the foreigners with one hand, he 
 must have had to keep down hia own subjects 
 with the other. Nor were the Picts altogether 
 defrauded of their i-evenge on the son of their 
 conqueror. They and their allies the Danes ap- 
 pear to have wrested from the Scottish king not 
 only the Orkney and Western Islands, but also 
 the extensive districts of Caithness, Sutherland, 
 and part of Eoss-shire, on the continent of Scot- 
 land ; and these acquisitions continued to be go- 
 verned for many ages by Norwegian princes 
 entirely independent of the Scottish crown. The 
 traditionary account, repeated by the later histo- 
 rians, of the termination of Coiistiintine's disas- 
 trous reign is, that he was killed in a battle with 
 tlie Danes, or put to death by them immediately 
 after the battle, near Crail, in Fife. A cave in 
 which he was massacred is still shown, and called 
 the Devil's Cave. The older writei-s, however, 
 place his death in a.d. 882, a year after the great 
 battle in Fife. 
 
 Constantine's immediate successor was his 
 brother Hugh; but he was dethroned the same 
 year by Grig, the chieftain of the district now 
 forming the shires of Aberdeen and Banff, who, 
 associating with himself on the throne Eocha or 
 Eth, son of the King of Strathclyde, by a daugh- 
 ter of Kenneth Mac Alpin, is said to have reigned 
 for about twelve years, with a more extensive 
 authority than had been enjoyed by any of his 
 predecessors. The monkish chroniclers, indeed, 
 who designate him by the pompous title of 
 Gregory the Great, absiu'dly make him not only 
 to have held his own with a strong hand, but to 
 have actually reduced to sid)jectiun all the neigh- 
 bouring states, including both the English and 
 the Irish. He appears to have been a favourer 
 of the church, upon which he proI>ably leaned for 
 support in the deficiency of his hereditary title. 
 However, he and his partner in the sovereignty 
 were at length dethroned by a popular insurrec- 
 tion, A.D. 893 ; on which their jjlace was supjilied 
 by Donald IV., the son of Constantine II. A 
 succession of combats with the Danes, again — one 
 of the most memorable of which was fought at 
 Collin, near Scone, for the possession of the fa- 
 mous Stone of Destiny, which Kenneth Mac 
 Alpin had transferred thither from the original 
 British nestling-place of liis antique race in Ar- 
 gyleshire — form almost the only recorded events 
 of his reign. The Northern invaders were beaten 
 at Collin; but a few years after, in 904, Donald 
 fell in fight near Forteviot, against another band 
 of them from Ireland. He was succeeded by 
 Constantine III., the son of his uncle Hugh. This 
 was the Scottish king who, as related in a pre-
 
 ut 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Scotland and Ireland. 
 
 ceding page, made au iuroad, in 937, into the 
 dominions of the Saxon Athelstane, in conjunc- 
 tion with Clave or Anlaf, tlie Danish chief of 
 Nortliumbei'land, when then- united forces were 
 routed in the bloody day of Briinnaburgh, and 
 Constantiue with ditiiculty escaped from the 
 slaughter, in which his eldest son fell. A few 
 years after this humiliating defeat, in a.d. 944, 
 he exchanged his crown for a cowl, and he passed 
 the last eight or nine yeai's of his life as abbot 
 of the Culdees of St. Andrews. Meanwhile the 
 throne was ascended by Malcolm I., son of 
 Donald IV. The most important event of this 
 reign was the cession, by the Saxon king, Ed- 
 mund, of the district of Cumln-ia, which he had 
 recently conquered from its last king, Dunmail, 
 to Malcolm, to be held by him on condition of 
 his arming when called upon, in the defence either 
 of that or of any other part of the English terri- 
 toiy. Cumberland remained an appanage of the 
 Scottish crown from this time till 1072, when it 
 was recovered by William the Conqueror. 
 
 Malcolm I. came to a violent death at the hands 
 of some of his own subjects in 953, and left his 
 sceptre to Indulf, the son of his predecessor, Con- 
 stantine III. The reign of Indulf was gi-ievously 
 troubled by repeated attacks of the Northmen; 
 and he at last lost his life in -ndiat the old writers 
 call the battle of the Bauds, fought in 9G1, near 
 the Bay of CuUen, in Banfl'shu-e, where several 
 baiTows on a moor still preserve the memoiy of 
 the defeat of the foreigners. Duti', the sou of Mal- 
 colm I., now became king, according to what 
 appears to have been the legal order of succession 
 at this time, when each king for many genera- 
 tions was almost uniformly succeeded, not by his 
 own son, but by the son of his predecessor. But 
 the effects of the natural disposition of the sove- 
 reign in possession to retain the succession ex- 
 clusively in his own line, now began to show 
 themselves; and the right of Duff was disputed 
 from the first by Indulf 's son, Culen, whose par- 
 tizans, although defeated in the fab- fight of Dun- 
 crub, in Perthshire, are asserted to have after- 
 wards opened the way to the throne for their 
 leader by the assassination of his rival. This 
 event took place at Forres, in 965. But Culen 
 did not long retain his guiltily acquired power. 
 Disregarding all the duties of his jolace, he aban- 
 doned himself to riot and licentiousness, and 
 soon followed up the murder of Duff by an act 
 of atrocious violence, committed on another near 
 relation, the daughter of the King of Strathclyde. 
 The nation of the injured lady took arms against 
 her violator; and Culen fell in a battle fought 
 with them at a place situated to the south of the 
 Forth, in A.D. 970. 
 
 The crown now fell to Kenneth HI., an- 
 other son of Malcolm I., and the brother of Dufi'. 
 
 The reign of Kenneth III. is one of the most im- 
 portant in the early historj' of Scotland. He was 
 a prince of remarkable abilitj', and of a daring 
 and unscrupulous character; he occupied the 
 throne for a suliicient length of time to enable 
 him to lay a deep foundation for his schemes of 
 policy, if not to carry them into complete effect; 
 and he came at a crisis when the old order of 
 things was naturally breaking up, and the most 
 i'avom'able opportunity was oflered to a bold and 
 enterprising genius like his of establishing, or at 
 least originating a new system. It was one of 
 those conjunctions of circumstances, and of an in- 
 dividual mind fitted to take advantage of them, 
 by which most of the great movements in national 
 affairs have been produced. His first effort was 
 to follow out the war with the declining state of 
 Strathclyde, until he wound it up, as has been 
 intimated above, with the complete subjugation 
 of that rival kingdom, and its incorporation with 
 his hereditary dominions. With the exception, 
 therefore, of the nominal independence, but real 
 vassalage in everything except in name, of the 
 Welsh, the whole of Britain was now divided 
 into the two sovereignties of England and Scot- 
 land. The Saxon power of Wessex had swal- 
 lowed up and absorbed everything else in the 
 south, and in the north every other royalty had 
 in like manner fallen before that of the Celtic 
 princes of Dalriada. Peace and intimate alliance, 
 also, had now taken place of the old enmity be- 
 tween the two monarchies; and an opening must 
 have been made for the passage to Scotland of 
 some rays from the supei'ior civilization of her 
 neighbour, which would naturally be favom-able 
 to imitation in the arrangements of the govern- 
 ment, as well as in other matters. It was in this 
 position of aflairs that Kenneth proceeded to take 
 measures for getting rid of what we have seen 
 was the most remarkable peculiarity of the Scot- 
 tish regal constitution, the pai'ticipation of two 
 distinct lines in the right of succession to the 
 tlu'one, a rule or custom to which, notwithstand- 
 ing some advantages, there would seem to exist 
 an all-suflicient objection in its very tendency to 
 excite to such attempts as that which Kenneth 
 now made. Kenneth's mode of proceeding was 
 characteristically energetic and direct. To put 
 an end, in the most effectual manner, to the pre- 
 teusions of Malcolm, the son of his brother Dufl', 
 he had that prince put to death, although he had 
 been already recognized as Tanist, or next heir 
 to the throne, and had a-s such been invested, ac- 
 cording to custom, with the lordship of Cumber- 
 land. We shall see, however, that this deed of 
 blood was, after all, perpetrated to no purjjose. 
 Another of Kenneth's acts of severity, and per- 
 haps also of cruelty and vengeance, recoiled ujion 
 iilm to his own destruction. After the suiipression
 
 A.D. 300— lOGC] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 14,1 
 
 of a comiuotioii in the Meams, he liad thoiif,'ht 
 it necessaiy to signalize the triumph of tlie myal 
 authority by taking the life of the only son of the 
 chief of the district, either because the j'ouug 
 man had been one of the leaders of the A'anquished 
 faction, or perhaps because his father had not 
 shown sufficient energy in meeting and putting 
 down their desigiis. By some means or other, 
 however, Kenneth was some time after induced 
 to trust himself in the hands of Fenella, the mo- 
 ther of his victim, by visiting her in her castle, 
 near Fettercairn. Here he was murdered, either 
 by her orders, or not im]irobably by her own 
 hands, for it is related that she fled the instant 
 the deed was done, although she was soon taken, 
 and suffered the same bloody death she had 
 avenged and inflicted. The reign of Kenneth 
 was thus terminated, a.d. 944. 
 
 The throne left vacant by the death of Ken- 
 neth appeal's to liave been contested fi'om the 
 fii'st by three competitors. Of these a son of 
 Culen, under the name of Constantine IV., is re- 
 garded as having been first crowned; but, within 
 a year, he fell fighting against one of his rivals, 
 a son of King Duff, and younger brother of the 
 murdered Prince Malcolm, who immediately 
 assumed the sovereignty, as Kenneth IV. The 
 Scottish chroniclers call him Kenneth the Urim. 
 There was still, however, another claimant to the 
 succession of Kenneth III. ; this was Malcolm, the 
 son of that king, whom his father had designed 
 to be his heir, and invested as such -with the 
 lirincipality of Cumberland, after the violent 
 removal of his cousin, the other Malcolm. The 
 two competitors met at last, in a.d. 1003, at 
 Monivaird, when a battle took place, in which 
 Kenneth the Grim lost both the day and his 
 life. 
 
 The vigorous line of Kenneth III. was now 
 again seated on the thi'one, in the jierson of 
 Malcolm II. The earlier part of Malcolm's 
 reign appears to have been consumed in a long 
 succession of fierce contests with the Danes, in 
 the coui-se of which these persevering invaders 
 are said to have been defeated in the several 
 battles of Mortlach in Moray, in the pai-ish chmx-h 
 of which place the skulls of the slaughtered fo- 
 reigners were, not many years ago, to be seen 
 built into the wall; of Aberlemno, where bar- 
 rows and sculptured stones are held still to pre- 
 serve the memory and to point out the scene of 
 the conflict; of Panbride, where the Danish com- 
 mander, Camus, was slain; and of Cruden, near 
 Forres, where a remarkable obelisk, covered with 
 engraved figures, is supposed, but probably erro- 
 neously, to have been erected in commemoration 
 of the Scottish victory. It was in 1020 also, in 
 the reign of this king, that a formal cession was 
 obtained from Eailulf, the Danish Earl of Korth- 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 umberland, of the portion of modern Scotland 
 south of the Forth, then called Lodonia, the ]ios- 
 aession of which had for a long period been dis- 
 puted between the Scots and the Saxons, although 
 in the meantime such numbers of the latter had 
 settled in it, that its population a])pears already 
 to have become in the greater part Saxon, and 
 the country itself was often called Saxonia or 
 Saxony. Malcolm II., the ability of whose ad- 
 ministration was long held in respectful remem- 
 brance, died in 1033. 
 
 This king, unfortunately for (he peaceful suc- 
 cess of his father's scheme of changing the old 
 rule of succession, left no son; but, imitating his 
 father's remorseless policy, he had done his ut- 
 most to make a similarity even in that rispect 
 between himself aud the rival branch of the royal 
 stock, liy having, a short time before his decease, 
 had the only existing male descendant of Ken- 
 neth the Grim, a son of his son Boidhe, put in 
 the most effectual manner out of the way. In 
 the£;e cii'cumstances no opposition apj^ears to 
 have been made in the first instance to the acces- 
 sion of Duncan, the grandson of Malcolm II., by 
 his daughter Bethoc or Beatrice, who was mar- 
 ried to Orinan, abbot of Dunkeld, in those days 
 a personage of gi-eat eminence in the state. 
 Boidhe, however, besides the son who was mur- 
 dered, had left a daughter, Gruoch; and this lady 
 had other wrongs to avenge besides those of the 
 line from which she was sprung. Her first hus- 
 band, Gilcomcain, mai-mor or chief of Moray, 
 having been defeated in an attem2)t to support 
 the cause of his wife's family by arms against 
 King Malcolm, had been burned in his castle, 
 along with fifty of his friends, when she herself 
 had to flee for her life, with her infant son Lu- 
 lach. She sought shelter in the remoter di.strict 
 of Boss, of which the famous Jlacbeth aii]ieai-s to 
 have then been the hereditary lord, maintaining 
 probably within his bounds an all but nominal 
 independence of the royal authority. This part 
 of Scotland, it may be remembered, had been 
 torn, scarcely a century before, from Constan- 
 tine II. by the Danes, and Macbeth liimself may 
 possibly have been of Danish lineage. Be this 
 as it may, to him the Lady Gruoch now gave her 
 hand. She is the Lady Macbeth made familiar 
 to us all by the wonderful di-ama of Shakspeare. 
 It would appear that, for some time after the ac- 
 cession of Duncan, Macbeth and his wife had 
 feigned an acquiescence in his title, and had ]iro- 
 bably even won the confidence of the good and 
 unsuspecting king (the pure-breathed Duncan, 
 as he is designated in Celtic song) by their ser- 
 vices or professions. The end of their plot, how- 
 ever, was, that Duncan was barljarously assas- 
 sinated in 1030, not, as Shakspeare has it, in Mac- 
 beth'a castle at Inverness, but at a place called 
 18
 
 UG 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Scotland and Ireland. 
 
 Dolligoiiaiuin, uear Elgin.' Macbeth immediately 
 mountej the throne, ami the accounts of the old- 
 est chroniclers give reason to believe that he filled 
 it both ably and to the general satisfaction of the 
 paople. The partizans of the race of Kenneth 
 III., however, re.si.sted the new king from the 
 first; for Duncan had left two sons, the elder of 
 whom, Malcolm, fled on his father's as-jassination 
 to Cumberland, and the younger, Donald, to the 
 Western Isles. One revolt in favour of ]\Ial- 
 colm's restoration was headed by his grandfather, 
 the abbot of Dunkeld; but this and several other 
 similar attempts failed. At length, in 1054, 
 Macduff, mai'mor or chief (improperly called by 
 later -wi'iters thane) of Fife, his patriotism in- 
 flamed, it is said, by some personal injuries, 
 called to arms his numerous retainers; and Si- 
 ward, the Danish Earl of Northumberland, whose 
 sister Duncan had married, having joined him at 
 the head of a formidable force, the two advanced 
 together upon Macbeth. Their fii-st encounter 
 appears to have taken place, as tradition and 
 Shakspeare agree in rejiresenting, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Dunsiunaue Hill, in Angus, on the 
 summit of which Macbeth probalily had a strong- 
 hold.^ Defeated here, the usurper retreated to 
 the fastnesses of the north, where he appears to 
 have protracted the war for about two years 
 longer. His last place of refuge is supposed to 
 have been a fortress in a solitary valley in the 
 parish of Lunfanan, in Aberdeenshire. In this 
 neighbourhood he was attacked by the forces un- 
 der the command of Macduff and Malcolm, on the 
 5th of December, 105G, and fell in the fight, struck 
 down, it is said, by the hand of Macduff. His 
 followers, however, did not even yet everywhere 
 throw down their arms. They immediately set 
 up as king, Lulach, the son of Lady ]\Iacbeth, 
 who indeed, as descended from Duff, the elder 
 son of Malcolm I., in the same degi-ee in which 
 liis rival was descended from Malcolm's younger 
 son, Kenneth III., might be affirmed to have had 
 the better right to the thi-one of the two. Lulach, 
 however, a fugitive all the while that he was a 
 king, did not long bear the empty title that thus 
 mocked his fortunes. His forces and those of 
 Malcolm met on the 3d of April, 1057, at Eassie, 
 in Angus; and that day ended his life, and also 
 broke for ever the power of his faction. In a 
 few days after this (on the 25th of April, the 
 festival of St. Mark) ]\Ialcolm HI. was crowned 
 
 * " The word Bothgouanan means in Gaelic, the Smith's Dwell- 
 ing. It is probable that the assassins lay in ambush, and mur- 
 dered him at a smith's house in the neighbourhood of Elgin." — 
 Hailes' Annals, i. 1 (eilit. of 1819). 
 
 ' The foundations of an ancient stone building are still to be 
 found buried in the soil on the top of the hill. Dunsijmane is 
 about eight miles north-east from Perth ; the hill is of vei7 re- 
 gular shape, and although more than 1000 ft. above the level of 
 tlie sea, it has been supposed to be in great part artificial. — See 
 Ch.almei^' Culedonia, vol. i. 
 
 at Scone. But the history of his reign belongs 
 to the next period. 
 
 It will be convenient, also, before we close the 
 present chapter, to turn for a few moments to 
 the couree of events in Ireland, which, altliough 
 not politically connected with England in the 
 period under review, had already acquired a re- 
 markable celebrity, and begun to maintain a con- 
 siderable intercourse both with Britain and with 
 continental Europe. We find the country at the 
 commencement of our era subjected to the rule 
 of the Scots, a foreign people, who had wrested 
 the supreme dominion of it from the Tuath de 
 Danans, in the same manner as the latter had 
 displaced their predecessors the Firbolgs. The 
 fables of the bards make mention of three still 
 earlier i-aces by whom the island was successively 
 colonized. But all that can be gathered from 
 the chaos of wild inventions which forms this 
 first pai-t of the Irish story is, that probably be- 
 fore the arrival of the Fii-bolgs the country had 
 been peopled by that Celtic race to which the 
 great body of its population still contmues to be- 
 long. These primitive Celtic colonists, whose 
 blood, whose speech, whose manners and customs 
 remain — in spite of all subsequent foreign infu- 
 sions — dominant throughout the island to this 
 day, would seem to be the Partholans of the le- 
 gendary account. The Fomorians, again, who 
 came from Africa, were perhaps the Phcenicians 
 or Carthaginians. The Nemedians, the Tuath 
 de D;uians, the Fii'bolgs, and the Scots or Mile- 
 sians, are afiii'med to have all been of the same 
 race, which was different from that of the Par- 
 tholans ; a statement which is most easily ex- 
 plained by supposing that all these subsequent 
 bodies of colonists or invaders were of the Gothic 
 or Teutonic stock, and came, as indeed the bardic 
 narrative makes them to have done, from the 
 north of continental Europe. It seems, at all 
 events, to be most probable that the Scots were 
 a Gothic people; Scyths, Scoti, Gothi, Getie, in- 
 deed, appear to be only different forms of the 
 same word.' The Scots are supposed, by the 
 ablest inquirers, not to have made their appear- 
 i ance in Ireland very long before the commence- 
 ment of our era, if their colonization be not, in- 
 deed, a still more recent event; for we believe 
 no trace of their occupation is to be discovered 
 before the second or third century. From the 
 fourth century dowai to the eleventh, that is, dui-- 
 ing the whole of the period with which we are 
 at present engaged, Ireland was known by the 
 name of Scotia or Scotland, and the Irish gene- 
 rally by that of the Scoti or Scots; nor till the 
 close of the tenth century were these names ever 
 
 3 See this matter very ably treated in Piidierton's Dissertation 
 on the Origin and Progress o/ tlu Scijthians or Goths, part 1. 
 ch.ap. 1.
 
 A.o. 300— lOGG.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 1 \: 
 
 otherwise aiiplieiL' If the Scots of North Britain 
 were spoken of, they were so designated as being 
 considereil to be a colony of Irisli. 
 
 The bardic account, however, carries back the 
 arrival of the Scotic colony, undei the conduct 
 of Ileber and Heremon, the sons of Blilesius, to 
 a much more ancient date; and the modern in- 
 quirers who have endeavoured to settle the chro- 
 nology of that version of the story, have assigned 
 the event, in the most moderate of their calcula- 
 tions, to the fifth or sixth ceutm-y before the 
 birth of Christ. Others place it nearly 1000 
 years earlier. It is related that the two bro- 
 thers at first divided the island between them, 
 Heber, the elder, taking to himself Leinster and 
 Munster, and Heremon getting Ulster and Con- 
 naught; but, in imitation of Romulus and Remus 
 (if we ought not rather to suppose the Irish to 
 have been the prototype of the classic incident), 
 they afterwards quarrelled, and, Heber having 
 been slain, Heremon became sole sovereign. 
 From him is deduced a reguku- succession of mo- 
 narchs of all Ireland down to Kimbaoth, who is 
 reckoned the fifty -seventh in the list, ami is said 
 to have reigned about 200 j'ears before our era. 
 Besides the supreme monarch, it is admitted that 
 there were always four subordinate kings, reign- 
 ing each over his province; and the history is 
 made up in great part of the wars of these reguli, 
 not only with one another, but frequently also 
 with then' common sovereign lord. Tacitus re- 
 lates that one of the reguli of Ireland, who had 
 been di'iven from his country by some dome.stie 
 revolution, came over to Britain, to Agricola, who 
 kept him with him under the semblance of fi'iend- 
 ship, in the hope of some time or otiier having an 
 op]iortunity of making use of him. It was the 
 opinion of Agricola that Ireland might have been 
 conquered and kept in subjection by a single 
 legion and a few auxiliaries. Tacitus observes, 
 however, that its ports and harbours were better 
 known than those of Britain, through the mer- 
 chants that resorted to them, and the extent of 
 their foreign commerce.''^ 
 
 We need not fm-ther pursue the obscure, and 
 in great part fabulous annals of the country be- 
 fore the introduction of Christianity. It is pro- 
 bable that some knowledge of the Christian reli- 
 gion had penetrated to Ireland before the mission 
 of St. Patrick; but it was by the labours of that 
 celebrated personage that the general convereion 
 of the people was eflected, in the early part of 
 the fifth century. The first Christian King of 
 Ireland was Leogaire or Laogaire Mac Neil, 
 whose reign is stated to have extended from a.d. 
 428 to A.D. 4()3. The twenty-ninth king, count- 
 
 1 See this completely eaUtblislied, and aU the authoritiea col- 
 lected, in Pinkerton's Iitiiuirt/, part v. ch. iv. 
 ^ Tacit. Vtt. Agrlc. xxiv. 
 
 ing from him, was Donahl IIT.,\vIio reigned from 
 A.L>. 743 to A.n. 7()3. It was in his time (a.d. 
 748) that the Danes or Northmen made tlicir first 
 descent upon Ireland. In 815, in the reign of 
 Aodhus v., these invaders obtained a fixed settle- 
 ment in Armagh; and thirty years afterwards, 
 their leader, Turgesius or Tnrges, a Norwegian, 
 was proclaimed King of all Ireland. At length, 
 a general massacre of the foreignei-s led to the 
 restoration of the line of the native ])rinces. But 
 new banils spectlily ai'rived from the north, to 
 avenge their countiymen; and in a few years all 
 the chief jiorts and towns throughout the south 
 and along tlie east coast were again in their 
 liand.s. The struggle between the two races for 
 the dominion of the country continued, with little 
 intermission and with various fortune, for more 
 than a century and a half, although the Danes, 
 too, had embraced Christianity about the year 
 948. Tlie closing period of the long contest is 
 illustrated by the heroic deeds of the renowned 
 Brien Boroilime or Boru, the " Brien the Brave" 
 of song, who was first King of Munster, and 
 afterwards King of all Ireland. He occu]>ied 
 the national throne from lt)03 to 1014, in which 
 latter year he fell, sword in hand, at tlie age of 
 eighty-eight, in the great battle of Clontarf, in 
 which, however, the Danish power i-eceived a dis- 
 comfitm-e from which it never recovered. Brien, 
 however, though his merits and talents had raised 
 him to the supreme power, not being of the an- 
 cient roj'al house, is looked upon as little better 
 than an usurper by the Irish historians; and the 
 true king of this date is reckoned to have been 
 Maelsechlan Mac Domhnaill, more manageably 
 wTitten Melachlan or Malachi, whom Brien de- 
 posed. Malachi, too, was a great warrior; the 
 same patriotic poet who, in our own day and in 
 our Saxon tongue, has celebrated " the glories of 
 Brien the Brave," has also sung — 
 
 " Let Erin remember the d.ays of old, 
 Ere her faithless sons betrayed her ; 
 When Malachi wore the collar of gold 
 Which ho won from her proud invader ;" 
 
 and on the death of Brien, Malachi was restored 
 to the throne, which he occupied till 1022. He 
 is reckoned the forty-second Christian King of 
 Ii-eland.' The interruption of the regulai- suc- 
 cession, however, by the elevation of Brien, now 
 brought upon the country the new calamity of a 
 contest among several competitors for tho throne; 
 and the death of Malachi was followed by a sea- 
 son of gi'eat confusion and national misery. The 
 game was eventually reduced to a trial of strength 
 between Donchad, the son of Brien, and Don- 
 chad's nephew, Turlogh; and in 10G4 Turlogh 
 
 3 In these dates we have followed tho aulliority of tho Catalo- 
 inui Chmnolopicus Rnjum Christ ianoi-um llibtrnia, in O'Connor'B 
 Vierum JliOmiicarmi Scriplom I'tlera, vol. i. pp. liiv. 4c.
 
 148 
 
 niSTOKY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [TtELlGION. 
 
 siicceeilej in overpowering liis uncle, who, bid- 
 ding fai'ewell to arras and to ambition, retired 
 across the sea, and ended liis days as a monk at 
 Eome. Turlogh, reckoned an usLiri)er by tlie na- 
 
 tive annalists, but acknowledged to have ruled 
 the country ably and well, occupied the Irish 
 throne <at the epoch of the Norman conquest i>f 
 England. 
 
 CHAPTER VI.— HISTORY OF RELIGION. 
 
 A.D. 419— IOCS. 
 
 Religion of the Saxon invaders of England— Its deities — Its doctrines of a future state— Its sanguinary rites— 
 State of Cliristiauity in North and South Britain at tlie Saxon invasion — Missionaries sent to England by 
 Gregory the Great — ^Progreas of the missionaries among tlie kingdoms of tlio Heptarcliy — Conversion of Nortli- 
 uinbria — Controversies about the frrrn of tlio tonsure and perioil for the celebration of Easter — Corruptions 
 among the clergy tbrougli wealthy donations — Multiplication of nmnasteries and nunneries — Havoc wrought 
 among them by the Danish invaders— Life of St. Dunstan — His miracles and adventures— He becomes Pri- 
 mate of England — His strange expedients to reform tlie church — Its condition after his death till the Nor- 
 man comiuesc. 
 
 HEN Hengist and Horsa, and 
 their followers an-ived in Bri- 
 tain,they certainly found Chi-is- 
 tiauity professed by a large 
 ] lart of the island ; but the re- 
 ligion of the South Britons had 
 become uixed with many corruptions of doc- 
 trine. The Saxons, one and all, were pagans, but 
 of a paganism which ditlered essentially from 
 the old Druidism. Woden or Odin was the head 
 of their mythology. The source from whence 
 their religion issued, the period of its fii-st pro- 
 mulgation, and the agents by whom it was 
 planted in the several countries where it flou- 
 rished, are historical difficulties, which yet re- 
 main to be settled. Long before the fourth cen- 
 tury of the Christian era, it prevailed through- 
 out Scandinavia, and in other countries be- 
 sides those which we now call Sweden, Norway, 
 and Denmark.' It was a grim and terril)le 
 theology. Woden or Odin was "the terrible 
 and severe god; the father of slaughter; the god 
 that carries desolation and fire ; the active 
 and roaring deity; he who gives victoiy, and who 
 names those that are to be slain." The wor- 
 ship of sitch a divinity kept up the ferocity and 
 warlike habits of these iron men of the North. 
 Under him figm'od Frea, his wife, as the goddess 
 of love, pleasm'e, and sensuality; the god Thor, 
 who controlled the temjiests; Balder, who was 
 the god of light; Kiord, the god of the watei-s; 
 Tyi-, the god of champions; Brage, the god of 
 orators and poets; and Heimdal, the janitor 
 of heaven, and the guardian of the rainbow. 
 Eleven gods, and as many goddesses, all the chil- 
 
 ' MaUefc, NoHlwn Aiitlquitui. 
 
 dren of Odin and Fx-ea, assisted their parents, 
 and wei-e objects of worship. But in addition to 
 all these there were very many inferior divini- 
 ties. There were thi-ee Fates, by whom the ca- 
 reer of men was predestined; and every indivi- 
 dual was supposed, besides, to have a Fate attend- 
 ing him, by whom his life was controlled and his 
 death deteiTuined. There were also the Valke- 
 ries, a species of inferior goddesses, who acted as 
 celestial attendants, and who were also employed 
 by Odin to determine victory, and select the war- 
 riors that were to perish in battle. There were 
 genii and sjiirits, who mingled in every moi-tal 
 event. Infernal agents there were in abundance; 
 and Lok, the personification of the evil principle, 
 was the head of them all. Lok is described as 
 beautiful in form, but depraved in mind; the 
 calumniator of the gods, the gi'and contriver of 
 deceit and fraud, the reproach of gods and men, 
 whom the deities, in consequence of his malig- 
 nity, had been constrained to shut up in a ca- 
 vern. The goddess Hela, the wolf Fem-Ls, the 
 great dragon, and giants of measureless size and 
 strength, completed the dark array. 
 
 On the subject of a futm-e state, this leligion 
 of the North was pai-ticularly explicit; and a 
 heaven was formed, congenial to a people whose 
 chief employment and greatest jjleasm-e was vv-ar. 
 Those who had led a life of heroism, or perished 
 bravely in battle, ascended to Valhalla. In that 
 blessed region the day was spent in war and 
 furious conflict; but at evening- tide the battle 
 ceased, all wounds were suddenly healed, and the 
 contending wari-iors sat down to the bancjuet, and 
 feasted on the exhaustless flesh of the boar Se- 
 rimner, and drank huge draughts of mead from 
 the skidls of their enemies. Such was the para-
 
 A.D. 449—1066.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 110 
 
 flise, the hope of which wakened to raptiu-e the 
 hiiagination of the Saxon and tlie Dane. There 
 was a lit'U for the wicked; but by the word wicked 
 was merely understood the cowardly and the 
 slothful. This hell was called Nitlheim. Here 
 Hela dwelt, and exercised lier terrible supre- 
 macy. Iler palace was Anguish, lier table Famine, 
 her waiters were Expectation and Delay, the 
 tlireshold of her door was Precipice, her bed was 
 Leanness, and her looks struck terror into every 
 beholder. 
 
 -But nothing of all this was to be strictly eter- 
 nal. After the revolution of countless ages, the 
 malignant powers, so long restrained, ai'e to burst 
 forth again; the gods are to perish, and even 
 Odin himself expire; while a contlagi'ation bursts 
 forth, in wliiih Valhalla, their heaven, anil the 
 world, and Nillheim or hell, with all their divine 
 and human inhabitants, ai-e consumed, and pass 
 awaj'. But from this second chaos a new world 
 is to emerge, fresh and full of beauty and gran- 
 deur, with a heaven more glorious than Valhalla, 
 and a hell more feai-ful than Niflheim; while 
 over all a God appears pre-eminent and alone, 
 possessed of incomjjai-ably greater might and 
 nobler attributes than Odin. Then, too, the 
 human race are finally to be tried, and higher 
 virtues than bravery, and heavier guilt than 
 cowardice and sloth, ai'e to form the standard 
 of good and evil. The rigliteous shall then be 
 received into Gimie, and the wicked shall be sent 
 to the unuttei'able punishments of Nastrande; 
 and this heaven and this hell shall continue 
 through all eternity under the reign of Him 
 who is eternal. 
 
 But among the fierce worshippers of Odin we 
 can discover no practical results of tliis better 
 faith that lay immediately beneath the surface 
 of their own system. They thought more of 
 the temjioral, but immediate, than of the eter- 
 nal — more of Valhalla than of Gimle. Their 
 tempest -breathing god, and his paradise of 
 battles, and drinking and feasting, though these 
 were finally to be consumed and to pass away, 
 were moi-e attractive than the excellences of a 
 more sjiii'itual Deity, and the eternity of a pm-er 
 lieaveu. 
 
 The Scandinavian temples, in which Odin was 
 represented by a gigantic image, armed and 
 crowned, and brandishing a naked swoj'd, were 
 rude and colossal ; and rugged were the rites per- 
 formed therein. Animals were olfered up as 
 sacrifices, and their blood was sprinkled upon the 
 worshippers. The rough altar was frequently 
 drenched with the blood of human victims. 
 Crowds of cajitives and slaves were immolated 
 for the welfare of the people at large; and princes 
 often sacrificed their own children, to avert a 
 mortal sickness or to secure an imiiortant vic- 
 
 tory.' Believing that tlie exclusion from Val- 
 lialla, which a natiu-al death entailed, could be 
 avoided by the sacrifice of a substitute, every 
 warrior who could procure a captive to put to 
 death with this object had a motive jjcculiai'ly 
 powerful for so horrid a j)ractice. 
 
 Mixed with all this ferocity, the Scandinavian 
 tribes had a more delicate and romantic feeling 
 about women than any other ancient ])eople. As 
 females among them were regarded with a vene- 
 ration elsewhere xmknown, and were supposed 
 to be chosen receptacles of Divine inspiration, 
 they were therefore considered as being well 
 fitted to preside over the worshij) of the gods. 
 The daughters of Scandinavian princes officiated 
 as priestesses of the national faith, were consulted 
 as the oracles of heaven, and were frequently 
 dreaded as the ministers of its vengeance; while 
 other women who cultivated the favour of the 
 malignant divinities were held to be witches. 
 Of the authority of the priests little is known. 
 Among the Saxons, they were not permitted to 
 mount a horse or handle a warlike weapon.' 
 Tacitus represents them in Germany as being in- 
 vested with magisterial authority. He says that 
 they settled controversies, attended the armies in 
 their expeditions, and not only awarded punish- 
 ments, but inflicted them with then- own hands, 
 the fierce wari'iors submitting to their stripes as 
 to inflictions from the hand of Heaven. 
 
 The grim Scandinavian faith was, however, 
 subject to gi'eat modifications, according to the 
 situation and circumstances of the several tribes 
 who professed it. It was of a moi-e sanguinai-y 
 complexion among the reckless followers of the 
 sea-kings than among those who dwelt on shore. 
 Perhaps the Saxon invaders of Britain might be 
 classed with those among whom the religion as- 
 sumed its least revolting shape; while the Danes, 
 who afterwards followed in their track, exhibited 
 the worship of Odin in its fiercest and most perni- 
 cious aspect. With tli e latter the primitive super- 
 stition was amplified by the principles and tales 
 of the Scalds, who clothed it in their songs with 
 hon-ors, of which its first founders had probably 
 no conception. Althoiigh both Saxons and Danes 
 worshipped the same gods, and believed alike in 
 Valhalla, yet the Saxons, even while they con- 
 tinued heathens, became jieaceful cultivators of 
 the soil which their swords had won; while the 
 Danes did not subside into the same social condi- 
 tion until they had abandoned their original creed 
 and embraced Christianity. 
 
 On the first coming of the Saxons into Britain 
 there was visible, not only in Wales, but in other 
 parts of the island, a strange intermixture of 
 
 ' Mallet, Northn-n Antiqidtifs ; Ditlimar, Chronicks 0/ Merse- 
 hnifj ; Wormiua in Monument. Dan. Saxo Granunalic. 
 - Bcde.
 
 i.-o 
 
 niSTOEY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [T!elioi(in. 
 
 Christ iauity and Druidism; and it is thnuglit 
 that throughout the protracted struggle which 
 ensued for the dominion of the country, it was in 
 tlie spirit and in the ritual of tliis Neo-Druidism, 
 and not of Christianity, that the national feeling 
 was chiefly appealed to, and the resistance to the 
 invaders sustained and directed. 
 
 About a q\iarter of a century before the Saxons 
 began their conquest, Ninian is said to have con- 
 verted the Picts that lived southward of the 
 Graraijian Hills. Nearly at the same time that 
 illustrious missionary, St. Patrick, had appeared 
 in Ireland, and, after sweeping away much of the 
 old heathenism, had established Christianity as 
 the national religion. About the year 550, Ken- 
 tigern, or St. Mungo, is supposed to have founded 
 the see of Glasgow. But the most distinguished 
 of the missionaries to Caledonia was St. Columba, 
 venerated as the patron saint of Scotland until 
 that honour was conferred upon St. Andrew. 
 Columba was born at Garten, a village now in- 
 cluded in the county of Donegal, in Ireland. 
 He was illustrious by his birth, being connected 
 with the royal families of the Irish and of the 
 Scots. He landed in Scotland with twelve com- 
 panions, in the year 563, and undertook the task 
 of converting the heathen Picts that occupied the 
 country north of the Grampians. He soon con- 
 verted and baptized the Pictish king, whose 
 subjects immediately followed the royal e.xam- 
 ple. Columba then settled in loua, where he 
 
 
 TuE Catiiedual and St. Or.AS's Chapel, Iona.> MuU in the 
 
 founded his celebrated monastery, and estab- 
 lished a system of religious discipline, which 
 became the model of many other monastic in- 
 
 * Tlie remains of religious establishments on this little island 
 of the Ilebrides, though popularly attributed to Columba, aro \ 
 of a much more recent date than the time of that venerated 
 saint, whose structiu-es were of veiy slight materials. The prin- 
 cipal i-uins are those of the cathedi-al chm-ch of St. Maiy, of a 
 nunnery, five chapels, and a building called the Bishop's House. I 
 Numerous Kings of Scotland, Ireland, and Norway were buried , 
 in the island. I 
 
 stitutions. The small and barren Island of lona 
 soon became illustrious in tlie labours and tri- 
 iimphs of the Christian church; and the Cul- 
 dees, or priests, animated with the zeal of tlieir 
 founder, not only devoted their efforts to en- 
 lighten their own country, but became adven- 
 turous missionaries to remote and dangerous 
 fields. Of the cai-e with which they were trained 
 to be the guardians of learning and instruc- 
 tors of the peo])le, some idea may be formed 
 from the fact, that eighteen years of study were 
 frequently required of them before they were 
 ordained.^ 
 
 In the south of Britain, in the first fuiy of the 
 Saxon invasion, if Christianity was not com- 
 pletely overthrown, the Christian church and 
 every trace of it were destroyed. Without a 
 clergy, or any apparatus for the administration 
 of the ordinances of religion, it is not easy to con- 
 ceive that such of the native Britons as were 
 Christians would very long retain their know- 
 ledge and profession of the truth. But mean- 
 while the Saxon couquei-ors themselves, becoming 
 settled and peaceful, gradually accinired habits 
 and a disposition favourable for their conversion 
 to a religion of love and peace. When things 
 were in this state, a simple incident led to great 
 results. Gregory, afterwards pope, and surnamed 
 the Great, passing one day through the streets of 
 Kome, was arrested at the market-place by the 
 sight of 3'oung slaves from Britain, who were pub- 
 licly exposed for sale. Struck with the 
 brightness of their complexions, their 
 fah- long hair, and the remarkable 
 beauty of their forms, he eagerly in- 
 quired to what country they belonged ; 
 and being told that they were Angles, 
 he said, "They would not be Angles, 
 but angels, if they were but Chris- 
 tians." Gregory resolved, at every 
 hazard, to carry the gospel to their 
 shores, and he actually set off upon the 
 dangerous pilgrimage ; but the pope 
 was prevailed upon to command his 
 \ return. When, some years after, Gre- 
 gory succeeded to the popedom, he 
 appointed Augustine, prior of the con- 
 vent of St. Andrew's at Pome, with 
 distance. forty monks, to proceed on a mission to 
 England. There were many delays and misgiv- 
 ings upon the road, Augustine and his companions 
 being alarmed by the i-ejiorts they heard of the 
 Anglo-Saxon ferocity; but Pope Gregory passion- 
 ately m-ged them on, and procured them all the 
 assistance he could in France; and in the year 597 
 they landed in the Isle of Thanet, and forthwith 
 announced the object of their coming to Ethel- 
 
 '^ Adomnani, Vit. Sti. Columhce.
 
 A.D. 449— 106U.] 
 
 SAXON PKlilOD. 
 
 151 
 
 bert, the King of Kent, who also held t-he rank uf 
 Bi'ctwalila, while his authority extomlej to the 
 right bank of the Humbsr.' His queen, Bertha, 
 was a Christian princess,- and having stipulated 
 at her marriage for the liberty of professing her 
 own religion, she liad some French priests in 
 her household, and a bisliop named Ijiudhard, 
 by whom the rites of the C!u-istian failh were 
 performed in a little chiu-ch outside the walls of 
 Canterbury.' The conversion of the king was 
 easily brought about, and the opposition of the 
 pagan priesthood was out feeble and momentary. 
 When Ethelbert had been baptized, 10,000 of his 
 people soon followed his example. The joy of 
 Pope Gregory was so great that he conferred the 
 primacy of the whole island upon Canterbury, 
 the capital of Kent, and sent the pall to Augus- 
 tine, who had already been consecrated Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbmy by the prelate of Aries. 
 
 From the facility with which he had established 
 his faith in Kent, Augustine hoped for a similar 
 
 convei-sion in the whole island; but, altliougli 
 Pope Gregory sent liini additional aid, the work 
 proved long and difficult, and was not completed 
 until many years after Augustine had been laid 
 in his grave, in (he church-yard of the monasteiw 
 in Canterbury which goes by his name. Among 
 the mountains of Wales, wliere the Saxon con- 
 querors could not penetrate, there existed many 
 Christians, and a regular clergy; but when Au- 
 gustine applied for the assistance of tlie Welsh 
 ecclesiastics, and demanded their sulmiission to 
 the universal su]iremacy of the Bishop.of Rome, 
 he found that the Welsh clergy would not co- 
 operate with him. They disagreed on veiy many 
 points, and notably as to the proper period for 
 the celebration of E;istor, a question which di- 
 vided many churches, and which was once dis- 
 puted with a most fierce and uncompromising 
 spirit. Yet, without the aid of the Welsh ec- 
 clesiastics, the progress of the Chri.stian faith was 
 rapid. lu the year 604 Sebert, King of Essex, 
 
 Si^j^,^__ 
 
 
 North Walls of Ricubohough CAdiLE, anu Foundations of St. .vi'oustine s Cuurcu.* — Fcora j. drawing on thi: spot, 
 
 by J. W. Archer. 
 
 and nephew to Ethelbert, the converted Kinc^ of 
 Kent, and Bretwalda, received the rite of ba])tism. 
 As usual, gi*eat numbers of the people forthwith 
 followed the example of their king; and a Chris- 
 tian church was erected in London, Sebert's capi- 
 tal, upon the rising ground which had foi-merly 
 been the site of the Ivoman temple of Diana. 
 This London church was dedicated to St. Paul, 
 
 ^ Sede. - See vol. i. p. 73. ' Bfde. \ 
 
 < Richborough Castle, near Sandwich, is the Ritupre or Ad 
 Portum Ritupis of the Romans. It exhibits one of the most 
 noblo ver,tigOi of tlie Romans in Britain. The walls have formed 
 a paralieiograra, but the e-ast wall has disappeared. It stands 
 upon a slight eminence, at the base of which flows the Stour. 
 Tlie walla are constructed in blocks of chalk and stone, and 
 faced with square blocks of grit stone. The northern wall, 
 which is perfect, measures 560 ft. in length; it contains seven 
 courses, each course 4 ft. thick, banded at intervals with layers 
 of large tiles. Rising 6 ft., the thickness of tlie walls is U ft. 
 
 and each suoces.sive building uy")on the same site 
 has retained the name. Nearly at the same time, 
 Redwald,the King of East Anglia,was converted.^ 
 In this same year (604) Augustine died, after hav- 
 ing seen the gospel firmly established in Kent 
 and Essex. He had consecrated Justus Bisliop 
 of Itochester, and Miletus Ei.shop of the E;xst 
 Saxons, and appointed his faithful follower Lau- 
 
 3 in., above which thoy measure 10 ft. S in. The greatest exiav 
 ing altitude of the walls is 23 ft., but the summit is everywhere 
 broken. Leland, in his //wiercn-y, says: "Within the castle is 
 a little parish church of St. Augustine, and an luirmitage. I 
 had antiquities of the hermit, the wluch is an imlustrious man." 
 In the centre of the area of the walls there is a platform in the 
 shape of a cro.s3, corrctponding with the sacellum of Roman for- 
 tifications, where the Roman st;indards and eaglea were doi>o- 
 sited, but whicli appears in tliis instanco to have been adopted 
 for the site of a church— that mentioned by Lelaud. 
 * bee vol. i. p. 74.
 
 152 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Religion. 
 
 rentius to be liia successor in the see of Canter- 
 bury. 
 The faith so lately planted among the Anglo- 
 
 Altar of Diana.' — Drawn fi-om tlio orig;inal, by J. W. Archer. 
 
 Saxons soon sustained a violent shock. Sebert, 
 the King of Essex, died ; and his tliree sons 
 endeavoured to re-establish the ancient idolatry. 
 Melitus was banished, and compelled to flee from 
 London to Rochester, to seek for shelter with his 
 friend Justus. But even in Kent the faith was 
 shaken, chiefly tln-ough the passion of Eadbald, 
 the son and successor of Ethelbert, for his father's 
 youthful widow.^ Melitus and Justus fled to 
 France, and the primate Lauientius was prepai'- 
 ing to follow them, in the conviction that the 
 cause of Cliristianity was for the present lost in 
 England ; but Eadbald relented, and became con- 
 verted anew. 
 
 After many sufiTering.s and most perilous ad- 
 ventures, Edwin became King of Northumbria, 
 and introduced Christianity into that very power- 
 ful and warlike kingdom. Before he was ac- 
 tually baptized, Edwin called an assembly of his 
 nobles, that they might discuss the claims of the 
 new faith and the old. Coifi, the jwgan high- 
 jiriest, declared that the gods whom they had 
 hitherto worshipped were utterly useless. No 
 man, he said, had served them with greater zeal 
 than himself, and yet many men had prospered 
 ill the world far more than he had done ; thei-e- 
 fore was he quite ready to give at least a trial to 
 the new religion. One of the nobles followed in 
 
 ' The altar is 21 in. high, 11 in. broad at the base, and 7.i in. 
 thicli. It was found May 5, 1S31, at a depth of 15 ft., in a stra- 
 tum of clay, when excavating the foundation for the Gold- 
 EUiiths' Hall, in Tvliich it is now deposited. Under the site of 
 Goldsmiths' Hall, and under that of the General Post-office ad- 
 joining, were found vaiUts and foundations, evidently of Roman 
 masonry. It is probable these were vestiges of the temple of 
 Diana, which were soiight for in vain on the site of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, at the di-stance of little more than a stone's throw. 
 
 * 6ee vol. i. p. 74, 
 
 a wiser and ]iurer spirit. Comparing the present 
 life of man, whose beginning and end is in dark- 
 ness, to a swallow entering a banqueting-liall to 
 find refuge from the storm 
 without, flitting for a moment 
 through the warm and cheerful 
 apartment, and then passing 
 out again into the gloom, he 
 proposed that if Cliristianity 
 should be found to lighten this 
 obscurity, and exjilain whence 
 we came and whither we de- 
 parted, it should immediately 
 be adopted. Upon this Coifl, 
 the pagan high-priest, moved 
 that Pauliniis the missionary 
 should be called in to explain 
 the Christian doctrine. Pauli- 
 nus came in immediately, and 
 made use of such cogent argu- 
 ments, that the impatient Coifi 
 declared there was no longer 
 room for hesitation; proposed 
 that the old Saxon idols should be immediately 
 overturned; and, as he had been the chief of 
 their worshippers, he now ofi'ered to be the 
 fii-Bt to desecrate them. He threw aside his 
 priestly gai-ments; called for arms, which the 
 Saxon priests were forbidden to wield, and for a 
 horse, which they were not permitted to mount, 
 and thus accoutred, he galloped forth before the 
 amazed multitude. Advancing to a temple in 
 the neighbourhood, where the chief idol stood, he 
 hurled his lance vrithin the sacred inclosure, and 
 by that act the temple was profaned. No light- 
 ning descended, no earthquake shook the ground; 
 and the multitude, encouraged by the impunity 
 of the daring apostate, proceeded to second his 
 efibrts. Forthwith the temple and its inclosiu'es 
 were levelled with the ground. This event hap- 
 pened at a village still called Godmundham, 
 which means the home or hamlet of the inclosure 
 of the god. The conversion of the king was in- 
 stantly followed by that of his subjects, and 
 Paulinus, who was afterwai'ds consecrated Arch- 
 bishop of York, is said to have baptized 12,000 
 converts in one day in the river Swale. This 
 Chiistian king, Edwin, attained to the dignity of 
 Eretwalda, and maintained the faith which lie 
 had adopted ; but in the year 634, while in the 
 vigour of his days, he was slain in battle against 
 the teiTible pagan king, Penda. Upon this sad 
 event there followed such a general apostasy of 
 the people in Northumbria, that Bishop Paulinus 
 was obliged to abandon his see, and retire into 
 Kent. The triumph of the heathen was, how- 
 ever, checked in the north liy the accession of 
 King Oswald, who had spent his youth in lona, 
 to which northern sanctuary he had repaii-ed for
 
 a.v. 449— lOGC] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 1; 
 
 Bhelter; and having been taught Christianity 
 among that primitive community, lie naturally 
 sent thither for spiritual instrui^tors to his people, 
 as soon as he was established upon the throne. 
 Cornian, the first monk that was sent from loiia, 
 quickly returned, disheartened by the dillhndtii's 
 
 of his office, and by the barbarous disposition and 
 gross intellect of the Northumbrians; but Aidan, 
 another monk of the order, volunteered to su])ply 
 Cormau's place. In the year (i:i'> Aidan foimded 
 amona.stery ujion the bleak Island of Litidisfarne; 
 and there his religious conununity flouri.ihed for 
 
 Holy Isund, coast of Xortlmmbarlaml, and Remains of tub Cliur.cn oy Lixdisfarne.'— From Turner's EnslaaJ and Wa!c3. 
 
 more than two centuries, until it fell beneath 
 the fury of the Danes. Aided by King Oswald, 
 Aidrm was very successful in reclaiming the apos- 
 tate Northumljriaus, and in converting other 
 Saxon states. Having prevailed upon the King 
 of Wessex and his daughter to be baptized, a 
 Christian chui'ch was established in that portion 
 of the Heptarchy, according to the primitive and 
 simple form of that of loua. 
 
 The introduction of the gospel into the power- 
 ful kingdom of Mercia was the next great event. 
 Peada, the son of the terriljle Penda, in whom 
 the Christianity of England had found its dead- 
 liest enemy, solicited the hand of the fair daugh- 
 ter of the converted King of Northumbria. The 
 l)rincess refused to man-y an unbelieving hus- 
 band, and the prince in consequence abjured his 
 idols, and was baptized ; and on his return to 
 iNlercia he took with him foiu- good missionai-ies, 
 who were very successful in converting the people. 
 Towards the close of this centuiy the kingdom 
 of Sussex was converted ; and thus, in less than 
 ninety years from the first arrival of Augustine, 
 Christianity was established over the wh.ole of 
 England. 
 
 When Christianity thus became the religion of 
 Saxon Britain, its rude inhabitants were prepared 
 for the further blessings of learning and civiliza- 
 tion, and these were now introduced in tlie train 
 of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was 
 consecrated to the jirimacy bj' Pope Vitalian, in 
 66S. Like St. Paul, he was a native of Tarsus 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 in Cilicia, and eminent for his extensive learning. 
 Though already sixty-six years old, yet such was 
 the energy of his character, that a life of useful- 
 ness was still expected from him ; ami these 
 hopes were not disappointed, for he governed the 
 English Church for twenty- two years. He 
 brought with him a valuable libi'ary of Latin and 
 Greek authors, among which were the works of 
 Homer, and established schools of learning, to 
 which the clergy and laity repaii'ed. The conse- 
 quence was, according to Bede, that soon after 
 (his many English priests were as conversant 
 with the Latin and Greek languages as wilh their 
 native tongue.- 
 
 Scai'cely, however, was the national faith thus 
 settled, when controversies ai'ose in the bosom of 
 the infant church on certain points of ceremonial 
 practice, the triviality of which, of course, did not 
 prevent them from being agitated with as much 
 heat and obstinacy as if they had involved the 
 most essential principles of morality or religion. 
 
 * In Holy Island was first established the nucleus of the opu- 
 lent see of Dm-hani, by Aidan, a monk of the monastery of lona. 
 The church w;is at first built of sjilit oak, and covered with 
 reeils. It w.is rebuilt by K.'idbert, successor to St. Cuthbert, 
 who caused the body of Cutlibert to bo removed and placet! in n 
 magnificent tomb near the high altar. Uei-o the venerated re- 
 mains rested till about the middle of the ninth contnry, when 
 the coast was overrun by the barb.irous Daiio, and the affrighted 
 monks of Lindisfurne escaped with the remains of their Iwloveil 
 apostle, and commenced the series of jteregrinations which 
 ended in their establishment at Dimholm .Inu-ham). Few traces 
 of the mon.Tstic buildings exist, except those of the churt^b. 
 which 13 of Anglo-Norman architecture. - Jhilr, iv, 2 
 
 20
 
 1.3i 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [rtEI.IOION 
 
 One of the subjects of dispute was the same difler- 
 ence as to the mode of computing Ea-ster that 
 had already prevented the union of the English 
 and Welsh Churches ; it now, in like manner, 
 threatened to divide the two kingdoms of Mercia 
 and Northumberland, which, as ah-eady related, 
 had been converted by Scottish missionaries, from 
 the other states of the Heptarchy, that had re- 
 ceived their instructors from Uome and France. 
 To this was added the difference between the 
 Romish and Scottish Churches, upon the form 
 of the ecclesiastical tonsure. While the priests 
 of the former wore the hair round the temples, 
 in imitation of a crown of thorns, they were hor- 
 ror-struck at the latter, who, according to the 
 custom of the Eastern Church, shaved it from 
 their foreheads into the form of a crescent, for 
 which they were reproached w-ith bearing the 
 emblem of Simon Magus.' A council had been 
 summoned with the view of accommodating these 
 dissensions, by Oswy, King of Northumbeiland, 
 in the year CG4; but the only result of this at- 
 tempt was to increase the animosity of the two 
 factions, the clergy of the Scottish persuasion, in 
 fact, retiring from the assembly in disgust.' 
 Their departure was occasioned by the intem- 
 perate zeal and arrogance of Wilfrith, afterwards 
 Archbishop of York, whose gi-eat aim was to re- 
 duce the English Church to a state of uniformity, 
 by the suppression of the Culdees.^ At a council 
 called at Hertford, in the year 673, the bishops 
 generally consented to the canons which Theodore 
 had brought with him from Rome, by which a 
 complete agi'eemerit in faith and worship v/as 
 established.' 
 
 In the meantime, Theodore was enabled to pro- 
 ceed with his division of the larger dioceses. 
 That of Mercia, in particular, which had till now 
 embraced the whole of the state so called, was 
 
 ' Theodore, who, wlien he was called to the primacy, wore the 
 Eastern tonsure, was obliged to wait four mouths, that his hair 
 might grow so as to be shaven accordiBg to the oi-thodo.x fasliion. 
 — Bede, iv. 1. 
 
 - For the lengthened discussion at tliis council, see Bcdn, iii, 2.^. 
 
 3 " Wilfritli, by his own power, accompliolied wli.it Augustine, 
 miniated by the spirit of Gregory the Great, had be^un. The 
 Anglo-Saxon states were converted not only to Cla-istianity, but 
 to Catholicism. For secular learning they were chiefly indebted 
 to the Scots and Britons — for their accession to the Europe.an 
 system of faitli, to tliese two men ; for, however successful Au- 
 gustine may appear in his first spiritual acquisitions for the 
 Church of Rome, the coui-se of Anglo-Sa.xon history, neverthe- 
 less, shows that, althougli the Roman ecclesiastical system was 
 acknowledged, the influonoe of Rome was exceedingly weait. and 
 that the Anglo-Saxons, even after they ware no longer anti- 
 Catholic, continued always anri-rapistical. As Wiltrith's his- 
 tory itself proves indeed how little even this zealous partisan ot 
 tlie popes could eilect, it is tlio more desirable to take a view of 
 the intei-nal relations of religion in England. 
 
 "We notice, in the first place, in every kingdom a bishop, 
 who, travelling about with his coadjutors, propagated both doc- 
 truie and discipline. This kind of church regimen was well oal- 
 cul.ated to succeed that of the pagan priesthood. Tiie bishops, 
 wljea chosca by the clergy, always reiiuire.l the ooniii-'uation of 
 
 divi^led by -King Etheh-ed, at his instigation, into 
 the four dioceses of Lichfield, Worcester, Here- 
 ford, and Chester. Many other reforms were also 
 prosecuted by the energetic primate. He en- 
 couraged the wealthy to build parish churches, 
 by confen-ing ujion them and their heirs the 
 right of patronage. The sacred edifices, till now 
 for the most part of timber, began to give place 
 to larger and more durable structures of stone; 
 the beautiful chanting, hitherto confined to the 
 cathedrals, was introduced into the churches 
 generally; and the priests, who had been accus- 
 tomed, in the discharge of then- office, to wander 
 from place to place, had fixed stations assigned 
 to them. They and the churches had as yet been 
 maintained solely by the voluntary contributions 
 of the people; but, because this was a precarious 
 resource w'hen the excitement of novelty had 
 ceased, Theodore provided for the regular sup- 
 port of religion, by jirevailing upon the knigs of 
 the ilillcrent states to impose a special tax uj5on 
 their subjects for that purpose, under the name 
 of kirk-scot.^ By these and similar measures, all 
 England, long before the several kingdoms were 
 united under one sovereign, was reduced to a state 
 of religious uniformity, and composed a single 
 spiritual empire. After living to witness many 
 of the benefits of his important labours, this illus- 
 trious primate dieil in 690, after a well-spent and 
 active life of nearly ninety years. 
 
 The age of the Christian chm-ch in England 
 that immediately succeeded its establishment, was 
 distinguished by the decline of tiiie religion, and 
 the rapid increase both of worldly-mindedness 
 among the clergy, and of fanaticism and super- 
 stition among the people. Fiom the humble con- 
 dition of a dependence upon the alms of the faith- 
 ful, the church now found itself in the possession 
 of revenues which enabled its bishops to vie in 
 
 the prince ; but, in most instances, they were nominated by Mm. 
 In later times, it is obsei-vable that the royal chaplains always 
 obtained the episcopal dignities. Over these bishops, he who 
 resided at Canterbury, the capital of the Brctwalda Etlielbert, 
 was set as archbishop, in like manner as the Bishop of Rome had 
 origin.ally assumed the supremacy over the Roman provinces. 
 The archbishopric of York, established by Gregory the Great, 
 which might act aa a chock to a primacy of the Kentish arch- 
 bishop, dangerous to the P.apal authority, ceased to exist after 
 the flight C'f Paulinus, and w£is not re-established till a cen- 
 tury afterwards, when Egbert, the brother of King Eadbert, after 
 many representations to the Papal chair, received the pall. A 
 third archiepisoopal see was established for the country between 
 the Tliames and the Hnniber, Ly the powerful OtFa of Mercia, 
 who held the dignity necessary for the honour of his kingdom, 
 with the consent of Popo Hadrian, to whom this augmentation 
 of his slight influence over the Anglo-Saxon clergy might have 
 been welcome. The old state of things was, however, shortly 
 after restored. — Almost oontempononeously with the bishoprics, 
 some monasteries were founded by the bounty of the kings and 
 their relatives, which served as residences to numerous monks. 
 Many of these oloistei-s in the north of England were destroyed 
 by the Danes, the very sites of which are not known with cer- 
 tainty." — Lapt>enberg, vol. i. p. ISO. 
 < Side, iv. 5. ^Ecde, Ejuslol. ad I'gberi
 
 A.D. 410-lOCC.] 
 
 S.WON PERIOD. 
 
 1. 
 
 [jamp and luxury with the chief nobility, an<l 
 even conferred no small consideration uiion many 
 of its inferior ministei'S. It is generally held that 
 tithes were first imiiosed upon the Mercians in 
 the latter part of the eighth century, by their 
 king:, Oli'a, and that the tax was extended over all 
 England by King Elhelwulf, in 855. But the 
 subject of this ;ussunied donation of Ethelwulf to 
 the church is involved in groat obscurity.' All 
 that is certain is, that in after ages the clergy 
 were uniformly wont to refer to his charter as 
 the foundation of their claim. The tithes of all 
 England, however, at this early period, if such a 
 general tax then existed, would not have been 
 sufficient of themselves to weigh down the church 
 by too gi-eat a burden of wealth. A great portion 
 of the soil was still composed of waste or forest 
 land; and the tithes appear to have been charged 
 with the repair of churches, the expenses of wor- 
 ship, and the relief of the poor, as well as with 
 the maintenance of the clergy. It was from the 
 lavish benevolence of individuals that the church 
 principally derived its large revenues. Kings, 
 under the influence of piety or remorse, were 
 eager to pour their wealth into the ecclesiastical 
 treasury, to bribe the favour of Ileaven, or avert 
 its indignation; and wealthy thanes wei'e in like 
 manner wont to expiate their sins, as they were 
 taught they might do, ]>y founding a churcli or 
 endowing a monastery. Ainong other conse- 
 quences of these more ample resources, we iind 
 that the walls of the churches became covered 
 with foreign paintings and tapesti-y; that the 
 altars and sacred vessels were formed of (he pre- 
 cious metals, and spai-kled with gems; while the 
 vestments of tlie priests were of the most splendid 
 description. Other much more lamentable eflecls 
 followed. Indolence and sensuality took the place 
 of religion and learning among all onlers of the 
 clergy. Tlie monasteries in jiailicular, founded 
 at first as abodes of piety and letters, and refuges 
 for the desolate and the penitent, soon l)ecame the 
 haunts of idleness and superstition. Many of the 
 numieries were mere receptacles of profligacy, in 
 which the roving debauchee was sure of a wel- 
 come.^ In the year 747 the Council of Cloveshoe 
 foimd it necessaiy to order that the monasteries 
 should not be turned into places of amusement 
 for harpers and buffoons; and that laymen should 
 not be admitted within their walls too freely, lest 
 they might be scandalized at the offences they 
 should discover there.' Most of the monasteries 
 in England, too, were double houses,' in which 
 resided communities of men and women; and the 
 uatiu-al consequences often followed this perilous 
 
 1 See Turner's An{jIo-Saxons, i. 479-4.S1. 
 
 - Bale: De Rejtiedio Peccaiorum: Wilkins' Concilia, i. SS, 99. 
 
 3 WOkins' Concilia, i. 97. 
 
 ^ Lins^rd's Antifjniti'S of the Anglo-Saxon Churcli, p. 120. 
 
 juxtaposition of the sexes, living in the midst of 
 plenty and idleness. Tliese establishments also 
 continued to multiply with a rapidity that was 
 portentous, not only from the tendency of tlie 
 idle and depraved to embrace such a life of in- 
 dulgence, but from the doctrine current at the 
 end of the seventh century, that the assumption 
 of the monastic habit absolved from all previous 
 sin. Bede, who saw and lamented this growing 
 evil, raised a warning voice, but in vain, against 
 it; and expressed his fears that, from tlie increase 
 of the monks, soldiers would at last be wanting 
 to repel the invasion of an enemy.' JIany nobles, 
 desii-ous of an uninterrupted life of sensuality, 
 pretended to devote their wealth to the service 
 of Ileaven, and obtained the I'oyal sanction for 
 founding a religious house; but in their new cha- 
 racter of abbots, they gathered round them a 
 brotherhood of dissolute monks, witli whom they 
 lived in the commission of every vice; while their 
 wives, following the examiile, established nun- 
 neries upon a similar piinciple, and filled them 
 with the most depravcil of their sex.' To tliese 
 evils was added the bitterness of religious con- 
 tention. Men thus pampered could scarcely be 
 ex)iected to live in a state of mutual hiirmoiiy; 
 and fierce dissensions were constantly raging be- 
 tween the monks, or regulars, as they called tliem- 
 selves, and the seculars or unmonastic c!erg3', about 
 their respective duties, privileges, and honours. 
 
 It was natural enough that the grossest su- 
 perstition should accompany and intermingle 
 with all this |irolligacy. So many Saxon kings 
 accordingly abandoned their crowns, and retired 
 into monasteries, that the practice became a pro- 
 verbial distinction of their race;" while other 
 ]iersons of rank, nauseated with indulgence, or 
 horror-sti-uck with religious dread, often also for- 
 sook the world, of which they were weary, and 
 took refuge in cells or hermitages. The penances 
 by which they endeavoured either to exjiiate 
 their crimes or attain to the honours of saintsliip, 
 emblazoned though they are in chronicles, and 
 canonized in calendars, can only excite contempt 
 or disgust, whether they a-scend to the extrava- 
 gance of St. Gurthlake, who endeavoured to fast 
 forty days, after the fashion of Elias,' or sink to 
 the low standard of those noble ladies wdio thought 
 that heaven was to be won by the s]iiritual purity 
 of unwashed linen. In addition to the feeling of 
 I'emorse by which sucli ex|iiations were ins]iired, 
 a profligate state of society will niulliply religious 
 observances, as a cheap substitute for the ])rnctice 
 of holiness and virtue ; and men will re.adily fast, 
 and make journeys, and give alms, in preference 
 
 * JJedo, £piJ(i. ad Eijbcrt, 
 
 •* Aicuiii, Epislola: ; Line.artl'B Anliqniiief of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church, p. 133. 
 
 ' Hunting, p. 337. ^ florcf Sinictorum, in Vit. Gurih. p. 34.
 
 15G 
 
 niSTOEY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Religion'. 
 
 to the greater sacrifice of amendment of life. We 
 need not, therefore, wonder to find Saxon jtil- 
 griiiis tlironging to tlie Continent and to I!ome, 
 
 ''S^y^l," Ir*!: 
 
 Rock Hermitage, at Guy's Cliff,^ Wanvicksliire. — From a 
 sketcli on the spot, by J. "W. Archer. 
 
 wlio do not seem to have considered a little con- 
 traband traffic, \vlien opportunity offered, as de- 
 tracting from the merits of their religious tour; ^ 
 while ladies of rank, who undertook the same 
 
 ' Dugdale, def>cribiiig Guy's CJiff, says: "This being a great 
 clift" on the western bank of the Avon, ivas made choice of by 
 that pious man St. DubHtius (who in the Britons' time had liis 
 episcopal seiit at Warwick) for a place of devotion, where he 
 bnilt an oratoiy, dedicated to St. Marv Mogdolm (Camden says 
 St. Margaret, into which, long after, in the Saxon days, did a 
 devout heremite repair, who, finding the natural rock so proper 
 for his cell, and the pleasant grove wherewith it is backed yield- 
 ing enteilaiiiment fit for solitude, seated himself here. Which 
 advantages invited also the famous Guy (sometime Earl of War- 
 wick), after his notable achievements, having weaned himself 
 from the deceitful pleasiu-es of this woi'Id, to retire hither, 
 where, receiving ghostly comfort from that heremite, he abode 
 till liis death." There are several cells in the cliff. Tliat 
 shown in the cut is at the base of the rock, and is popularly 
 distinguished as Guy's Cell. However doubtful that pei-sonage 
 and Ids localities may be, the cell itself bears a token of early 
 occupation, in an inscription cut in the wall in Saxon characters, 
 but not legible. 
 
 - Spelraan's Concilia, i. p. 2.07. 
 
 ^ "To the distance from Rome, and their slender dependence 
 on the Papal chair, the people of England are apparently in- 
 debted for the advantage of having retained their mother tongue 
 as the language of the church, which was never entirely banished 
 by the priests from their most sacred services. Tlieir careless, 
 sensual coiu-se of life, and perhaps the prejudice which pre- 
 vented them fi-om learning even so much Latin as was requisite 
 to enable them to repeat the Paternoster and Creed in that lan- 
 guage, have proved more conducive to the highest interests of 
 the countiy than the dark subtilty of the learned Romanized 
 monk, pondering over authorities. Even the mass itself was 
 not read entirely in the Latin tongue. Tlie wedding form was. 
 
 journey, frequently parted with whatever virtue 
 they i^oKsessed by the way." 
 
 "While such was the state of the English Church, 
 the invasions of the Danes coinnieneed at the end 
 of the eighth centuiy, and were continued in a 
 succession of inundations, each more terrible than 
 the preceding. These spoilei-s of the North, de- 
 voted to their ancient idolatry, naturally abhorred 
 the Christianity of the Saxons, corrupted though 
 it was, as a religion of humanity and order; and 
 as the treasures of the land, at the first alarm, were 
 deposited in the sacred edifices, which were fondly 
 believed to be safe from the intrusion even of the* 
 most daring, the tempest of the Danish warfare 
 was chiefly directed against the churches and 
 monasteries. Those miracles lately so plentiful, 
 and so powerful to deceive, were impotent now 
 to break or tiu-n back the sword of the invader. 
 The priest was massacred at the altar; the monk 
 perished in his cell ; the nuns were violated ; and 
 the course of the Northmen might be traced by 
 the ashes of sacred edifices that had been pillaged 
 and consumed. The effects of these devastations 
 upon both religion and learning may be read in 
 the mom-nful complaint of Alfred. At his acces- 
 sion, he tells us, in the interesting preface to his 
 translation of Pope Gregory's tract on the Duties 
 of Pastors^ that he could find very few priests 
 north of the Humber Avho were able to translate 
 the Latin service into the vulgar tongue ; and 
 south of the Thames, not one.^ 
 
 After the land had begun to recover from the 
 immediate effects of this visitation, and the chm'ch 
 had resumed its wonted position, the celebrated 
 
 no doubt, in Anglo-Saxon ; and its hearty, sound, and simple 
 sterling substance, are preserved in the English ritual to the 
 present day. The numerous versions and paraphrases of the 
 Old and New Testaments made those boo'ts known to the laity, 
 and more familiar to the clergy. That these were in general 
 ch'CTilation in Bede's time, may perhaps be inferred from his 
 omission of all mention of them, though the learned and cele- 
 brated Anglo-Saxon poet, Aldhelm, had ah'eady translated the 
 Psalms ; and Egbert, Bishop of Lindisfame, the four gospels. 
 Beds is also said to have translated both the Old and the New 
 Testament into liis mother tongue, an assertion wldch, like a 
 similar one regai'ding King Alfred, must be limited to the Gos- 
 pel of St. John, and, in the case of Alfi*ed, to somo fragments 
 of the Psalms. An abridged version of the Pentateuch, and of 
 some other books of the Old Testament, by Elfric, in the end 
 of the tenth centmy, is still extant. The vast collection of 
 Anglo-Saxon homilies, still preserved in man\iscript, at once 
 enlarged and ennobled the language and the feelings of Chris- 
 tianity; and the ear, which continued deaf to the mother tongue, 
 was, in the ^Vnglo-Sason Church, yet more sensibly addressed, 
 and in a way to agitate or gently move the heart. Large organs 
 are described and spoken of as donations to the chm-ch in the 
 begiiming of the eighth centmy. The mention of this instru- 
 ment at Mahnesbury, aflords ground for the conjecture that it 
 might have been introduced by the musical Welsh. Ciiurch 
 music was fii-st brought into Kent by the Roman clergy, and 
 from thence into the northern parts, where it \mderwcnt im- 
 provement. Tills was an object of such interest, that the arrival 
 of aRnman singing-master is mentioned by contemporary authors 
 as a matter of almost equal imiwrtance with a new victory gained 
 by the Catholic faith over the Pagans or Scots." — Lappenbcrg, 
 vol. i. p. 202.
 
 AD. 440— 1066.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 1 
 
 0/ 
 
 Duustim appeared. lie was born iu ^yessox, 
 about the year 925. Although he was of uoble 
 birth, and remotely related to the royal family, 
 as well as connected with the church through two 
 uncles, one of whom was primate, and the other 
 Eishop of Winchester, those signal advantages 
 were not deemed enough for the future a.spirant 
 to clerical supremacy, without the corroboration 
 of a miracle. Ilis career was, therefore, indicated 
 by a miracle iu a clim-ch, even before he v.-as born. 
 His youth also was a series of miracles, llis 
 early studies having been pursued with an inten- 
 sity that exhausted his feeble constitution, a fever 
 ensued; but an angel visited his couch by night, 
 and suddenly restored him to health. By another 
 niii'acle he was taught how he must enlarge the 
 cluirch in Glastonbui-y, &c. Dunstan, however, 
 accomplished himself in all the learning and in 
 most of the arts that might give him an influence 
 in society. He was an excellent composer in 
 music; he played skilfully upon vai'ious instru- 
 ments; was a painter, a worker iu design, and a 
 caligraplier; a jeweller, and a blacksmith. After 
 he had taken the clerical habit, he was introduced 
 by his uncle, Aldhelm the primate, to King Athel- 
 stane, who seems to have been delighted with liis 
 music. At this time of his life he w.as accustomed 
 to sing and play some of the heathen songs of the 
 ancient Saxons, and for this he was accused by his 
 enemies as a profane person. Incun-ing the envy 
 of Athelstane's courtiers, and losing the favour of 
 the king, who was made to suspect him of sorcery, 
 Dunstan was driven from the court, was kicked, 
 and cudgelled, and thrown into a bog, and there 
 left to perish. lie escaped, however, from this 
 peril, and sought refuge with his uncle, the Bisho]i 
 of "Winchester. His vi-hole life was now altered. 
 Contiguous to the church of Glastonbui-y he 
 erected a very small cell, more like a sepulchre 
 than a human habitation; and this was at once 
 his bed-chamber, his oratory, and his workshop; 
 and it was here that he had that most celebrated 
 combat with the devil which all have heard of. 
 His character for sanctity now began to wax illus- 
 trious. A noble dame, who had renounced the 
 world, and who occupied a cell near Ids own, 
 died in the odoiu- of sanctity, and left him all 
 her property. He distributed the personal pro- 
 pei'ty among the poor, and bestowed the lands 
 iipon the church at Glastonbury, endowing that 
 estaljlishment at the same time with the whole 
 of his own patrimony, which had lately fallen to 
 him. His ambition, though inoi-dinate, was of 
 too lofty a character to stoop to lucrative consi- 
 derations. Edmund ha\-ing now succeeded to the 
 throne, Dunstan was recalled to court; but his 
 ambition and the dread of his talents again united 
 the courtiers against hiin, and he was once more 
 dismissed through their intrigues. An opjiortunc I 
 
 miracle, however, induced the king to make him 
 abbot of Glastonbury, and to increase gi'eatly 
 the privileges of that famous mouastei-y. Eilrcd, 
 the successor of Edmund, showed him equal fa- 
 vour, anil wovdd have made him IJishop of Crc- 
 diton; but Dunstan, who seems to have cont^m- 
 ])lated a much higher preferment, declined the 
 oll'er. The very next day (liaving alw.ays mira- 
 cles at his hand) he declared that St. Peter, St. 
 Paul, and St. Andrew had visited him iu tlie 
 night, and that the last, having severely chastised 
 him with a rod for rejecting their apostolic society, 
 commanded him never to refuse such an offer 
 again, or even the primaci/, should it be offered 
 him; assuring him witlial that he should one day 
 travel to IJouie. 
 
 It is prol).al)le that Diinstan's ultimate aim was 
 to etlect what he deemed a reformation of the 
 church, and that, according to the morality of the 
 times, he justified to himself the means to which 
 he resorted by the importance of the object he 
 had in ■view. A fiex-ce champion for the fancied 
 holiness of celibacy, he determined to reduce the 
 clergy under the monastic yoke, and to cairy out 
 the celibate rule of Pope Gregory II.; and as 
 during the late troubles many both of the secular 
 and the regular priests had married, he insisted 
 that those who had so acted should put away both 
 their wives and families. Those clergv'men also 
 who dwelt with their i-espective bishops were re- 
 quired to become the inmates of a monaster)'. In 
 these views Dunstan was happy in having for his 
 coadjutor Archbishop Odo. This pei-sonage, born 
 of Danish pai-ents, and distinguished in the early 
 part of his life as a warrior, retained ever after 
 the firmness and ferocity of his first calling. We 
 have ah'cady related the jiart he acted along with 
 Dunst:m in tlie tragedy of the inihap]iy Elgiva.' 
 When Dunstan, shortly after this, was ol)liged to 
 flee from England, on being accused of embezzle- 
 ment in the administration of the royal revenues, 
 it is related that while the king's ollicei's were 
 employed at the abbey of Glastonbury in taking 
 an inventoiy of his efiects, his old advcrsaiy, the 
 devil, made the sacred building resound with 
 obstreperous rejoicings. But it is added tliat 
 Dunstan checked the devil's triumph by the pro- 
 phetic intimation of a speedy return." In etlect 
 the death of Edwy immediately brought about 
 the recal of Dunstan, and the restoration of his 
 inlluence; and ho was appointed Bisliop of Wor- 
 cester by King Edg.oi- in 957. Three years after 
 he obtained the primacy, being pi'omoted to the 
 archbishopric of Canterbury ujion the death of 
 his friend Odo. According to custom, he re])aired 
 to Home to receive the pall at the hands of the 
 pope, thus fulfilling the pi-edictions of his vision. 
 
 ' Soo vol. i. p. 101. 
 
 2 Angtia Sacra.
 
 153 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [r.ELiGioy. 
 
 Diiiistaii was now possessed of uulimitoJ eccle- 
 siastioal authority;' and lie was seconded hj' the 
 zealous efforts of Oswald and Ethehvald, the for- 
 mer of \Yhom he promoted to the see of Worces- 
 ter, and the latter to the see of Winchester, and 
 both of whom were afterwards canonized as well 
 as himself. The superstitious King Edgar, and 
 afterwards the youthful King Edward, were com- 
 pletely under his control. With none to check 
 him, he proceeded with merciless zeal in his pro- 
 jects of reformation, and alternately adopted force 
 and stratagem. The clergy were imperiously re- 
 quired to dismiss their wives and child .en, and 
 conform to the law of celibacy or resign their 
 charges ; and when they embraced the latter 
 alternative they were represented as monsters of 
 wickedness. The secular canons were driven out 
 of the cathedrals and monasteries, and their places 
 were filled with monks. Miracles were not spared 
 for converting the obstinate recusants, and, be- 
 sides the wonderful legends that were prop.agated 
 in praise of St. Benedict and his severe institu- 
 tion, Archbishop Dunstan vouchsafed to them a 
 sign for their conviction. A synod being held at 
 Winchester in the year 977, at which the canons 
 hoped that the sentence against them would be 
 reversed, all at once a voice issued fi-om a crnciti.x 
 in the wall, exclaiming, "Do it not! do it not! 
 You have judged well, and you would do ill to 
 change it." This miracle or ventriloquism, how- 
 ever, so far from convincing the canons, only 
 produced confusiou, and broke up the meeting. 
 A second meeting was held, with no better suc- 
 cess. A third wa-s appointed at C'alne, and there 
 a prodigy was to be exhibited of a more tremen- 
 dous and decisive character. The opponents of 
 Dunstan had chosen for their advocate Beornelm, 
 a Scottish bishop, who is described as a pereon 
 of subtle understanding and infinite loquacity. 
 Dunstan, perplexed by the arguments of the logi- 
 cal and loquacious Scot, proceeded to his final 
 demonstration. " I am now growing old," he 
 exclaimed, " and you endeavour to overcome me. 
 I am more disposed to silence than to contention. 
 Yet I confess I am unwilling that you should 
 vanquish me; and to Christ himself, as judge, 1 
 commit the cause of his church ! " Scarcely had 
 he said the words, when part of the scaffolding 
 
 ' " The CTiristian clergy occupied an influential station amons 
 tue Anglo-Sa.\ons, which, considering the numerous calamities 
 that had befiiUen them, as well as their disputes with the Scots, 
 is the more remarkable. In explanation of tliis striking pheno- 
 menon among barbaric horde;, may be adduced the account 
 given by Tacitus of the vast influence in secular affairs possessed 
 by the pagan Gennan priesthood, in whom exclusively resided 
 the power of life and death. Such a primitive influence tended, 
 no doubt, greatly to facilitate the domination of the Roman 
 Tapal Church, and a part of their jurisdiction — the ordeals or so- 
 called judgments of God — may have had their origin in the legal 
 iLiiges of the heathen priests. Religion became a national con- 
 cern, and priests enacted a jirincipal part In the Anglo-Saxon 
 witeuagemot. The rank of an archbishop was equal to tliat of 
 
 and flooring suildcnly gave way, and fell with a 
 mighty crash, with his adversaries, of whom some 
 were crushed to death, and many grievously in- 
 jured; while the part of the edifice which Dun- 
 stan and his adherents occupied i-emained safe 
 and unmoved — sound as a rock. It is no viola- 
 tion of charity to suspect from this incident that 
 the archbishop was skilled in the profession of 
 the carpenter and builder as well as in that of 
 the black.smilh. 
 
 Dunstan lived for ten years after this sangui- 
 nary trick, and spent them in prosecuting his. 
 favom'ite schemes of ecclesiastical reform. His 
 last moments are irradiated in the legend of his 
 life by a whole galaxy of miracles. lie died in 
 the reign of Ethelred, a.d. 988. 
 
 The history of the Anglo-Saxon Church, from 
 the death of Dunstan to the Norman conquest, 
 pre.seuts little to interest the general reader. The 
 cause for which Dunstan and his coadjutoi-s had 
 laboured, with the celibacy of the clergy, re- 
 mained completely in the ascendant. IMonaste- 
 ries continued to be founded or endowed in every 
 jiartof thekingdonijand such were the multitudes 
 who devoted themselves to the cloi-stei", that the 
 foreboding of the venerable Bede was at length 
 accomplished — the monks wei-e so numerous that 
 there were not left soldiers enough to defend the 
 conntry, and above a third of the projierty of the 
 land was in possession of the church, and exempted 
 from taxes and military service. 
 
 "With the i-emnant of the superstitions of the 
 ancient Britons were blended many of the super- 
 stitions and customs which the Saxons and Danes 
 brought with them from Northern Germany and 
 Scandinavia, and of which traces are still to be 
 foimd in simdry usages and in many parts of 
 England and Scotland. An increase of supereti- 
 tion of a certain kind was one of the consequences 
 of the invasion of the Danes. In a canon of the 
 reign of King Edgar the clergy are enjoined to 
 be diligent in withdi'awing the ])eople from the 
 worship of trees, stones, and fountains, and from 
 other evil practices; and the laws of King Canute 
 prohibit the worship of heathen gods, of the sun, 
 moon, fire, rivers, fountains, rocks, or trees, the 
 practice of witchcraft, or the commission of mur- 
 der by magic, or other infernal devices.^ 
 
 an atheling, of a bishop to th.at of an eolderman. The bishop 
 presided with the eoldei-man in the county court [scir-geinot), 
 the jurisdiction of which was frequently coextensive with the 
 diocese." — Lappaiberg, vol. ii. p. 323. 
 
 2 " No Gennanic people preserved so many memorials of pa- 
 ganism as the .\nglo-Saxons. Their days of the week have t« 
 the present time retained their heathen names ; even that of 
 Woden (Wednesd.ay) is still unconsciously so called in both 
 worlds, and by more tongues than when he was the chief object 
 of religious veneration. In the north of Kngland and the Ger- 
 manic parts of Scotland, the Yule fc-ist igcoltol, gcol) has never 
 been supplanted by the name of Christmas. That these deno- 
 minations throughout ages were not a senseless echo of super- 
 anmiated customs, is evident from th"* Anglo-Saxon laws of later
 
 A.D. -149— 106G.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 l.-:i 
 
 111 the canons of Elfric, wlio was Aivlibisliop of \ ostiary, who took charge of the church doors, and 
 
 Canterbury from 905 to 1005, we learn that tl 
 were seven orders of cler<,'y in the church, whose 
 names and olUces were the following:— 1st, the 
 
 rang the bell; 2d, the lector or reader of Scrip- 
 ture to the congregation; 3d, the exorcist, who 
 drove out devils by sacred atljiu-atlons or iiivo- 
 
 Ordees op the Clergy,' li'om carved panels in the cJiiuch at TiiiU, Somersetshire. — J, W. Aiclur, troin his drHWiiigon tlie spot. 
 
 cations ; 4tli, the acolyte, who held the tapers 
 at the reading of tlie gospels and the celebra- 
 tion of mass; 0th, the sub-deacon, who produ- 
 ced the holy vessels, and attended the deacon at 
 the altar ; 6th, the deacon, who ministered to 
 the mass-priest, laid the oblation on the altar. 
 
 times, wMcli strictly forbid the Tvorship of heathen gods, of the 
 siin, the moon, fire, rivei-s, water- wells, stones, or forest-trees. 
 It is, however, probable, that some of this heathenism may have 
 been awakened by contact with the pagan Northmen. A part 
 of the old theology lost its pei'nicious power; when reduced to 
 history it became subservient to the purposes of epic poetry, as 
 instances of which may be cited the genealogies of the Anglo- 
 Saxon kings and the poem of Beowulph. Of many superstitions, 
 which long retained their gvomid, relative to the power of magic, 
 to amulets, magical medicaments, as well as to the innocent 
 belief— 6o intimately connected with poetry — in elves and swanns 
 of benevolent, or at least hai-mless unearthly, though sublunaiy 
 spirits, it is often difficult to point out the historic elements from 
 which they have spning; as precisely in the northern parts of 
 England, where they were longest preserved, the intermixture 
 of the Britons with tlie Germans was the most intimate." — 
 lappeiibei-fj. 
 
 ' In this curious carving, we have, commencing on the right, 
 the ostiarj' ringing the church bell; next, it may be conceived, 
 tlie sub-deacon, bearing a coffer containing the holy vessels. 
 The next figure may represent the exorcist, then followed by a 
 cross-bearer, the mass-priest, in his embroidered cape. The in- 
 tervening panels are ornamented with — 1st, an oak ; 2d, a vine ; 
 3d, the iustiTiments of the passion, viz., the cross, the hammer, 
 the pincers, and the ladder, between the nmgs of which is the 
 flagellum or scourge ; on the ladder is the cock which admo- 
 nished St. Peter by its crowing, and opposite, the lantern of 
 
 read the gospel, baptized children, and gave the 
 euchai'ist to the people; 7th, the mass-priest 
 or presbyter, who preached, baptized, and con- 
 secrated the eucliarist. Of the same order with 
 the last of these, but higher in honour, was the 
 bishop.^ 
 
 Judas; 4th and 6th, a repetition of the oak and vine; and 
 6th, a vine surmounted by the sacred monogi-am. Over an 
 adjoining series of scroll panels are the names of the ecclcsliistic 
 under whose auspices the work w;is performed, "John Wayo 
 Clarke heere;" and of the carver himself, "Simon Warnian 
 maker of thys "worke. Ano. Dni. 1560." 
 
 - " A preceding bishop, probably his immediate predecessor. 
 FIfric, in the year 1000, had directed, in one of the canons pub- 
 lished at a council in which he presided, that every parish prie.st 
 should bo obliged, on Svunlays and on other holidays, to explain 
 the Lord's Prayer or the Creed, and tho gospel for the day, before 
 the people, in the English tongue. While historians enlarge on 
 the quarrels between the Papacy and the civil power, and de- 
 scant, with tedious prolixity, on the superstitions which were 
 in vogue dm-ing the dark ages, they are too apt to pass over in 
 a cursory manner such facts as this. Lot tho reader rellcct on 
 the precioiLsness of the doctrines which the Loi-d's Pi-ayer, tho 
 Creed, and some of the plainest and most jiractical passages of 
 the New Testament either exhibit or imply, and he will be 
 convinced that, if the canon of Eifric had been obeyeii with any 
 tolerable degree of spirit and exactness in a nmnber of parishes 
 in England, the ignorance and darkness could not have been so 
 complete or so universal as we are generally taught to believe. 
 . , . That elementary knowledge which is tho object of the 
 canon is ever more salutary in its influence than the most inge- 
 nious subtleties of literary refmement in religion." — Milner, 
 flist. of the Church of Christ, cent. 11, ch. iv.
 
 IGO 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social State. 
 
 CHAPTER YII.-HISTORY OF SOCIETY. 
 
 FROM THE ARRIVAL OF THE SAXONS TO THE ARRIVAL OF THE NORMANS. — A.D. 449— 10C6- 
 
 TJnion of the Saxon tribes in England into one people— Classe3 into winch tliey were divided — Condition of tlio 
 ceorls and serfs — Different kinds of servitude— Ecclesiastical architecture — Houses — Furniture — Food — 
 Cookery — An^Io-Saxon banquets — Drinking practices— Dress of the Anj^lo-Saxons — Ornaments — Female 
 costume and ornaments — Social and domestic life of the Anglo-Saxons — Female occupations — Superstitions 
 of the people— Their course of life from the beginning to the close — Amusements of the Anglo-Saxons — State 
 of education — Learned Englishmen. 
 
 ^HEN the Saxons, Jutes, and 
 Aiic^les had obtained ])ossession 
 of England, and when the Ilep- 
 tarchy had been resolved into 
 a monarchy, it was in the or- 
 dinary coui'se of things that 
 these distinctions of races should cease, and the 
 ■whole become one people. This was the more 
 natiu'al, as they were pi-eviously assimilated in 
 character, language, customs, and institutions, as 
 well as by the fact of a common origin. Accor- 
 dingly they soon came to be spoken of, first 
 under the name of Angles, and afterwards under 
 the compound term of Anglo-Saxons. An equally 
 natural, but still more important change, was 
 
 • Tlie police of the Anglo-Saxons was established and secureJ 
 by the principle of mutual guarantee. This system began with 
 the mccgburh, or family-bond, including whole commimities, 
 related by blood and occupying the same localities. These seem 
 to have given their names to their respective possessions in the 
 lands they had conquered. Mr. Kemble gives two lists of 
 patronymical names, winch he believes to be those of ancient 
 marks — the fii-st derived from the Cod-x Diplomaticus and other 
 authorities; the second inferred from actual local names in Eng- 
 land. The total number of the latter is G'27 ; bnt as several .are 
 fomid repeated in various counties, the grand total is 131^9. 
 Thus, the .Ebingtis are supposed to have given their name to 
 Abhiger, Abingliall, and Abington ; the Aldingas, to Alding- 
 boum, Aldingham, and Aldington ; the Buslingas, to Busling- 
 thorpo ; the Fealdingas, to Faldingworth ; the Ferdingas, to 
 Firdlngbridge ; the Gildingas, to Gildingwells; the Ilemingas, 
 to Hemingbrough and Uemingby, &c. ; while many of these 
 names stand alone, witliout any atldition of ton, ham, thorpe, 
 worth, &c. Mr. Kemble supposes that, as of U)0 of these last, 
 140 occiu" in coimties on the eastern and southern coasts, and 
 twenty-two more in counties easily accessible tlirough great 
 navigable streams, they were possibly the original seats of the 
 marks bearing those names ; and that the settlements distin- 
 guished by the addition of ham, wic, &c., to these original names, 
 were filial settlements, or, as it were, colonies from them. 
 
 " In looking over a good coimty map," says Mr. K., " we are 
 surprised to see the systematic succession of places ending in dai, 
 holt, tcood, hurst, fald, and other words, which invariably de- 
 note forests and out-lying pastures in the woods. These are all 
 in the viarh; and witliin them we may trace, with ecxual cer- 
 tainty, the hams, tans, icorihs, and sUd<s, which imply settled 
 habitations," 
 
 Thus, while the British and Celtic races seem to have named 
 places almost invariably fi'om some natui'al pecidiarity of the 
 grcmid, the Anglo-Saxons, it appears, named them from the fa- 
 milies or relationsliips that settled on them. And each of thcL^e 
 small comramnties had its police maintained originally by the 
 maghurh, or family-bond, according to which all were held resixm- 
 
 that which converted them from restless pirates 
 into peaceful industrious agi'iculturists. In ob- 
 taining not the mere plunder of the English 
 coast, but the permanent possession of England 
 itself, they had got all and more than they hail 
 hoped for; and, therefore, nothing further re- 
 mained for them but to sheathe their swords, and 
 sit down to the full enjoyment of their conquest. 
 In this way the three Germanic tribes became 
 a single nation; and from these causes, also, they 
 acquired that distinctive nationality which was 
 best suited to their common character. The 
 country was divided into shires antl lunnlreds, 
 and into cities, burghs, and townships;' while the 
 people, in like manner, were jmrted into their 
 
 siblo for the offence committed by one; and an oJience done to 
 one, it became the right and duty of all to avenge. 
 
 But this, though a natural, could not be a lasting system. A 
 time inevitably comes when the members of a sibsccaft, or cog- 
 nation, giadually disperse, and neighbours cea-'^e to be kinsmen. 
 This naturally led to a new system of guiiranteo, founded sim- 
 ply on number and neighbourhood. The free inhabitants of the 
 mark came thus to be classed in tens and liundreds — techni- 
 cally, titliings and hundreds — each forming a corporation, pro- 
 bably comprising a coiTesponding nimiber of members respec- 
 tively, together with a titliing-nian for each tithing, and n 
 hundred-man for each hundi-ed ; thus making 111 men in each 
 territorial hundred. 
 
 It must not be supposed that these 111 heads of houses were, 
 with their children and domestic servants, the sole inhabitants 
 of tlie hmidred ; a large allowance must be made for slaves. 
 Neither did the territorial himdred contain always neither more 
 nor fewer heads of houses than those with which it commenced. 
 A distinction seems, indeed, to have been for some time obsei-ved 
 between the numerical and the territorial division— the nume- 
 rical being called the hynden, wldch consisted of ten tithings, 
 and the territorial being called the hundred, although originally 
 they were identical. The tendency of land divisions being to 
 remain stationary for ages, whUe their population varies inces- 
 santly, two very distinct things seem to have grown up together 
 in England — a constantly increasing number of the pj/hh, or 
 corporations, yet a nearly or entirely stationary tale of tenito- 
 rial tithings and himdreds. There seems to have been elbow- 
 room within the marks, to admit a considerable elasticity of 
 the population, without disturbing their ancient boimdaries, 
 i but merely by extending and improving cultivation within 
 1 those boimdaries. Assuming that ovu present hundreds nearly 
 represent the original in number and extent, we miglit (in- 
 clude that, if in the year 400 Kent wiu fii^t divided, Thanct 
 then contained only 100 heads of houses, or hydes, upon :!U00 
 acres of cultivated land ; wliile, in the time of Bedc, tln-eo cen- 
 turies later, it comprised COO families, upon 1S,000 cultivated
 
 A.D. Uy— 10G6.J 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 IGl 
 
 respective classes, whether of rich or poor,\vliether 
 of boud or free.' But it is to these divisions of 
 the people that we confine our attention at pre- 
 sent, and to the development and progi-ess of 
 their chai-aeter in intellectual, social, and domes- 
 tie life. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon society, after it had assumed 
 a settled and regularly organized form, may bo 
 divided into six classes. These wore — 1, the king 
 and liis family; 2, the ethelborn, or nobly-born, 
 who were men of the highest birth; 3, men high 
 in office or possessed of large property; 4, a free- 
 man; 5, a freed man; G, a serf." In simplifying 
 these nice distinctions, however, the people, pro- 
 perly so called, were divided into two great 
 classes — the eoiis and the ceorls. The former 
 comprised the ethelborn, eoldermen, or men of 
 princely descent; the twdfh(undnun, or men of 
 twelve hands, and the sixhaeiuimeii, or men of 
 six hands; that is, the nobility of inferior rank. 
 As for the ceorls (or chmis), who were also called 
 villains (or inhabitants of a \411?.), they were the 
 free-born and the liberated, who dwelt in the 
 township, village, or farm, under the rule of their 
 feudal superior, and were the agxicultui-ists and 
 liaudicr;iitsmen of the country, and traders and 
 small kmdholders of every description under the 
 rank of priest and noble. These constituted the 
 middle classes, out of which the commons of Eng- 
 land were ultimately formed. An idea of the 
 inferior jilace which the ceorls occupied, although 
 they constituted the bulk of the commimity, may 
 be obtained from the following scale, established 
 in the courts of law. The Mord of a king or 
 bishop was of itself conclusive, and required 
 no additional corroboration. The compurgatory 
 oath of a priest was equivalent to that of 1'20 
 ceorls, and the oath of a deacon to that of sixty. 
 But when we descend from these sacred privi- 
 leges of the chui-ch in the matter of legal testi- 
 mony and oath-taking, to the lay nobles, it is gra- 
 tifying to find that the eorl was equivalent to 
 not more than six ceorls. This was a liberal al- 
 lowance, according to the standard of the age; 
 
 but still it was hard enough that five good men 
 and true might bo outfaced in a coiu't by the tes- 
 timony of only one six-handed mjin. The ceorls, 
 also, although they were not the absolute property 
 of a master, were yet so strictly bound to the 
 soil that they could not remove from the estate 
 on which they were born; and when this was 
 sold, they were transferred with it to the new 
 purchiiser, like the cattle that grazed, or even tlie 
 trees tliat grew ujion it.' This was nothing more 
 or less than the condition in which these ceorls, 
 villani, or bondmen had been placed in the forests 
 of Germany, v, liich Tacitus thus describes : " The 
 rest of theii- slaves liave not, like om-s, particular 
 employments in the family allotted them. Each 
 is the master of a habitation and household of 
 his own. The lord requu'es from him a certain 
 quantity of gi-ain, cattle, or cloth, as from a ten- 
 ant; and so far only the subjection of the .slave 
 extends." Mild though this form of servitude 
 might be in a rude slate of society, the Roman 
 historian characterizes it imder the n;une of sla- 
 very; and there ai'e few of the present day who 
 v/ill not agree with him. To be mere part and 
 parcel of the soil, though it were that of Eden 
 itself, and to be bound to it beyond the power or 
 liberty of removal, is bondage indeed. It is evi- 
 dent that a long period 
 had to intervene, and 
 many a step of transi- 
 tion to be efl'ected, be- 
 fore these laud-enthrall- 
 ed churls could become 
 the happy, bold-hearted, 
 and free - born, free - 
 moving conunons of 
 merry England. 
 
 A worse condition still 
 than this was that of the 
 serfs or slaves, in the 
 proper acceptation of 
 the term. These men, 
 who constituted a lai-ge portion of the Anglo- 
 Saxon population, were not only bondmen of the 
 
 -Serf or Theow. — Cotton MS 
 Ckypatia C. a. 
 
 ' "'The populatiou oi the coimtry consisted of two elements 
 — tue cliieis and tlioir loLlowei-s, who had obtained possession 
 and lordslup of the lands; and the agricultui'ists and labourei-s, 
 who Were in the position of serfs and bondmen, and comprised 
 cliiefly ttie old Romano-British popnlation, which, xmder the 
 Anglo-Saxons, was probably ipiito as well off as under the Ro- 
 mans. The Saxons thus held the coimtiy, while the Roman 
 cities continued to hold the towns as tributaries of the Saxon 
 kings, within whose bounds they atood. The country thus 
 exliibited Teutonic l-udeueas, whUe tlie towns were the repre- 
 sentatives of Roman civilization; and though the intercoui-se 
 between the two, and the gradual infusion of Saxon blood into 
 the townis, laid the foundation of modern society, there was a 
 feeling of hostility and rivalry between tov/n and country which 
 has hardly yet disappeai-ed. Between the aristocratic feeling of 
 the Saxon landholders, and the republican principles that ex- 
 isted in the towns, arose, under the balancing influence of the 
 crown, the modei-u political constitution." — See T/te CtU, Ifa 
 Vol. ]. 
 
 Roman, and tlie Saxon, p. 435. In illustrating the only effects 
 by wliicb his view w;is demonstrated, the same author adds, at 
 p. 440: — " it may be cited as a proof of the correctness of this 
 view ot tho mode in which the Roman corponitious outlived 
 tho shock of invasion, and titus became a ch'uf hutratnent in 
 the civiii2ation of subsequent ages, that even tho Danes, in their 
 predatory excursions, often entered into similar compositions 
 with the Saxon towns, aa with Canterbury, in 1009. It m.ay 
 be added, that there is no greater evidence of the independ- 
 ence and strength of the tow'iis under tho Saxons than the cir- 
 cumstance, that while the kijig and his earls, with tho forces 
 of the counties, were not able to make a successful stAud against 
 the Danish invaders, it frequently haiipcned that a town singly 
 drove a jwwerfiU army from its gales, and tho to^viismeu 
 sometimes issued forth, and defeated tho enemy lu a pitched 
 battle." 
 
 2 Sliaron Turner's Uiatory of the Anglo-Saxon). 
 
 ^ Ibid. ; Palgrave's EnglUh Cominonwcalth. 
 
 21
 
 162 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social State. 
 
 soil, but 01 the proprietor also, and, as such, were 
 bound to serve him at home or a-field without 
 wages, except the clothing and sustenance which 
 he was pleased to' give them. It was not merely 
 that they were bought and sold with the land, 
 like cattle or other projierty — for this was also 
 the destiny of the chiu-ls, who considered them- 
 selves as freemen notwithstanding — but they 
 were bequeathed by will on the death of their 
 masters, and not only they, but then- posterity to 
 the remotest generations, in the fashion of a mo- 
 dern entail. While the ceorl also was protected 
 by the laws in such liberty as he possessed, the 
 slave might be confined, whipped, or branded 
 without appeal, and was frequently yoked to the 
 car or plough; and in this way, we read of "teams 
 of men " in the inventories of the day, to distin- 
 guish them from horses and oxen.' Such was the 
 condition of the slaves, or t/icows, as they were 
 denominated among the Anglo-Saxons. But in 
 this, also, there were several ameliorating circum- 
 stances. Thus the practice of manumission, which 
 was recommended as a Cliristian duty, was fre- 
 quent, especially at the horn- of death, and by the 
 wills of testators. A serf might also buy out his 
 freedom by a little extra industry, for which he 
 had many opportunities. But the greatest blow 
 at slavery was struck by the institutions of Al- 
 fred, which decreed that when a Christian man 
 was purchased as a slave, he should only seive 
 for six years, but on the seventh be set at liberty. 
 In this way it was decided that, in the ordinary 
 com-se of nature, aud without any other interfer- 
 ence, slavery should gradually die out in Eng- 
 land. As to the kinds of people upon whom this 
 unfortunate lot of slavery had fallen, it is per- 
 haps not very difficult to ascertain them, As 
 the Saxous had been accustomed to the in- 
 stitution in their own country, they would 
 scarcely scruple to continue it in their new 
 home, and retain in serfage the classes whom 
 they had been wont to hold in thraldom 
 in Germany. But besides their own here- 
 ditary bondmen, who were of the same race 
 with themselves, there were the vanquish- 
 ed Britons, over whom they probably exer- 
 cised that right of the stronger which every 
 countiy has used in tiu-n, and whom they 
 converted not only into ceorls, but iu many '^^ 
 cases into theows. Fmalty, there were but 
 too many Sax:ous who either had forfeited 
 their liberty by their- ciimes, or been fain 
 to sell it in consequence of their poverty, out 
 of whom the ranks of servitude were con- 
 stantly supplied. A slave-mai'ket, indeed, was 
 not unknown in England; and in the frequent fa- 
 mines that occui-red, chiefly from the Danish in- 
 
 vasions, parents sold their own children, to save 
 them from a death of hunger. In this way each 
 noble household was abundantly sup])lied with 
 such kind of service, as is evident from the single 
 example of Alcuin, the Saxon abbot, who had 
 10,000 slaves to his own share." But besides 
 these numerous serfs, the princes and eorls had 
 retinues, composed of men of a higher grade. 
 These were /i.i(s<:arh'i! (house ceorls), who waited 
 upon their master's person at home, or upon a 
 journey ; and cnihts, or knights. As this last 
 word bulked so largely during the Norman as- 
 cendency, it is necessary to mention, that among 
 the Anglo-Saxons it only signified a boy, after- 
 wai-ds a servant who was not a slave, and finally, 
 a militaiy attendant. In this la.st capacity the 
 cnihts were distinguished for their fidelity and 
 devotedness, as was manifested by an instance 
 that oocmTed during the period of the Heptarchy. 
 When Cynewulf, King of Mercia, was about to 
 be assassioated, his military attendants were of- 
 fered immunity if they cea-sed to resist; but they 
 scorned the bribe, aud died to a man in the hope- 
 less defence of their master. When Cyneheard, 
 his murderer, a few hom-s after, was attacked by 
 a gi-eatly superior force, who sought to revenge 
 their sovereign's death, his cnihts, who might have 
 escaped, rallied in his defence, and fell one by one 
 before he could be reached. 
 
 Before tiu-ning our attention to the social and 
 domestic life of the Anglo-Saxons, and the homes 
 they inhabited, it is necessai-y to advert to the 
 condition of their ecclesiastical and public ai-ehi- 
 tectm-e. When Christianity was established iu 
 the seventh century in England, the first churches 
 partook of the rude simplicity of the 
 period, being constructed only of timber 
 and roofed with thatch, as in the in- 
 stances of Lindesfarne aud York, while 
 nothing but the altar was of stone. Of 
 this primitive kind of edifice, the chm-ch 
 at Greenstead is believed to be an ex- 
 
 T 
 
 SouTH View of Greensteau chuklh, i:.M«\. — i^iawu 174S. 
 
 isting specimen. According to ancient legends, 
 this simple structure was erected to serve as a 
 
 ' Shai-on Turner's UislMry of the Anglo-Saxoiti. 
 
 - Stndt.—lt is to the various works of tliis indefatigable an- 
 tiquarian tliat we are mainly indebted for our knowledge of the 
 condition, oostiime, and manners of the Auglo-Sa.\;ouB. Tliis 
 tntimation will make it the less necessary to refer to bis name 
 as our autbority in the foUowijig pa^es.
 
 A.n. U9— 1066.1 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 1C3 
 
 .shrine for the body of St. Ednuuul, .\.D. KUO. 
 The nave ia entii-ely comuosed of the trunks of 
 
 West End of Greenstead CsuBcn, Esse.x 
 
 l.Tj'ge oaks, split and roughly hewed ou both 
 sides; they are set upright, aud close to each 
 other, being let into a sill at the bottom, and a 
 plate at tke top, where they are fastened with 
 wooden pins. This was the whole of the origi- 
 nal fabric, which still remains entire, although 
 much decayed by time. It is twenty-nine feet 
 nine inches long, fourteen feet 
 wide, and five feet six inches 
 high on the side which sup- 
 ported the primitive roof. 
 The addition at the east end 
 is of Anglo-Norman architec- 
 ture, and forms a further evi- 
 dence of the antiquity of this 
 timber edifice. 
 
 In the seventh ceutuiy, 
 churches in England began to 
 be built of stone; and of this 
 early ecclesiastical masonry 
 specimens are still to be found 
 iu the remains of the monas- 
 teries erected by Benedict 
 Biscop, at Weai-mouth, a.d. 674, and at Jar- 
 row, A.D. 684. Those in the foi-mer place consist 
 of a banded cylindrical column that has be- 
 
 COLUMN IN MoNKWEAK- 
 
 MOUTH Church. 
 
 Carved Fbaomknt, Munkwoarmouth Chui-ili. 
 
 longed to a small window, and of very rmle de- 
 sign, but which con-espouds precisely with some 
 columns delineated in Anglo-Saxon illumina- 
 
 tions; and another fragment, suiJjjosed lo liave 
 belonged to tlie same edifice, being jiart of a 
 string com-se, on which ai-o rude cai'vings of ani- 
 mals, &c. The architectural zeal of Biscop was 
 manifested not only by the sacred edifices he 
 erected, but his diligence iu bringing foreign ar- 
 tisans into England ; but amidst the growing 
 improvement, it is evident that the architectural 
 styles both of the Saxons and the Normans were 
 only imitations of the Komanesque style of Italy, 
 and that the chief dillerence lay in the degi-ee of 
 ability in imitaling a debased original. 
 
 The towers of Earls-Biu-ton Church in North- 
 amptonshire, and of Sompting Chm-ch in Sussex 
 — as structures admit- 
 ted to belong to the 
 Anglo-Saxon period — 
 ])resent a remarkable 
 feature in the peculiar 
 mode of their construc- 
 tion, being built rather 
 iu the manner of tim- 
 bered edifices than of 
 those raised in mason- 
 ry. " Beyond the face 
 of the walls long thin 
 stones project, placed 
 vertically at nearly 
 equal distances, which 
 ' <iutinue from one ho- 
 rizontal course or story 
 to another, and in the 
 sjMces between are se- 
 micircular and diago- 
 nal jiieces, which give 
 it a gi-eat similarity to wood quartering. The 
 quoins are of the description of masonry which is 
 always identified with the Anglo-Saxon style, and 
 called long and short work, from theii- being ar- 
 ranged with stones of 
 equal size, placed al- 
 ternately in a vertical 
 ajid horizontal position 
 upon each other, thus 
 bearing resemblance to 
 debased rustic work. 
 The walls of the tower 
 of St. Peter's Church, 
 Bai-ton -upon-H umber, 
 are built in a similar 
 manner to those just 
 described, of rubble 
 stone and grout, inter- 
 spersed with a sort of 
 framework of project- 
 ing freestone in com- 
 
 TowEB OF Sompting Church, 
 Sussex. 
 
 Window, Bamrick Cluircli, 
 Northamptonshire. 
 
 partments, and incasing the doors and windows; 
 the openings of the windows in the upper story 
 ai-e covered by two stone.s, inclining together.
 
 1C4 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social Statk. 
 
 n-ithout nny curvature.'' This peculiarity iu the 
 Anglo-Saxon bell towers is not recognized in the 
 Noiinan arcliitecture, nor in any other, except in 
 some of the numerous tombs of Asia Minor; and 
 it may be presumed to have origin.ated in the 
 transition fnmi the practice of executing edifices 
 composed of timber, to that of working in stone, 
 Tlie heads of windows and doors in Anglo-Saxon 
 .'irchitecture are triangidar or semicircular; the 
 former .shape seems to have been copied from the 
 
 Doorway of the Tower ok Earls-Barton Church. 
 
 debased Roman form wliich is to be seen on 
 sarcophagi in the catacombs of Rome. " The 
 extreme of the triangle rests upon a plain abacus, 
 the impost in some cases projecting fi-om the 
 wall.''^ The semicii'cular arch is the most fre- 
 quent, the earliest of which were constructed of 
 large tiles, probably borrowed from the debris of 
 Roman edifices. These tiles -were placed on end, 
 and the spaces between, which are nearly equal 
 in width, filled in with i-ubble-work ; the jambs 
 or imposts of the arches were generally of stone, 
 as well as the walls, in which were sometimes 
 laid courses of tile, either iu horizontal layers, or 
 in the diagonal man- 
 ner ca.lled herring- 
 bone, bemg evi- 
 dently an imitation 
 of the Romano-Bri- 
 tish structures. A 
 massive but rude 
 imitation of the Ro- 
 man models before 
 them seems to have 
 characterized the 
 ■works of the Saxon 
 architects. Their 
 mouldings were few and simple, consisting of a 
 square faced projection, with a chamfer or splay 
 on the upper or lower edge. Another feature in 
 the Anglo-Saxon bell towers is to be remarked 
 in the rude columns which di^dde the openings 
 
 Baluster V.'indow, llonkwedr- 
 mouth Church, Durham. 
 
 of the windows, and form a kind of balustrade, 
 frequently represented in Anglo-Saxon manu- 
 scripts. Tliese appear iu the tower of Earls-Barton, 
 .T:u-row, Monk we.armoutli, and other churches. Of 
 llie genius of Anglo-Saxon sculjrture we have a 
 fow examples, chiefly consisting of crosses and 
 fonts, in wliich the human figiu-e and animals 
 are sometimes rudely carved, but the adorn- 
 ments of interlaced knot-work and foliage dis- 
 play some ingenuity of design and execution, as 
 in the font of Bridekirk, Cumberland, on which 
 is a Saxon inscription, evidently part of the ori- 
 sriual design. 
 
 ' Talbot Burj', Rudimentary Atchitpcture. 
 
 Font in Bridekirk Church, CumTjerlaiiil. 
 
 Of the domestic architecture of the Anglo- 
 Saxons, all we can learn is only to be gathered 
 from a few scattered hints, which show that the 
 houses of our Saxon ancestors were piles con- 
 structed without ai-t, or mere imitations of the 
 Roman edifices which existed among them. Such 
 is the testimony of William of Malmesbury,^ 
 who contrasts the low and mean dwellings of 
 the people with those stately edifices which the 
 Norm.ans .afterwards introduced. That such was 
 the condition even of tlie palaces of kings at the 
 introduction of Christianit}', is app.arent from the 
 speech of the venerable thegn to Edwin, King 
 of Northumbria, when the question of adopt- 
 ing the new faith was discussed. He compared 
 the state of man to the entrance and dej^ar- 
 ture of a swallow ; and from the whole picture, 
 we see nothing better than the king and liis 
 nobles seated I'ound a fire in the midst of the 
 apartment, from which the smoke was allowed to 
 escape as it best might, while the wdLole building 
 was so open, that, even in the winter storm, a 
 bird could enter and depart at pleasure. When 
 Alfred liad settled the Danelagh, and commenced 
 a life of study in earnest, we also find that he was 
 obliged to invent a lantern, to guard his candles 
 from being blown out by the winds that swept 
 through his apartment. As often happens, how- 
 ever, all this squalor and discomfort was contrasted 
 with the occasional richness of the furniture; and 
 
 ^ Tlu6 historian, who wrote after the Norman conquest, 
 .ibounds with incidental notices of the manners and cugtoma of 
 the Anglo-Saxons prior to that event.
 
 A.D. 44!) - l()G(i. 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 165 
 
 Ike walls wi;lnn, iiotwitliatauding tlieir apeiiurca, 
 aiid the dust with wliioh they were begrimed, 
 were hung with rich tapestry. These hangings 
 are frequently mentioned in the inventories of 
 the day; and in the liouses of the wealthy and 
 noble they were generally of silk, sometimes 
 adorned with rich needle-work of gold, represent- 
 ing hirds and other animals. One of the.se, men- 
 tioned by Iug\ilphus,' which was made in the ninth 
 century, represented the destruction of Troy; and 
 another, wrought by Edeltleda, for the church of 
 Kly, was embroidered with the actions of her 
 husband Brithnod, Duke of Northumberland, in 
 needle-work of gold. The chairs, benches, and 
 stools, were sometimes covered with the same 
 kind of tapestry, and the wood-woi-k ornamented 
 with cai'ved likenesses of the heads and legs of 
 animals. The tables also were rich, being some- 
 times described as made of silver, and even of 
 gold," while the same costly materials were abun- 
 dantly used in the manufacture of drinking- 
 cups, and the furniture of a banquet. In these 
 consisted the chief wealth of their ownei-s, and 
 they were at any time convertible into money. 
 Besides the above articles, a silver mh'ror is 
 mentioned in Dugdale's Monasticon as an accom- 
 paniment of the toilet, and silver candelabra and 
 cressets occur in the notices of the period. To 
 these may be added the indispensable conveni- 
 ence of a hand-bell, with which the lord or lady 
 
 erected a monastei-y at \Vearuio\ith, K.n. 674, ii> 
 troduced workers in gla.ss into England, who not 
 only glazed the windows of his edifices, but also 
 
 Saxon IlAND-nnLLS. — 1, foimd at Ijittle Wilbraham. Nuvillo's 
 Saxon Obsequies. — 2, fi-om Strutt. 
 
 summoned the attendants. As for cups and ves- 
 sels of glass, these were rarely used in England 
 before the period of the Norman conquest; and 
 Bede mentions that the people were " ignorant and 
 helpless in the art of glass-making." The same 
 authority informs us that Benedict Biscop, who 
 
 ' Secretary of William the Conqueror, This writer is also a 
 valuable authority upon the condition of the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 2 ProKibly they were only overlaid or oniameuted with the.se 
 precious metals. In the same manner, Turgot infoi-ms us that 
 Malcolm Canmore. King of Scotland, was served at table in ves- 
 sels of gold and silver, and then adds, that at least they were 
 over-gilt. 
 
 ^ These vessels are of a fine material. No. 2 is of extremely 
 delicate fabric, and of a rich brown tint. It is so exceedingly 
 light, as scarcely to be felt in the hand. No. 3 is of very trans- 
 parent light green glass; it holds exactly a pint. Drinking-glassea 
 
 Glass Vessels, fuund iu Saxon graves.^ -: ^nl l. 1^a\\\ at Cud- 
 tiison, Oxon ; 2 and 3, from a cemetery in East Kent. — Akei-- 
 man's Pagan Saxondoui. 
 
 made glass for lamps and other uses, and gave in- 
 struction in those manufactures to the English.' 
 When the hour of rest arrived, the tables of the hall 
 were removed, and beds laid in their places, where 
 those who had feasted dm-ing the day betook them- 
 selves to repose, each man with his weapons above 
 his head. This, however, was during the eai-lier 
 stage of the Saxon occupation of England ; for 
 afterwards, as appears by an illuminated MS., 
 bedsteads, with a roof shaped like that of a house, 
 and liung with curtains, were introduced ; and in 
 the Anglo-Saxon poem of Judith, we read also of 
 one being siu-rounded with the luxuiy of a "golden 
 fly-net." As for the beds themselves, they were 
 sacks stuiVed with soft materials, furnished with 
 pillows of straw, and the usual comjilement of 
 blankets and sheets. These accounts, as will at 
 once be seen, only ajiply to the houses of the 
 noble and wealthy; what kind of habitations were 
 used by the lower classes, and how they were 
 furnished, the chroniclers of the jieriod have not 
 informed us. 
 
 distinguished by the same peculiarities have boon found in the 
 Frank cemeteries of France and Germany. The form of those 
 ghisses, not being adapted to set domi until emptied, is con- 
 j ectured to have originated the name of tumbler, given to modem 
 drinking glasses. 
 
 ^ Local tradition accounts for several outlandish names, such 
 as Tyzack, Henzcll, &C., still flourisliing among the Tyno glass- 
 works, by st.ating that Biscop's artificers pl.anted themtielvea on 
 the Tyne, and cstublished the fii-st English glass-works in that 
 quarter, which continued to be carried on by their descendants 
 lor several centuries aftel-w-ards.
 
 I fig 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social Statu. 
 
 This mention of tl»e Anglo-Saxon houses sug- 
 gests the subject of in-door and domestic life; and 
 here the department of cookery claims om- first 
 attention. But on this we must confess that 
 oiu- knowledge is extremely limited. The people, 
 
 Saxon Bed.— Cotton MS. Claud. B. IV. 
 
 it is well known, were vigorous feeders; but 
 before the arrival of the more refined Normans, 
 it is probable that quantity rather than quality 
 was the chief mark of their solicitiade. The 
 principal animal food used among them was 
 pork; and the landholders kept such lai-ge herds 
 of swine, that the swineherd was an important 
 functionary among the rural offices of a farm 
 establishment. This was the more natural, as 
 swine could be easily maintained in the 
 woods, which were of common access 
 before the Norman game-laws were in- 
 troduced; and fattened upon the fruit 
 of the beech and oak, that requii-ed no 
 cultivation. Mutton was not so abun- 
 dantly used, as the Saxons appear to 
 have valued the sheep more for its wool 
 than its flesh; but beef, venison, and 
 fowls were common articles of susten- 
 ance. In striking contrast to the Bri- 
 tons, however, the Anglo-Saxons were 
 partial to a fish diet, and next to pork, 
 eels appear to have been their principal 
 articles of food. These were carefully 
 fattened in eel -ponds and inclosures, ■ 
 and were so abundant, that they were sometimes 
 paid by the thousand as rent. Besides eating 
 eveiy kind of fish used in the present day, we 
 ieam that the Saxons also ate the porpoise. The 
 processes of cooking food among them were broil- 
 ing, baking, and roasting, but chiefly boiling; 
 and a th-awing in one of the Saxon MSS. repre- 
 sents a calilron resting on a trivet, with the fire 
 beneath, wliile the cook stands beside it with an 
 iron flesh-fork, for the pm-pose of removing the 
 meat when it is ready. In boiling meat they 
 also seasoned it with various herbs, among which 
 
 colewort appears to have held the chief place. 
 Bread w:i.s not so plentiful among the Saxons a.s 
 animal food, and was therefore more sijaringly 
 used, and wheaten bread was a luxury confined 
 to the tables of the rich. 
 
 From various pi<-tures in the MSS. 
 of this period, a pretty distinct idea can 
 be formed of an Anglo-Saxon banquet. 
 The table was commonly covered with 
 a table-cloth, and abundantly provided 
 with knives and spoons, but no forks ; 
 dishes of various shapes and sizes; 
 loaves of bread, and services of soup 
 and fi.sh; and cups or drinking-horas, 
 which were still more numerous than 
 the dishes. Sometimes the table-cloth 
 was so large as to cover the knees of the 
 guests, and serve the purposes of a 
 napkin. The roast meats were gene- 
 rally presented by servants on the 
 spits to the company, and each man 
 cut from the offered joint, with his 
 knife, the portion he required. One picture in 
 the Cotton MS. represents the servants kneel- 
 ing in the performance of this duty. It is 
 pleasing to remark, also, that at these tables 
 the women were seated on equal terms with 
 the men, instead of being kept apart, or ob- 
 liged to wait upon the other sex, as was gene- 
 rally the case in a rude state of society. In 
 pledging each other with the cup at table, a 
 
 Si.'toN Banquet. — Cotton MS. Tib. C. 7. 
 
 cnrious practice prevailed — by no means un- 
 necessary in the revels of such a jnignacious 
 people — which was also common at a compara- 
 tively late period in the Highlands of Scotland. 
 This was, for the person pledged to hold up his 
 knife or sword, in token that he would protect 
 the drinker from assault or assassination while 
 he was thus off his guai'd. This custom, we are 
 informed by Williaui of Malmesbury, originated 
 in the treacherous murder of Edward the Martyr, 
 who was stabbed in the back while di-inkiug a 
 cup of wine which his stcij-mother Elfrida had
 
 A.D. 449-106C.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 i6r 
 
 oftereil liiin. When the meats were removed, 
 and tlie guests were warmed with wassail, it was 
 the custom, as we are informed by Bede, to bring 
 in a har)), which was sent round the company, 
 and each man was exijected to phvy and sing in 
 turn for the amusement of the rest. Thus it 
 was even in Athens in the days of Themistocles 
 and Pericles. But in spite of the charms of music 
 and poetry, these Saxon feastings were so gross, 
 and tlie drinking was so excessive, as frei.iueutly 
 to be followed with fatal consequences : in this 
 way Hardioanute, after a life of gluttony, died 
 of an over-abundant dinner; and Edmund I. was 
 assassinated at table, because his nobles and at- 
 tendants were too drunk to defend him. This 
 style of living, especially among the gi'eat, was 
 at last so exaggerated, that at court four abun- 
 dant meals were served up daily — a profusion 
 which an historian of the twelfth century regret- 
 fully contrasts with the single daily dinner in- 
 troduced by the Normans, as if the spirit of hos- 
 pitality and social intercomse had been banished 
 by the change. 
 
 As the Anglo-Saxons were still moi-e notorious 
 for then- drinking than eating propensities, an 
 account of their principal beverages demands 
 full notice. And first in the list must be men- 
 tioned ale, which had been their favoiu-ite liquor 
 before they left the shores of Germimy. This 
 we are informed by Tacitus, who describes the 
 chief diink of the German tribes as a distillation 
 from barley "corrupted into a likeness of wine." 
 Besides ale, they used mead, which probably they 
 had learned to make from the Biitons, as this 
 constituted for centuries aftei'wai'ds the national 
 beverage of the Welsh. The Saxons also knew 
 the art of making cider, which they may Lave 
 acquired after theh" settlement in England. Pig- 
 ment and morat were in use among them, but 
 probably more sparingly than the other liquors, 
 on account of then- superior richness and costli- 
 ness, the former being a composition of wine, 
 honey, and various spices, and the latter of honey 
 diluted with the juice of mulberries. As wine 
 was not a native produce, and imported at gi-eat 
 expense, its use in England before the Conquest 
 w;is limited to the higher classes. Of the im- 
 mense spilth of these liquors at the great fes- 
 tivals, or even common revelries of the Anglo- 
 Saxons, and the vociferous mii-th and desperate 
 excesses which they occasioned, the continued 
 history of the people makes frequent mention; 
 and the following extract, from a translation of 
 the Saxon poem of Judith, was no doubt a faith- 
 ful pictm'e of the noble and even royal banquets 
 of the author's own day: — • 
 
 " Then was Holoferuea 
 Enchauted with the wine of men; 
 In the hall of the guests 
 
 lly laughed and Hhoiitcd, 
 
 Ho roared and dinned , 
 
 That the children of men might heir iif;\r. 
 
 How the sturdy one 
 
 Stormed and clamoured, 
 
 Anim.'tted and elated with wine; 
 
 lie adnionLsliud amr'y 
 
 Tho.se sitting on tho bench 
 
 Tliat they slioiUd hear it well. 
 
 So was the wicked one all d.ay, 
 
 Tho lord and his men, 
 
 Drunk with wine; 
 
 Tlie stern dispenser of wealtji; 
 
 Till that they bwiniming lay 
 
 Over dnuik, 
 
 All his nobility 
 
 As they were death slain, 
 
 Their property poured about. 
 
 iSo commanded the lord of men 
 
 To fill to those sitiins at the fe;ii^t. 
 
 Till the d,ark night 
 
 Approached the cliiUlren of men." 
 
 This national vice of inebriety, however it 
 might be indulged uncensured among the wor- 
 shippers of Thor and Woden, was too flagrant 
 for the toleration of a Christian priesthood, and 
 the statutes of the church were both frequent 
 and severe against the prevailing tendency. That 
 no one, also, might be ignorant of the mark at 
 which he should stop short, the following speci- 
 fication of the crime was given in one of the 
 canons: "This is di'unkenness, when the state of 
 the mind is changed, the tongue stammers, the 
 eyes are disturbed, the head is giddy, the belly 
 is swelled, and pain follows." But as such de- 
 fjuitious are only found useful to those who do 
 not need them, a more tangible corrective was 
 devised by Edgar the Peaceable, at the suggestion, 
 it is said, of St. Dimstan. As it was discovered 
 that one gre;it source of the e-xcess ai'ose from the 
 practice of handing round a large vessel at the 
 table, while each guest vied with the othera in 
 the amplitude of his draught, these vessels were 
 ordered by royal statute to be made with knobs 
 or pins of bra^s placed at regular distances, while 
 each drinker was only to go from one mark to 
 another. But it was easy to elude such a formal 
 restriction; and the phrase, "' He is in a merry 
 ])iu," came to designate a person who had ti'ans- 
 gi-essed the graduated scale of temperance, or, in 
 common parlance, "got more than enough." It 
 is probable, also, that the penances imposed by 
 the chui-ch on such transgressors were frequently 
 commuted or overlooked, iis the Anglo-Saxon 
 clergy were too much addicted to the same ex- 
 cesses. This we leai-u from the decrees of dif- 
 ferent councils, in which the incentives to in- 
 temperance were strictly prohibited — gambling, 
 dancing, and singing in the monasteiies, "even 
 to the very middle of the night;" while every 
 priest was forbid to have harpers or any music, 
 or to permit jokes or plays to be performed in 
 his presence ; and eveiy monastery was debarred
 
 168 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social State. 
 
 from being a haimt of pructisei-s of tlie sportive 
 ai'ts; that is — as the decree jjarticularly indicates 
 them — poets, liai'pers, musicians, and bullbous. 
 
 It is difficult to ascertain tlie national costume 
 of the Saxons at tlie period of their arrival in 
 England, and until the time of their conversion 
 to Chi'istiauity. But that it largely partook of 
 barbarism is testified by the fact that they some- 
 times tattooed then- bodies, like the primitive Bri- 
 tons; and although this practice was condemned 
 in the year 785, it \\ai not wholly rooted out of 
 England till after the Norman conquest. The 
 chm-ch, also, that set itself against this pi'actice 
 of skin-engi-aving, as a relic of the former heath- 
 enism, was equally zealous against their eai'lier 
 clothing, from the same cause, and endeavoured 
 to have it wholly set aside. This is evident from 
 the rebuke addressed to the people, who still ad- 
 hered in whole or in part to the costume of theii- 
 ancestors, by the council of Cealhythe, a.d. 787. 
 "You put on," it said, "youi" gai'meut3 in the 
 manner of pagans, whom your fathei-s expelled 
 from the world; an astonishing thing that you 
 imitate those whose life you always hated." At 
 this time, as we learn from Paulus Diaconus, the 
 di-ess of the Chiistianized Anglo-Saxons was 
 similar to that of the Lombards, of whom he 
 says, "Their garments wei-e loose and flowing, 
 and chiefly made of linen, adorned with broad 
 borders, woven or embroidered with vaiious 
 colours." Fortunately' we ai'e enabled, from the 
 many illuminated MSS. of the eighth and ninth 
 centmies, to specify the particular pai-ts of this 
 briefly described costume, and ascertain with dis- 
 tinctness how our ancestors were dressed in the 
 days of Alfred, Canute, and "William the Con- 
 queror. 
 
 First of all, then, we should mention the shu-t, 
 which was made of linen, and was in general use 
 among the Anglo-Saxons so eai'ly as the eighth 
 centm-y. Over this was a tunic of linen or wool- 
 len, which was worn by all classes, fi'om the sove- 
 reign to the peasant. This garment — of fine or 
 coarse textm'e according to the means of the 
 wearer — descending no lower than the knee, ap- 
 pears to have formed the outer covering of the 
 common people wlien employed in their usual 
 avocations, and was probably the origin of the 
 EngUsh smock-frock. It was open at the neck, 
 and occasionidly at the sides also, while the 
 sleeves, which descended to the waists, were 
 either close and tight, or puckered into small 
 folds. If ornamented, it was generally with 
 needle-work of diiferent colours, round the bor- 
 der and coUai'S. This garment was usually gu-ded 
 round the waist with a sash or belt. Last in the 
 article of a working man's costmne was the shoe, 
 which appears to have been in common use, even 
 among those who otherwise went bare-legged. 
 
 These shoes, not only in material and colour, 
 but also in form, resembled those of the present 
 day, having an opening at the top to receive the 
 foot, which opening w;is fastened by two tUwangs 
 or thongs. The usual covering for the head was 
 a cap or cowl, shaped like a Phi-ygian bonnet. 
 Thus attired, we can form a distinct idea of the 
 appeai-ance of the English peasantry of this 
 period, while travelling on the highway or en- 
 gaged in the labours of the field. To these we 
 can add other articles of di-ess belonging to the 
 better classes, but which were also probably used 
 by the common peojile upon particular occasions. 
 The first of these was a short cloak or mantle, 
 tlu-own over the tunic, and fastened either across 
 the breast or shoulder with a buckle. Next came 
 a pair of drawers, which begin to make their 
 appearance in the pictures of the ninth century. 
 
 ArmkdMax, — Beuediotional of St. Ethelwuld. 
 
 These were either of linen or woollen, and at 
 fu'st were so short that they were fastened above 
 the knee ; but in process of time they were elon- 
 gated into trousers, or rather pantaloons, where 
 drawers and stockings composed one piece of 
 atth'e. In addition to this, the stocking was fre- 
 quently bandaged from ankle to knee with strips 
 of cloth or leather ; and as the colom- and arrange- 
 ment of such strips gave ample scope to the love 
 of finery and display, we can imagine that not a 
 few MalvoUos of the period were " cross-gartered 
 most villainously.'' Sometimes, instead of this 
 cross-gartering, a half-stocking or sock was worn 
 over the di-awers, supposed to have been made 
 of woollen, and ornamented with fringes. In 
 this progress of addition, and perhaps of improve- 
 ment in the common national costume, we shall 
 do well to take into account, fh-st, the settlement
 
 A. I). 44!) 1066.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 169 
 
 of the Danes in Englaud, svlio were disUuguislied, 
 even be}i>inl the .Saxons, for their love of finery 
 
 Saxon Kiuo and Eolderman— Cotton MS. Clauil. B. IV. 
 
 and display; and afterwards, the introduction of 
 Norman fashions into tlie court of Edward the 
 Confessor. Tliese causes, it is probable, tended 
 to make the dress of the people not only more 
 complete, but also more elegant. 
 
 We now ascend to the costume of the rich and 
 the noble, wliich mainly consisted of certain 
 additional garments tliat were used on public or 
 state occasions. The first of these was a long 
 tunic, that descended below the knee; the second 
 a kind of surcoat, that had short wide sleeves, 
 and an aperture at the top to admit the head. 
 These, which were frequently made of silk, after 
 the eighth centm-y had introduced the use of 
 that luxury into the court of England, were also 
 ornamented with rich embroideries of gold and 
 silver, and silk thread of various colours, and 
 lined with the fur of the beaver, sable, or fox. 
 Such are the chief distinctions in costume or 
 princes and nobles in the illuminated MSS. of the 
 times. Except when the regal crown appears, no 
 distinctive head-cbess occurs, beyond the Phi-ygian 
 shaped bonnet, which was worn by all classes, but 
 in the case of the higher ranks, imjjroved, as may 
 be supposed, in texture, colour, and ornament. 
 Indeed, in all these delineations we find nothing 
 in the form of a hat, an article which was worn 
 among the Britons, in shape similar to that of a 
 Vol. 1. 
 
 modern carman or coal-heaver, as may be seen 
 in the coins of Cunobelinus. But the Saxons 
 were independent of this head-coveiing, in 
 consequence of the long hair they wore, and 
 of which they were not a little proud. This 
 was parted on either side from the middle of 
 the head, and flowed, waving or in ringlets, to 
 the shoulders; and such was eitlier the time 
 they consumed in dressing this ornament of 
 nature, so (jrized liy all tlie Teutonic tribes, 
 or the superstitious veneration attached to 
 it, that the English clergy inveighed against 
 it with a vehemence equal to that of Prynue 
 himself, when he so terribly denounced the 
 " unlovelines.s of love-locks." But the long 
 fair hail- of onr ancestors remained unshorn, 
 and even unshaken, amidst the clerical tem- 
 pest. The beard, however, was more mutable 
 in its character; and the fir.U change it un- 
 dei-went was by the shaving of the upper 
 and lower lip, so that it became a continua- 
 tion of the whiskers, terminating below the 
 chin in two forked points. Afterwai-ds, the 
 beai-d was shaven away, and the mustaches 
 left entire — the former being resigned wholly 
 to the clergy — and hence the ridiculous error 
 of the English spies whom Harold sent to 
 the camp of William the Conqueror, when 
 they mistook the Norman soldiers for priests, 
 because they wore short hair, and sliaved 
 the upper lip. 
 In the ai-ticles of rich oi-naraent, the Anglo- 
 Saxons were not behind the other nation.s of 
 
 BucKLRs AND Broocii, h.olf tlie actual size.' — Proceedings of tho 
 Britisli .Archaiol. Aiwoc. 
 
 the period; but it speaks little for their gallantly 
 that the men in this particular seem to have 
 
 ' The buckles were discovered, togetlier with spear heads, and 
 an iron sword, at BoUevue, in the jiarish oi Lyinpne, Kent; the 
 
 22
 
 170 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social State. 
 
 appropriated the costliest share to themselves. 
 Tliese werechiefly bracelets, brooches, and buckles 
 made of gold, silver, and ivory ; chains, wm- 
 lets, and crosses, made of gold and silver, and 
 set with jewels; sword-belts, mounted with the 
 
 Necklace and Pin,' fi-om a tumulus at Callige Lowe, DerbysLire 
 Kings, from Little WUbraham. 
 
 same rich accompaniments; and fillets or coro- 
 nets by whose lustre an additional brightness was 
 imparted to their long flowing hair. As miglit 
 have been expected among a people essentially 
 warlike, the hilts and sheaths of theii- weapons 
 
 ment, and as it was worn on the finger of the 
 right hand next to the little one, this was called 
 the "gold finger." Thia distinct badge of the 
 wearei-'s rank could at all times be recognized, 
 as gloves, which were a Norman innovation, weie 
 not worn by the Anglo-Saxons until 
 the twelfth century. 
 
 In advancing to the more diflioult sul>- 
 ject of female costume, it may be pre- 
 mised that the dress of the Anglo-Saxon 
 ladies was not only splendid and gi-aceful, 
 but in strict accordance with the most 
 rigid modesty. The outer garment [gunna 
 or gown) was a long tunic, the sku-ts of 
 which nearly reached the ground, while 
 the sleeves, that were loose and wide, 
 reached only to the elbows. It was of 
 various coloiu-s, but generally white, 
 probably being made of linen, and was 
 boimd at the waist with a girdle. As 
 this gai-ment was a fan- gi-oundwork, 
 upon which the weai-er's taste and skill 
 in embroidery could be exhibited to best 
 .advantage, we fhid it in the illuminated 
 MSS. fi-equently adorned with needle- 
 work of variegated stripes, or small 
 sprigs, diverging gracefully from a centre. Over 
 this, ladies of rank appear to have worn a cloak or 
 mantle, i>robabIy for visituig or travelling. Uniler 
 
 Saxon SpmsraK, and Male CosTUME.-Cotton MS. Claud. B. 4. 
 
 were not neglected amidst the general adorn- 
 ment. The ring was an indispensable orna- 
 
 Bccond of them has been gilt. The brooch was found near the 
 turnpike road at Folkestone HiU, between Folkestone and Dover. 
 The body is of bronze, gUt; the central band h.is been ornamented 
 with slices of garnet, one of which remains at the bottom in a 
 silver rim; the upper pai-t has also been set with stones, or some 
 kind of glass. 
 
 1 The necklace is composed of gold drops, set with g.amets, 
 and is probably of late Roman workmanship. The jeweUed 
 hair-pin was found in the grave of a woman, at Wingham, Kent. 
 The rings are of gold; one of them has been formed to encircle 
 
 Heads, fiom the Saxon Cross of Rothbury, Northnmberland.2— 
 J. W. Archer, from his original drawmg. 
 
 the gown was worn a more succinct tunic, perhaps 
 the original kirtle, the sleeves of which descended 
 
 the finger in a series of elastic hoops. - Akermans Pagan 
 
 2 The top of this cross, which is greatly fractured, shows frag- 
 ments of the cmcified figure of our Saviour. The group of hea<U 
 is from one side of the base, and is supposed to repr^ent the 
 spectators who assembled to witness the crucifi.vaon. This lUus- 
 tration is given to show the manner of the AngloSa^on ,vo- 
 men in wearing the hair roUed back, or parted and coiifined by 
 a flUet, with an ornament over the forehead, like that shown on 
 some Roman coins.
 
 A.D. 443—1006.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 to tlie wrist. The lioiid-drcss was a kerchief or 
 veil of linen or silk, which, being fastened near 
 the top of the forehead, or wrapped round the 
 head and neck, enveloped the shouldera, 
 and fell on either side as low as the kneca 
 Shoes, of which the colour is always black, 
 form part of a lady's dress in the Anglo- 
 Saxon delineations; and although, from 
 the length of her gownskirts, we are una- 
 ble to perceive any token of stockings or 
 socks, yet we may presume that such a 
 useful article of di-ess, which was worn 
 by the men, was common to the women 
 also. AJthough the veil or head-rail, 
 which we have already described, must 
 have concealed the greater pait of the 
 head, yet we learn from Aldhelm, that 
 the Anglo-Saxon ladies, at the close cf 
 the eighth century, were at least as care- 
 ful of their hair as the other sex; and 
 he describes them a-s wearing it artifi- 
 cially dressed, and delicately cm-led with 
 irons. From the same authority we are 
 informed of another practice by which 
 the ladies endeavoured to heighten their 
 beauty, that was scarcel}' so commend 
 
 among every race of mankind, from the nuked 
 savage girl, who plasters her face with chalk or 
 odire, to the fashionable court belle, who deli- 
 
 13eai>s of Guvss, and of Coloured Paste, foiuid .it Little Wilbraliara. 
 1, '2, li.ilf size; 3, 4, 5, fuJl size. — Neville's Saxon Obsequies. 
 
 able— it was the painting of theii- cheeks with I cately tints her cheek with more than the bloom 
 the red colour of stibium. This practice, how- I of youth. In the enumeration of female orna- 
 ments, we find that they chiefly consisted 
 of golden half-cu-cles or fillets for the 
 head, ear-rings, necklaces, beads, jewelled 
 neck-crosses, rings, girdles adorned with 
 gold or precious stones, a bulla, and a 
 golden fly beautifully set with gems. 
 
 Having thus endeavoiired to describe 
 the broad outlines of an Engli.sh Iiomc and 
 its inmates, before they were modified or 
 altered by the Norman conquest, we ] iro- 
 ceed to add a few minute particulai-s, by 
 which the picture will become more com- 
 plete. While the master and mistress 
 were thus attired in full costume, the ser- 
 vants of the household are represented as 
 waiting upon them bareheaded and bare- 
 footed. Within doors, the master generally 
 wore his bonnet; but on leaving the house, 
 his covering was laid aside, and he went 
 forth bareheaded. A practice which he 
 . had perhaps derived from his warlike an- 
 cestors, made him always carry his weapons with 
 him wherever he went; but even when England 
 was most settled, there wiis too little cause to dis- 
 continue the habit. Thus equijiijcd, with sword 
 or spear, or both weapons together, he repaired to 
 the social meeting or the market-place, ready 
 equally to kiss his friend or chastise his enemy, 
 as the case might require. Besides the possession 
 of good cb-ess and ornaments, and the full plea- 
 sures of the table, the Anglo-Saxon loved the eu- 
 
 Necklace or CRArET.ET,' from n jjrave ne.ir St.imford: unrl Heads, found 
 nt yysLou Parli, Lincolushiie. — British Museum. 
 
 ever, has prevailed not only in every stage of 
 human existence, but at some time or other 
 
 ' The necklace is composed of glass beads of vai-ious colours, 
 sizes and degrees of opacity. Deep blue is the predominant 
 tint, and this is relieved by a light green specimen, and by 
 others nearly resembling, both in colour and substance, " Samian 
 ware." The beads Nos. 1 and 2 are remarkable for tiieir con- 
 struction. No. 1 is of a pale brown, the knobs yellow, with a 
 red b.and at the base. No. 2 was found in the Anglo-Saxon 
 cemetery at Fairford in Gloucestershire. It is banded with 
 stripes of red, yellow, and green. The knobs are alternately 
 red and yellow.
 
 172 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social Stath. 
 
 joymeiit of a wai'm bath; but to ])lunge into cold 
 water w;is so utterly itvolting to his feelings, 
 that he only endured it at the command of the 
 priest, and for the remission of liis sins. In this 
 way, he sauntered, ate, and chatted dui-ing the 
 day, until the afternoon's banquet arrived, with 
 its suliseciuent revelry, that was often kept up 
 till midnight. It was through this luxurious dis- 
 position and love of enjoyment, that the church 
 endeavoured to coerce him into full submission; 
 and in the following extract from the laws of 
 Edgar, we perceive how completely the penance 
 was fitted for the man, however the man might 
 be for the penance: — "He must lay aside his 
 weapons, and travel barefoot a long way; nor be 
 sheltered of a night. He must fast, and watch, 
 and pray, both day and night, and willingly 
 weary himself, and be so careless of his di-ess, that 
 the iron .^ihould not come to his h.-^ir or nails. He 
 must not enter a warm bath, nor a soft bed; nor 
 eat flesh, nor anything by which he can be intoxi- 
 cated ; nor may he go inside of a church, but seek 
 some holy place, and confess his guilt and pray 
 for intercession. He must kiss no man, but be 
 always grieving for his sins." In this way was 
 the Saxon sinner assailed at every possible point 
 of enjoyment: the whole world was tabooed 
 against his entrance; and he lived " a man for- 
 bid," until the church was pleased to absolve him. 
 Whetlier he contrived, in any of tliese cases, " to 
 boil the pease," so that he might walk through 
 his penance more lightly, we are not informed; 
 but it may be suspected that such was the fact, 
 from the dexterous plan which he adopted in 
 what was to him the most odious of all penances 
 — the penance of fasting. lu this case, he hired 
 a whole regiment of penitents to fast with him 
 on bread, green herbs, and cold water; and as 
 each man's share was of full account in the 
 sum total, himself and 800 auxiliaries could thus 
 get through a hungiy seven years' penance in 
 three days and a few odd hours. When such 
 was the permission of the church, even in sins of 
 gi-eatest enormity, the peccadilloes of smaller 
 account were liquidated in a way which the 
 clergy must have found very profitable to their 
 own private revenues. Thus, a man might re- 
 deem one day's fasting by the fine of a penny, or 
 a whole year of such penance by the payment of 
 thirty shillings, or the manumission of a slave 
 worth that sum. 
 
 While the occupations of the men — such at 
 least as were exempted from the necessity of toil 
 — were of such an unintellectual and unprofitable 
 character, those of the ladies appear to have been 
 of a more industrious description. An idea of 
 the multitude of their domestic occupations may 
 be formed from the thronged households over 
 which they presided, where almost every trade 
 
 and craft was comprised; and the huge daily 
 llcsh- feasts and caiousals of their lords, for which 
 they had to make due preparation. But be- 
 sides these, there was the complicated needle- 
 work of robes and hangings, that were so in- 
 dis]iensable to every family above the rank of 
 servitude, and the embroidery of clerical vest- 
 ments, cb-apery for the church walls, and cover- 
 ings for the altars, by which the ladies of the 
 day manifested their religious zeal. No lady, 
 however high in raid<, wa.s too proud for such 
 occupations; and the hall of the palace, as well 
 as the kitchen of the gi'angc, was animated with 
 the boom of the spinning-wheel and the click of 
 the loom. We are informed incidentally in this 
 way, by William of Malraesbury, that the four 
 princesses, daughters of Edward the Elder, and 
 sisters of Athelstaue, were distinguished for their 
 superior skill in spinning, weaving, and embroi- 
 dery; and that Queen Editha, the wife of Ed- 
 ward the Confessor, was a complete mistress of 
 the needle, and embroidered with her own hands 
 the rich state robes of her husband.' Of this 
 lady a touching delineation is given in the follow- 
 ing simple statement of Ingulphus : "I have often 
 seen her, while I was yet a boy, when my father 
 was at the king's palace ; and as I came from 
 school, when I have met her, she would examine 
 me in my leai'ning; and from grammar, she 
 would jn-oceed to logic (which she also under- 
 stood), concluding with me in the most subtle 
 argument ; then causing one of her attendant 
 maids to present me with three or four pieces of 
 money, I was dismissed, being sent to the lai'der, 
 where I was sure to get some eatables." Al- 
 though many ladies in England might be as skil- 
 ful, industrious, and hospitable as Editha, per- 
 haps few were equally capable of conducting a 
 logical ai'gument. It is gratifying to find, that 
 while female industry was thus encouraged in 
 England, female chastity was duly prized and 
 carefully protected. This is evident from the 
 severe laws enacted against those men who were 
 guilty of outrage upon the female sex, not even ex- 
 cepting the female slaves, and whei'e the punish- 
 ment was proportioned to the rank of her against 
 whom the oft'ence was committed. The law was 
 still more merciless against her who had willingly 
 yielded to the crime." Even the approaches also 
 
 ' Hence the term " spinster," by which every immarrieJ 
 woman still continues to be designated in England, upon a cer- 
 tain important occasion. Dauglitei-s were also termed children 
 of tlio " spindle side," in the enumeration of a family. 
 
 - The adulteress was driven from place to place by crowds of 
 her own sex, and mangled with their knives until she expired, 
 or hanged herself to escape further torture. Her body was then 
 burned, and her seducer put to death upon tlio spot. Such is the 
 testimony of St. Boniface or Winfritli, in tlie early part of the 
 eighth century. This, however, seems to have been a popidar 
 aneute, or Lynch-law process, rather than tho result of the 
 usual form of legislation.
 
 A.D. 449—1066.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 173 
 
 to immodesty and uucliastity iu liouselioKls where 
 servants of both sexes were numerous, were 
 strictly guai'ded, as may be learned from the fol- 
 lowing notice of Bede: "In the courts of princes 
 there ai-e certain men and women moving con- 
 tinually in more splendid vestments, and retain- 
 ing a gi'eat familiarity with their lord and lady. 
 There it is studiously provided that none of the 
 women there who are in an enslaved state should 
 remain with auy stain of imchastity; but if by 
 chance she should turn to the eyes of men with 
 an immodest as]iect, she is immediately chided 
 with severity. There some art- deputed to the 
 interior, some to the exterior offices, all of whom 
 carefully observe the duties committed to them, 
 that they may claim nothing but what is so in- 
 trusted." 
 
 The other domestic usages of the Anglo-Saxons 
 maybe briefly dismissed. As each day is fi'aught 
 with its own doubts and difficulties, and as the 
 people in general were not particularly addicted 
 to the toil of profound thinking, they were wont, 
 like other nations of a similar character, to solve 
 the question by lot. In this case a white sheet 
 was thrown upon the gi'ound, and slips from a 
 fruit-bearing tree,mai-ked on either side, were cast 
 down at i-andom upon it. The number of lucky 
 or unlucky mai'ks lying ujipermost decided the 
 matter at once, and saved all further speculation. 
 Was it from this compendious way of solving a 
 doubt that their descendants acquired such a 
 wondrous aptitude for betting? But in matters 
 of greater importance, where a heavy wi-ong had 
 been inflicted, or grievous crime committed, while 
 the culprit could not be directly convicted, the 
 same chance-medley system was adopted, under 
 a mox-e solemn form. The accused was bound 
 hand and foot, and cast into deep water, where, 
 if he floated on the surface without stir or mo- 
 tion, he v/aa held innocent, but if he struggled 
 or sunk, he was accounted guilty. This was the 
 trial reserved exclusively for witches and wi- 
 zards at a later period. Another form of the 
 water ordeal was for the accused to plunge his 
 naked arm into boiling water, from which if he 
 could withdraw it unscalded, he was absolved 
 from suspicion. These forms of trial, which 
 originally must have been the right of every 
 noble householder to exercise among his own 
 serfage, were reckoned a direct appeal to heaven, 
 and as such, their superintendence was claimed 
 by the clergy, at first, it may be, from motives 
 of pure humanity, but which afterwards degene- 
 rated into a selfish spirit of rule and aggrandize- 
 ment. In the same way they became the um- 
 pires of the ordeal by fire, the most solemn form 
 of trial in Saxon legislation when sunicicnt proof 
 of guilt was wanting. By this process the ac- 
 cused was obliged to walk blindfold and bare- 
 
 footed over nine red-hot ploughshares, placed at 
 equal distances, or to caj-ry a bar or red-hot mass 
 of iron to a certain distance unhurt. But in this 
 case the culprit was previously put under tlie 
 chai-ge of the clergy, who also heated the hons; 
 and when his probation was over, liis hands or 
 feet were muffled up for three days, at the end 
 of which he was to exhibit them in open court. 
 Who does not at once see his numerous chances 
 of escape, especially if he was rich and liberal) 
 At all events, it is certain that several persona 
 thus tried passed the ordeal imhurt — and it is 
 equally certain that the same feat can be achieved 
 by an ordinary juggler. 
 
 On the birth of a child, after the conrersion of 
 the people to Christianity, the first gi'eat subject 
 of thought was the administration of baptism, 
 and the imposition of a name. The sacred rite 
 was performed by immersion; and as for the 
 name, it was not a patronymic, but one expres- 
 sive of some peculiar quality or circumstance, 
 and generally a compound word. Tlius, Egbert 
 means the bright eye; ^thelwulf, the noble wolf; 
 Ealdwulf, the old wolf; Eadward, the prosjjeroua 
 g-uai-dian; ^thelgifa, the noble gift. To these 
 was frequently added a surname, expressive 
 either of locality, occupation, or family, when the 
 Christian name itself would not have been a suf- 
 ficient designation. The period spent by the boy 
 between infancy and manhood was called cniht- 
 hade (knighthood); but, as we have seen, this was 
 a term indicative of servitude, rather than liberty 
 and distinction. The paternal authority, how- 
 ever, was limited. Thus, if a boy of fifteen yeai-s 
 old had an inclination to become a monk, he 
 might pursue his purpose, notwithstanding his 
 father's inclination to the contrary. After the 
 age of fifteen, also, a father might not give his 
 daughter in marriage against her will. What is 
 commonly called the school-boy period of life, 
 and remembered in after stages as the darkest or 
 brightest of our existence, had scai-cely a place in 
 England during the Anglo-Saxon ascendency, as 
 it was confined only to the higher ranks, and, even 
 in their case, only for a brief season. It was not 
 wonderful, therefore, if so many of their kings 
 and nobles were unable to read, or to sign their 
 own names. When scholai-ship was required, 
 the chitrf teachers were the ecclesiastics; and flog- 
 ging appeai-s to have been their principal incen- 
 tive in accelerating the progress of their pupils. 
 At the age of fourteen, the stripling, now a yomig 
 man, threw aside his previous occupations, and 
 commenced the study of arms, which was reck- 
 oned the proper profession of the high-bom. 
 How the rest of his life was usually spent we 
 have already .seen. AVhen this wria closed, and 
 the only oflice that remained was to return dust 
 to dust, the last duties were performed by the
 
 174, 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
 
 [Social Statr. 
 
 survivors with I'liit reverential care and affection 
 which is common to evei-y people, however diver- 
 sified may be the mode. In that of tlie Anglo- 
 Saions we have abundant information, as it 
 forms the frequent subject of their pictorial illus- 
 trations. From these we perceive that the body, 
 after being washed in pure water, was wi-ap]3ed 
 in a shirt, and clothed according to the rank of 
 the wearer; and if he had held a high office, it 
 was often adorned with his robes of state, and 
 the rich insignia he had worn when living. All 
 this w;is finally enveloped in a winding-sheet, 
 while the face w-as cai-efully left uncovered, that 
 the frieads of the deceased might view it to the 
 last. When the pei-iod for bui-ial had an-ived, a 
 srularium or napkin was spread upon the face, 
 the extremities of the winding-sheet were drawn 
 over it, and the body consigned to the coflin, 
 which at first v/as made of wood, but afterwards 
 of stone, often richly carved, as is found on open- 
 ing the graves of illustrious pereonages. The 
 funeral procession, the chant of monks with 
 which it was accompanied, the prayere over the 
 closing grave, and the plentiful dole of bread and 
 meat that was usually administered at the gate 
 of the house of mom-ning, may be left to the ima- 
 
 gination of the reader. One funeral custom, how- 
 ever, we must not omit, as it originated during 
 the Anglo-Saxon period. This was the ringing 
 of the passing beU when the person's death oc- 
 curred, that all who were within hearing might 
 pray for the repose of his soul. 
 
 Of the sedentary spoi-ts and pastimes used by 
 the Anglo-Saxons before the Norman conquest, 
 we can say little, as scarcely any notice occurs of 
 them among the writera of the day. We may 
 pi-esume, however, that they were, for the most 
 part, such as were followed at a later period, 
 which we must, therefore, reserve for a subse- 
 quent era of this history. With the stirring and 
 active out-door amusements we are better ac- 
 quainted, and can speak of them with greater 
 certainty. We learn, from Asser's Life of Alfred, 
 that the young noblemen of the day, after having 
 acquired what was reckoned a sufficient know- 
 ledge of the Latin language, betook themselves 
 to " the ai-ts adapted to manly strength, such as 
 hunting;" and we know that this last sport has 
 been reckoned essenti.al in every age in the train- 
 ing of yoimg gentlemen for a military life. The 
 animals chiefly hunted in England were the wolf, 
 until it was finally extirpated — wild boars and 
 
 Saxon Boar HuNT.^Fiom Stnitt. 
 
 deer, the hare, and sometimes the goat. These 
 were either run down with hor.se and hound, 
 amidst the joyous cheer of the horn, or driven 
 into nets. As each proprietor was at full liberty 
 to himt the game iipon his ovra ground, the ex- 
 tinction of this right by the Norman game-laws 
 was considered by the Anglo-Saxons as one of 
 the most oppressive results of the Conquest. 
 Hawking was also a favourite sport among them, 
 and was in such high account with the gi-eat 
 Alfred, that, amidst his many important cares, 
 he insti-ucted his falconers in the proper training 
 of hawks, and wi-ote a book on the subject. The 
 falcons of England, however, were judged so in- 
 ferior, that the best were brought from abroad, 
 and purchased at high prices. After hawking 
 came fowling, the sport of those who were not 
 rich enough to keep falcons, but where variety 
 
 made amends for the want of splendour and 
 bustle. In this case the bu-ds of game were 
 sometimes allured with decoys, sometimes trap- 
 ped with snares and gins, and sometimes caught 
 with bh-d-lime; but to bring them down upon the 
 wing, the bow and aiTOw were used, as also the 
 sling and stone. Two jjictores occirr in the Cot- 
 ton MS. of fowling practised with these simple 
 weapons, which were probably used also by the 
 poorer classes in hunting. As horse-racing may 
 be termed an English passion, it would have been 
 strange if at least the germ of it had not been 
 indicated among the earlier amusements of our 
 Saxon ancestors. But that it was in usual prac- 
 tice among them, although in its simplest form, 
 we can conclude from a passage in Bede, where 
 he mentions iucideutall}', and as a thing of course, 
 that when himself and his school-fellows were
 
 AD. 449—1066.] 
 
 SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 r 
 
 riding togetlier, tliey tried the mettle and speed 
 of tlieir horses in a race, as soon as they entered 
 upon tlie optin plain. 
 
 We have already spoken of the state of educa- 
 tion in England at this period, and the unprofit- 
 able results with which it wa-s followed. Was 
 this, then, to be attributed to any inherent defi- 
 ciency in the Anglo-Saxon intellect, or disincli- 
 nation to the jjuj'suit of knowledge, from the 
 toil and difficulty with \N-hich it was attended ? 
 We scai'cely think that any will venture to an- 
 swer in the affirmative. The cause, perhaps, is 
 to be found in the unsettled state of the people 
 from the lauding of Heugist and Horsa to that 
 of William the Conqueror. Leai-niug being a 
 plant of slow gi'owth, requires a king and peace- 
 ful interval; but the protracted struggle of the 
 Saxous before their occupation of England was 
 secm-ed, then the wai's of the Heptarchy, and, 
 finally, the Danish invasions, allowed no such 
 interval to occur. Still, however, their oppor- 
 tunities, such as they were, do not appear to 
 have tieeu wholly neglected ; and, in common 
 with the scholars of every country, English stu- 
 dents of all ranks repaii'ed to L'eland, at that 
 period abounding in learned and liberal scho- 
 lastic institutions, where they were received with 
 
 hospitable welcome, and gratuitously supplied 
 with food, books, and instruction. Of this we 
 are informed by Bede; while the high intellec- 
 tual rank of the Irish schools, and the eagerness 
 with which they were sought by our countrymen, 
 is thus rolucUintly attested by Aldhelm: — "Why 
 should Ireland, whither troojjs of students are 
 daily ti-ansportcd, boast of such unspeakable ex- 
 cellence. Its if, in the rich soil of England, Greek 
 and Roman masters were not to be had to unlock 
 the treasures of Divine knowledge ? Though Ire- 
 land, rich and blooming in scholars, is adorned, 
 like the poles of the world, with iimumerable 
 bi-ight stars, it is Britain that has her radiant 
 Sim, her sovereign-pontiff Theodore." This "ra- 
 diant sun," who, as we have seen, was the Primate 
 of England during the latter part of the seventh 
 century, fully deserved the commendations be- 
 stowed on him, by the zeal with which he la- 
 boured to introduce learning into the country 
 in the train of Christianity, and the successors 
 whom his instructions had prepared or his ex- 
 ample stimulated. 
 
 Of these leai-ued Englishmen, Aldhelm him- 
 self was one. A eotemj)orary of Theodore, and 
 originally the pupil of one of those monks whom 
 the archbishop had brought with him from Italy, 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 -^ nM^0 
 
 '^^ 
 
 ^^^vSif" 
 
 Church and Remains op the Monastery at jARROw.i—From Surtee's Diuham. 
 
 his scLolai'sLip was matured and perfected by 
 one of those Irish preceptors against whom he 
 afterwards declaimed with such patriotic jea- 
 
 ' " Almost at the very mouth of the Tyne," says Camden, 
 
 " is to be seen Girwy, now Jarrow, the native soil of the Ve- 
 nerable Bede, where also in ancient times flourished a little 
 monastery. The fomidation wherof, and tlio time of the founda- 
 tion, this inscription showeth, which ia yet extant in the church 
 ^TaU ■•— 
 
 DEICATIO BASILICE 
 B PAVLI VIII KL »IAII 
 ANNO XVI. ECFRIDI REO 
 CEOLFRIDI ABB. FIVS DEMQ. 
 KCCLE3 DEO AVCTORB 
 CONDITORIS ANNO IIII. 
 
 lousy. Although he was eminent, and deservedly 
 so, among the writers of the day, yet his subjects 
 were of a contracted and temporary character, 
 -1 that aflbrded little scope for the development of 
 genius, as they consisted chiefly of laudations of 
 virginity, both in prose and verse, and the right 
 method of computing the period of Easter; while 
 
 Bede died and was buried in this monasterj', but his remaina 
 were afterwards removed to Durham, and laid in the same cof-* 
 fin or chest with those of St. Cdthbort. Some remains of the 
 original edifice may be observed in the church. Bedo's Well, 
 near the church, is still venerated ; the bottom of it is covered 
 with pins, from the custom observed by visitors of dropping a 
 pin into the water. His chair is preserved in the church.
 
 176 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Social Stati;. 
 
 his wi-itiDgs, which were iu Latin, were turgid, 
 pedantic, and ai-tificial. Eddius, snrnamed Ste- 
 plianus, who wrote a Life of Bishop Wilfred in 
 Latin, and was the fii-st who instructed the 
 churches of Korthumbria in tlie science of sa- 
 cred music, was another literajy English clia- 
 racter of note. A third distinguished luminary 
 among the learned men of the eighth centui-y was 
 Winfrith, better known as St. Boniface, a native 
 of Devonshire, who finally became Archliishop of 
 Mentz, and suffered martyrdom from the pagans 
 of East Friesland, and whose letters, illustrative 
 of the period in which he lived, have been pub- 
 lished in the Magna Bibliotheca Patrum. One 
 unlucky proof which he afforded of his ortho- 
 doxy and religious zeal, was to denoimce the 
 Irishman Virgilius, Bishop of Saltzburgh, as a 
 heretic, for asserting the existence of the anti- 
 podes ! But fiir more illustrious than any of 
 these was Venerable Bede, whose name and 
 writings are still as fresh in the present, as ever 
 they were in past ages. He was born at Jar- 
 row, in the county of Durham, somewhere about 
 the years 672 and 677, and died in 735. His 
 chief work was the Ecclesiastical History of 
 England, and it is from this well-known pro- 
 duction, devoted though it be to the affairs of the 
 
 church, that the best portion of our information 
 on the civil affah-s of the country is derived. As 
 the gi-eater part of his life wa-s spent in a cloister, 
 while liis whole time was devoted to writing, lie 
 produced, besides his voluminous history, many 
 other works, chiefly c)n theology and educational 
 subjects, and a Martyrologj'. He was also the 
 author of a volume on the metrical art, and 
 another of hymns and epigi-ams. These works 
 were wa-itten in Latin; but his last literary la- 
 bour, upon which he was engaged when he died, 
 was a translation of St. John's Gospel into his 
 native tongue. The literary exertions of Alfred 
 the Great, by which he sought to become the 
 teacher as well as the liberator and lawgiver of 
 his countiy, are too well known to recpiire par- 
 ticular notice here. His various productions, 
 both original and tran.slated, which he executed 
 iu the midst of difficulties such as few sovereigns 
 have been able to surmount, were as remarkable, 
 and perhaps as beneficial, as his victories. It 
 wUl be seen, however, that, at the best, the his- 
 tory of Anglo-Saxon literature forms a veiy 
 scanty record. The genius of England, like its 
 poUtical constitution, required the labour of gene- 
 rations and the lapse of ages to bring it into full 
 form and maturity.
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 PERIOD FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE DEATH 
 OF KING JOHN.— 1.50 YEARS. 
 
 FROM A.D. lOCG— 1216. 
 
 
 
 CONTEMPORARY PRINCES. 
 
 England. 
 
 11.53 
 
 MALCOLM IV. 
 
 
 France. 
 
 lOCG WILLIAM I. 
 10S7 WILLIAM II. 
 
 1165 
 1214 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 ALEXjVNDER n. 
 
 lOGO 
 
 1109 
 
 PHILIP I. 
 LOUIS VI. 
 
 1100 HESBT I. 
 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 1137 
 
 louia VII. 
 
 1135 STEPHEN. 
 
 1064 
 
 TDRLOGH. 
 
 USD 
 
 roiLip II. 
 
 1154 HENEY II. 
 1189 KICHAED I. 
 1199 JOHN. 
 
 1086 
 1094 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 MURTACH O'BRIEN in 
 
 
 Germany. 
 
 
 the South, 
 
 1056 
 
 HENRY IV. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 
 DONALD MACLACULAN 
 
 1107 
 
 HENRY V. 
 
 
 o'NEIL in the North. 
 
 1125 
 
 LOTHAIRE. 
 
 1057 MALCOLM III. 
 
 1119 
 
 DONALD MACL.ACHLAN 
 
 1139 
 
 CONRAD III. 
 
 1093 DONALD BANE. 
 
 
 o'NEIL. 
 
 1152 
 
 FREDERICK I 
 
 1094 DONCAN. 
 
 1121 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 1191 
 
 HENRY VI. 
 
 1095 DONALD BANE 
 
 1136 
 
 TDRLOGH O'CONNOR the 
 
 1209 
 
 OTTO IV. 
 
 (restored). 
 
 
 Great. 
 
 
 Popes. 
 
 1093 edqah. 
 
 1156 
 
 MURTAOH MAOLACHLAN 
 
 
 1107 ALEXANDER I. 
 
 
 O'NEIL. 
 
 1061 
 
 ALEXANDER 
 
 112-t DAVID I. 
 
 I1C6 
 
 RODERIC O'CONNOR. 
 
 1073 
 
 GItEfiORY VII 
 
 10S6 
 
 loss 
 
 1099 
 1118 
 1119 
 1124 
 1130 
 1143 
 1144 
 1145 
 1153 
 1154 
 1159 
 llSl 
 1185 
 1187 
 1188 
 1191 
 119S 
 
 VICTOR m. 
 
 URBAN II. 
 PASCAL II. 
 GKLASIUS II. 
 OALI.XTUS II. 
 H0N0RIU3 II. 
 INNOCENT II. 
 CELESTINB II. 
 LUCIUS II. 
 EUGEN1U3 in. 
 ANASTASIU3 IV. 
 ADRIAN IV. 
 ALEXANDER III. 
 LUCIUS III. 
 URBAN III. 
 GREGORY VIII. 
 CLEMENT III. 
 CELESTINE III. 
 INNOCENT HI. 
 
 CHArXER I.— CIVIL AND MILITxVEY HISTORY. 
 
 WILLIAM I., SURNAMED TUE CONQUEROR. ACCESSION, A.D. 10G5— DEATH, A.D. 10S7. 
 
 Battle Abbey founiled — "William's aJv,\nce to London — Feeble resi-stance of the Englisli — AVilliam crowned at 
 Westminster — Riot at his coronation — -He revisits Normandy — Revolt in England dnring his absence — Hia 
 merciless proceedings to complete the conquest at his return — .\narchy and sufferings thereby occasioned — 
 William's military operations in the north of England — Desertion among his nobles — Revolt in Northumber- 
 land — William suppresses it — Confiscations and oppressions which follow — -Resistance of Hereward, Lord 
 of Brunn, in Lincolnshire — Ilereward's Camp of Refuge at Ely — His successes over the Normans — He is 
 obliged to capitulate — Completion of the conquest — William departs to the Continent — Revolt of his nobles 
 during his .absence — They are defeated — E.\ecution of Waltheof, E,arl of Nortluimberlaud — Rebellion of Wil- 
 liam's family against him — Demand of Robert, his eldest fo'i, for a separate government — He makes war upon 
 his father — Combat between William and his son under the walls of Gerberoy — The Northumbrians again in 
 rebellion— They kill their Norman governor and his garrison — Their suppression by Odo, brother of William 
 — Odo intrigues for the popedom — He is arrested and imprisoned by William — Tyrannical formation of tho 
 New Forest — William's inordinate love of hunting — He repairs with an army to France — His death occasioned 
 by an accident — Ingratitude of his sons and courtiers — Ingloi-ious funeral of William tho Conqueror. 
 
 HE first feelings of the Normans 
 after the battle of Hastiugs seem 
 to have been sensations of trium]:>h 
 I and joy, amounting almost to a 
 delirium. They are represented by 
 a contemporary' as making then- 
 K^'j" horses to prance and bound over tlie 
 thickly strewed bodies of the Anglo- 
 Saxons ; after which they proceeded to 
 rifle them, and despoil them of their clothes. 
 By William's orders the space was cleared round 
 
 the pope's standard, which he had .set up; and 
 there his tent was jiitched, and he feasted with his 
 followers amongst the dead. The critical cii-cum- 
 stances in. which he had so recently been placed, 
 and the difficulties which still lay before him, 
 disposed the mind of the Conqueror to serious 
 thoughts. Not less, perh.aps, in gratitude for the 
 past than in the hope that such a work would 
 procure him heavenly favour for the future, he 
 solemnly vowed that he would erect a splendid 
 abbey on tlie scene of this his first victory; and 
 
 • WiUiam of Poitiers. ' This writer asserts, that although 
 Harold's mother offered its weight in gold for tho dead body of 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 her son, the stem victor was deaf to lier i-eriucst, pi ofeasing indig- 
 nation at the propoa.aI that he should enjoy tho ritea of sepul- 
 
 23
 
 178 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [CrVIL AND RIlLITAIll 
 
 when, in process of time, this vow wiis accom- 
 plished, tlie liigh altai- of the abbey church stood 
 on the very s]iot wliei-e the staiidai-d of Harold 
 had l)een i)lautfHl and thrown down The exte- 
 
 
 Fattle Abeev.' — From a drawing in the King's Library, British Museum 
 
 rior walls embraced the whole of the hill, the I 
 centre of their position, which the bravest of 
 the Euglisli had covered with their bodies, and 
 all the surrounding country where the scenes 
 of the combat had passed, became the property 
 of the holy house, which was called, in the Nor 
 man or French language, I'Abbai/e de la Bataillc, 
 and was dedicated to St. Martin, the patron of 
 the soldiers of Gaul. Monks, invited from the 
 great convent of Marmontier, near Tour?, took 
 up their residence in the new edifice. They 
 were well endowed with the property of the 
 English who had died in the battle, and prayed 
 alike for the repose of the souls of those victims, 
 and for the prosjierity and long life of the Nor- 
 mans who had killed them.- In the archives of 
 the house was deposited a long roll, on which 
 were inscribed the names of the nobles and gen- 
 
 tui'e for whose excessive cupidity so many men lay unburied. 
 Harold, it is added, was buried on the beach. Most of the Eng- 
 lish histori.ons, however, say that the body was given to his 
 mother without ransom, and interred by her in Waltham Ab- 
 bey, which had been foimde<l by Harold before he was king. 
 The Cottonjan MS., Jidiiis D. 6, which appears to have been 
 written in Walth.am .\bbey about a century after the event, re- 
 lates that two monks, who were allowed by William to search 
 for the bod,v. were unable to distingui-sh it among the heaps of 
 slain, until they sent for Harold's mistress, Editha, " the Swan- 
 necked," whose eye of affection was not to ba eluded or deceived. 
 The improbable story told by Giraldus Cambrensis (and in more 
 detail in the Harleian MS. 377(3) about Harold, .after receiving 
 liis woirnd, having e.scaped from the battle, and living for some 
 years as an ancliorite in a cell near St. Jolin's Church, in Chester, 
 thougli a pretty enough romance, is palpably undeserving of 
 notice in an historical point of view. 
 
 ' The building of Battle Abbey was commenced by the Con- 
 queror in A.D. 10G7, the year following th.at on which the b.attle 
 of Hastings was fought. In the reign of Edward III. the abbey 
 
 tlemen of mark who came with the Conqueror 
 and survived the battle of Hastings.^ 
 
 The most sanguine of the Norin;uis, in common 
 with the most despondent among the English, 
 expected that, immediately 
 after the battle of Hastings, 
 the Conqueror would man-h 
 straight t(j London, and make 
 him.self master of that capi- 
 tal. But the first move was 
 a retronrade one ; nor di<l 
 William establish himself 
 in the cajjital until more 
 tlian two months had passed. 
 While the army of Harold 
 kept the field at Senlac or 
 Cattle, several new ships, 
 with I'einforcements, came 
 over from Normandy to join 
 William. Mistaking the pro- 
 per place for landing, the 
 commanders of these vessels 
 put in to Eomney, where 
 they were at once assaulted 
 and beaten by the people of 
 the coast. AVilliam leai'ned this unpleasant news 
 the day after his victory, and to save the other 
 recruits, whom he still expected, from a similar 
 disaster, he resolved, before proceeding farther, 
 to make himself master of all the south-eastern 
 coast. lie tm-ned back, therefore, from Eattle 
 to Hastings, at which latter place he stayed 
 some days, awaiting his transports from beyond 
 sea, and hoping, it is said, that his presence 
 would induce the population of those parts to 
 make voluntary submission. At length, see- 
 ing that no one came to ask for peace, William 
 resumed his march with the remnant of his army, 
 and the fresh troojis which had arrived in the in- 
 terval from Normandy. He kept close to the 
 sea-coast, marching from south to north, and 
 spreading devastation on his passage. He took 
 a savage vengeance at Eomney for the reverse his 
 
 was fortified by permission of the king. The circuit of the ruins 
 is computed at about a mile. Gilpin considers that the prevail- 
 ing style indicates the rebuilding of the greater part of the edifice 
 in the time of tho later Henries. The remains consist of three 
 sides of a quadrangle, the fourth havhig been removed. Tlie 
 grand enti-ance was a large squ.aro building, embattled, with .an 
 octagon tower at each comer. The abbey church is supplanted 
 by the edifice of Sir Tliomas Webster. Tlie refectory lies in utter 
 ruin, and the cryi^ts h.ave been converted into a st.able. Many 
 fine minor vestiges exist in diflTerent parts of the ruin. 
 
 2 Tliierry, Ilistoire de la Conquete. 
 
 ^ The original roll of Battle Abbey is lost ; but some copies 
 have been preserved, from which the document has been repeat- 
 edly printed. It is believed, however, that these pretended 
 tr.anscript3 are far from faitliful, and that, besides other cor- 
 ruptions, many names have been inserted in later times by the 
 monks of tlie abbey, to gratify families or individuals th.at 
 wished to m.ake it appear they were sprung from followers of 
 the Conqueror. To date from tho Conquest, .as is well known, 
 is still tlie .ambition of noble English families.
 
 A.u. lOGG-1087] 
 
 WILLIAM THE CONQUEilOK. 
 
 17:) 
 
 troops had sustained there, by massacring the in- 
 habitants and biirning tlieu- houses. Prom Roni- 
 ney he advanced to Dover, tlie strongest place on 
 the coast — "tlie lock and key of all England," as 
 Holinshed calls it. With little or no opposilion, 
 he burst into the town, which his troops set fire 
 to; and the strong castle, whieli the sou of God- 
 win had put into an excellent state of defence, 
 was so speedily surrendered to him, that a sus- 
 picion of treachery rests on the Saxon comman- 
 der. The oaptiu-e of this fortress was most oppor- 
 tune an<l important, for a dreadful dysentery had 
 broken out in the Norman army, and a safe re- 
 ceptacle for the sick had become indispensable. 
 Dover Castle also commanded the best landiijg- 
 place for troops from the Continent, and William 
 was not yet so sure of his game as not to look 
 anxiously for a place of retreat on the coast, in 
 case of meeting with reverses in the interior. He 
 spent eight or nine days in strengthening the castle, 
 and repairing some of the damage done to the 
 town by his lawless soldiery. Meanwhile, in order 
 to conciliate the inhabitants, he made them some 
 compensation for the losses and in j uries they had 
 sustained ; and in the same interval he received 
 more recruits from Normandy. 
 
 When the Conqueror at last moved from Do- 
 ver, he ceased to creep cautiously round the 
 coast, but, penetrating into Kent, marched du'ect 
 to London. A confused story is told by some of 
 om' early liistoi'ians about a popular resistance, 
 organized by Archbishop Stigand and the abbot 
 Egelnoth, in which the men of Kent, advancing 
 like the army of Macduff and Siward against 
 Macbeth, under the cover of cut-down trees and 
 boughs, disputed the passage of the Normans, and, 
 with arms in their hands, exacted from them terms 
 most favoiu'able to themselves and the part of 
 England they occupied. But the plain truth 
 seems to be that, overawed by the recent catas- 
 trophe of Hastings, and the presence of a com- 
 pact and numerous arm}', the inhabitants of Kent 
 made no resistance, and meeting William with 
 offers of submission, placed hostages in his hands, 
 and so obtained mild treatment. 
 
 Diu'iug these calamities the Saxon Witan had 
 assembled in London, to deliberate and provide 
 for the futiu'e; but evidently, as far as the lay 
 portion of the meeting was concerned, with no 
 intention of submitting to the Conqueror. The 
 first care that occupied their thoughts was to 
 elect a successor to the throne. Eitlier of Ha- 
 rold's brave brothers, at such a crisis, when valom- 
 and military skill were the qualities most wanted, 
 might probably have commanded a majority of 
 sufJrages; but they had both fought their last 
 fight; and, owing to their youth, their inexperi- 
 ence, their want of popularity, or to some other 
 circumstance, the two sons of Harold seem never 
 
 to have been thought of. Many voices would 
 have supported Morcar or Edwin, the [lowerful 
 brothers-in-law of Harold, who had already an 
 almost sovereign .authority in Northumbria and 
 Mercia; but the citizens of Ijondon, .and the men 
 of the south of England generally, preferred young 
 Edgar Athcling, the grand-son of Edmund Iron- 
 side, who had been previously set aside on account 
 of his little worth : and when Stigand the primate, 
 and Aldred the Archbishop of York, threw their 
 weight into this scale, it outweighed the others, 
 anil Edgar was proclaimed king. It should seem, 
 however, that even at this stage, many of the 
 bisho])s and dignified clergymen, who were even 
 then Frenchmen or Normans, raised their voice 
 in favour of William, or let fall hints that were 
 all meant to favour his preten.sions. The pope's 
 bull and banner could not be without their effect, 
 and, motives of interest and policy apart, some 
 of these ecclesiastics may have conscientiously 
 believed they were performing their duty in pro- 
 moting the cause of the elect of Rome. Others 
 there were who were notoriously bought over, 
 either by money paid beforehand, or l)y jiromises 
 of future largesse. 
 
 The party that ultimately pre^■ailed in the 
 Witan did not carry their jioiut until much pre- 
 cious time had been consumed ; nor could the 
 blood of Cerdic, Alfred, and Edmund, make the 
 king of their choice that rallying point which 
 conflicting factions required, or a hero capable of 
 facing a victorious invader, advancing at the head 
 of a more powerful army than England could 
 hope to raise for some time. In fact, Edgar was 
 a mere cipher — a boy incapable of government as 
 of war — with nothing popular about him except 
 his descent. The primate Stigand took his place 
 at the council board, and the military command 
 w.as given to Earls Edwin and Morcar. A very 
 few acts of legal authority had been performed 
 in the name of Edgar, when William of Noi-- 
 raaudy appeared before the southern suburb of 
 London. If the Normans had expected to take 
 the capital by a coup-de-main, and at once, they 
 were disappointed ; the Londoners were very 
 warlike ; and the popidation of the city, great 
 even in those days, was much increased by the 
 pi'eseuce of the thanes and chiefs of all the neigh- 
 bouring counties, who had come in to attend 
 the Witan, and had brought their servants and 
 followers with them. After making a successful 
 ch.arge, with 500 of his best lu)rse, against some 
 citizens who were gathered on that side of the 
 river, William set fire to Southwark, and marched 
 away from London, with the determination of 
 ravaging the country around it, destroying the 
 property of the thanes who had assembled at the 
 Witan, and, by iuterru])ting all communication, 
 induce the well-defended capital to surrender.
 
 ISO 
 
 niSTOEY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and MiuTAnr. 
 
 Detachments of his tirmy \7ere soon spread over 
 a wide tract; and in biu-uing towns and villages, 
 in the massacre of men armed and men uu;u-med, 
 and in the violation of liclploss females, the 
 people of Surrey, Sussex, Ilampshii'e, and Berk- 
 shire, were made to feel the full signification of 
 a Norman couqiiest. William crossed the Thames 
 at Wallingford, near to which place he established 
 an intrenched camp, where a division of his army 
 was left, in order to cut off any succoui-s that 
 might be sent towards London from the west. 
 This done, he proceeded across Buckingliamshire 
 into Hertfordshire, "slaying the people," till he 
 came to Berkhampstead, where he took up a 
 position, in order to interrupt all communication 
 with London from the north. The capital, in- 
 deed, at this time seems to have been girded 
 round by the enemy, and afflicted by the prospect 
 of absolute famine. Nor were there wanting 
 other causes of discouragement. The Earls Ed- 
 ^vin and Morcar showed little zeal in the com- 
 mand of a weak, and, as yet, unorganized army, 
 and soon withdrew towards the Humber, talcing 
 with them all the soldiers of Northumbria and 
 Mercia, who constituted the best part of King 
 Edgar's forces, but who looked to the earls much 
 more than to the king. These two sons of Alfgar 
 probably hoped to be able to maintain themselves 
 in independence in the north, where, in reality, 
 they at a later period renewed, and greatly pro- 
 longed the contest with the Normans. Their 
 depai-ture had a baneful eiTeot in Loudon; and 
 while the spirit of the citizens waxed fainter and 
 fainter, the partizans and intriguers for William, 
 encom-aged at every move by the prevalent fac- 
 tion among the clergy, raised their hopes and ex- 
 tended their exertions. 
 
 After some time, however. Earls Morcar and 
 Edwin appear to have returned to the capital. 
 On many an intermediate step the chroniclers are 
 provokingly silent : but at last it was determined 
 that a submi-ssive deputation should be sent from 
 London to Berkhampstead ; and King Edg.ar 
 himself, the primate Stigand, Aldred, Ai-chbishop 
 of York, Wolfstan, Bisliop of Worcester, with 
 other prelates and lay chiefs, among whom the 
 Saxon chronicler expressly names the two Earls 
 of Northumbria and Mercia, and many of the 
 principal citizens, repaired to William, who re- 
 ceived them with an outwaj'd show of modera- 
 tion and kindness. It is related that when the 
 man whom he most hated, as the friend of Ha- 
 rold and the energetic enemy of the Normans — 
 that when Stigand came into his presence, he 
 saluted him with the endearing epithets of father 
 and bishop. The puppet-king Edgar made a 
 verbal renunciation of the throne, and the rest 
 swore allegiance to the Conqueror — the bishops 
 swearing for the whole body of the clergy, the 
 
 chiefs for the nobility, and the citizens for the 
 good city of London.' During a part of this sin- 
 gular audience, William pretended t(j have doubts 
 and misgivings as to the pi-opriety of his ascend- 
 ing the vacant throne; but these hypocritical ex- 
 pressions were drowned in the loud acclamations 
 of his Norman barons, who felt th.at the crown 
 of England was on the point of then- swords. 
 Having taken oaths of fulelity and peace, the 
 Saxon deputies left hostages with the Norman, 
 who, on his side, promised to be mild and merci- 
 ful to all men. On the following morning the 
 foreigners began their march towards London, 
 plundering, murdering, and burning, just as be- 
 fore." They took then' way through St. Alban's. 
 Even now William did not enter London in per- 
 son, but, sending on part of his ai'iny to build a 
 fortress for his reception, he encamped with the 
 rest at some distance from the city. This for- 
 tress, which was built on the site, and probably 
 included j^art of a Roman castle, grew gradu- 
 ally, in after times, into the Tower of London. 
 Some accounts state that William's vanguard was 
 hostilely engaged by the citizens, but according 
 to others, they met with no resistance, and were 
 permitted to raise then' fortifications without ;iny 
 serious molestation. 
 
 As soon as the Normans had finished his strong- 
 hold, William took possession of it, and then 
 they fixed his coronation for a few days after. The 
 Conqueror is said to have objected to the per- 
 formance of this ceremony while so large a part 
 of the island was independent of his authority; 
 and he certainly hoped, by delaying it, to obtain 
 a more formal consent from the English nation, 
 or something like a Saxon election, which would 
 be a better title in the eyes of the people than 
 the right of conquest. Little, however, was 
 gained by delay; and the coronation, which, for 
 the sake of greater solemnity, took place on 
 Christmas Day, was accompanied by accidents 
 and circumstances highly mitating to the peo]>le. 
 It is stated, on one side, that William invited 
 the firimate Stigand to perform the rites, and 
 that Stigand refused to crown a man " covered 
 with the blood of men, and the invader of others' 
 rights."' Although there might have been some 
 policy in making this great champion of the Saxon 
 cause hallow the Conqueror, it does not appeal- 
 probable that William would ask this service of 
 one who was lying \mder the severe displeasure 
 of Eome; and it is said, on the other side, that 
 
 » "Biigon tha for ncode," 8.173 the Saxon Chronicle, " tba 
 maest w.iea to heami gedou ; and thaet waes micel unread thaet 
 mail aeror swa ne dyde tha hit god betan iiolde for unim syu- 
 num." (They suhmittod them for need, when the most harm 
 was done. It was very ill-advised that they did not so before, 
 seeing that God would not better things for our sins. — Ingram's 
 Traii^lation.) 
 - Boger Jlovcien; Chraa. Sax. a n'ifimni of Ne^cburr/.
 
 A.D. lOGG— lOST.] 
 
 WILLIAM THE CONQUEnOR. 
 
 ISl 
 
 he refused to be consecrated by Stigaiul, and con- 
 ferred tliat honour on Aldred, Ai-chbishop of 
 York, wliom some of the chroniclere describe as 
 a wise and prudent man, wlio understood tlie ex- 
 pediency of acc-ommodatinr; himself to circum- 
 stances. Tlie new abbey of Westminster, the last 
 work of Edward the Confessor, was chosen as 
 tlie place for the coronation of our first Norman 
 king. The sidnu'bs, the streets of Loudon, and 
 all the approaches to the abbey were lined with 
 double rows of soldiers, horse and foot. The 
 Conqueror rode through the ranks, and entered 
 the abbey church, attended by 260 of his warlike 
 chiefs, by many priests and monks, and a consi- 
 derable number of English, who had been gained 
 over to act a part in the pageantry. At the open- 
 ing of tlie ceremony one of William's prelates, 
 Geoflrey, the Bishop of Coutanoes, asked the Nor- 
 m;ins, in the Freucli language, if they were of 
 opmion that theu- chief should take the title of 
 King of England ? and then the Ai-chbishop of 
 York asked the English if they would have Wil- 
 liam the Norman for their king ? The reply on 
 either side was given by acclamation in the affii-- 
 mative, and the shouts and cheers thus raised 
 were so loud that they stai-tled the foreign ca- 
 valry stationed round the abbey. The troops 
 took tlie confused noise for a ciy of alarm raised 
 by their friends, and, as they had received orders 
 to be on the alert, and ready to act in case of any 
 seditious mo\-ement, they rushed to the Englisli 
 houses nearest the abbey, and set fire to them all. 
 A few, thinking to succoiu- their betrayed duke 
 and the nobles they served, ran to the church, 
 where, at sight of their naked swords, and the 
 smoke and flames that were rising, the tumult 
 soon became as gi-eat as that without its walls. 
 The Normans fancied the whole popidation of 
 London and its neighboui'hood had risen against 
 them; the English imagined that they had been 
 dujied by a vain show, and drawn togethei', un- 
 armed and defenceless, that they might be mas- 
 sacred. Both parties r;iji out of the abbey, and 
 the ceremony was interrujj^ed, though WiUiam, 
 left almost alone in the church, or witli none but 
 the Archbishop Aldi-ed and some tei'rified priests 
 of both nations near him at the altar, decidedly 
 refused to postpone the celebration. The service 
 was theiefore completed amidst these bad augu- 
 ries, but in the utmost huriy and confusion, and 
 the Conqueror took the usual coronation oath of 
 the Anglo-Saxon kings, making, as an addition 
 of his own, the solemn promise that he would 
 treat the English people as well as the best of 
 their kings had done.' Meanwhile the commo- 
 tion without continued, and it is not mentioned 
 at what hour of the day or night the conflagra- 
 
 ' Guil. Pictav.: Ordcric. Vital.: Citron. Sax. 
 
 tion ended. The English, who had been at the 
 abbey, r.an to e.xtingui.sh the fire — the Normans, 
 it is said, to ])lunder, and otherwise jirofit by the 
 disorder; but it appears that some of the latter 
 exerted themselves to stop the progress of the 
 flames, and to |iut an end to a riot peculiarly un- 
 palatable to their master, whose anxious wish 
 was certainly, at that time, to conciliate the two 
 nations. 
 
 Soon after his coronation, William withdrew 
 from London to Bai-king, where he established 
 a court, which gradually attracted many of the 
 nobles of the south of England. Edric, surnanied 
 the Forester, Coxo, a warrior of high repute, and 
 others are named; and, as William extended his 
 authority, even the thanes and tlie gi-eat earls 
 from the north, where the force of his arms was 
 not yet felt, repaired to do him homage. In re- 
 turn AVQliam granted them the confii-mation of 
 their estates and honours, which he had not at 
 present the power to seize or invade. It ajijiears 
 that the Conqueroi-'s first seizures and confisca- 
 tions, after the crown lands, were the domains of 
 Harold, and his brothers Gurth and Leof win, and 
 the lands and property of such of the English 
 chiefs as were either very weak, or unjiopular, or 
 indiflerent to the nation. 
 
 Edgar Atheling was an inmate of the new 
 court, and William, knowing he was cherished 
 by many of the English on account of his descent, 
 pretended to treat him with great respect, and 
 left him the earldom of Oxford, which Harold 
 had conferred on him when he ascended the 
 throne in his stead. From Barking the new king 
 made a progi-ess through the territory, that was 
 rather militai-ily occujiied than securely conquered, 
 displaying as he went as much royal pomij, and 
 treating the English with as much coui-tesy and 
 consideration, as he could. The extent of this 
 territory cannot be exactly determined, but it ap- 
 pears the Conqueror had not yet advanced, in the 
 north-east beyond the confines of Norfolk, nor 
 in the south-west beyond Dorsetshire. Both on 
 the eastern and western coast, and in the midland 
 counties, the invasion was gi-adual and slow, and, 
 as yet, the city of O.xford had certaiidy not fallen. 
 
 All William's measures at this time were mild 
 and conciliating ; he respected the old Anglo- 
 Saxon laws; he established good courts of justice, 
 encoiu-aged agi'iculture and commerce, and (at 
 least nominally) eulaiged the jirivilegcs of Lou- 
 don and some other to^vns. At the same time, 
 however, the country he held was bristled with 
 castles and towers ; and additional fortresses 
 erected in and around the capital, showed his dis- 
 trust of what was termed, in the language of the 
 Normans, an over-numerous and too proud popu- 
 lation. Next to London, the city of Winchester, 
 which had been a favourite residence of the
 
 IS'J 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militai:v. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon kings, excited most suspicion ; 
 " for," says William of Poitiers, the Conqueror's 
 chaplain, " it is a noble and powerful city, inha- 
 bited by a race of men rich, fearless, and perfidi- 
 ous." A castle was therefore erected at Win- 
 chester, and a strong Norman garrison put into 
 it. Such operations coidd not be otherwise than 
 distasteful to the English, who were further irri- 
 tated by seeing proud foreign lords fixed among 
 them, and married to the widows and heiresses 
 of their old lords, who had f.-dlun at Hastings. 
 The rapacious followers of William were hard to 
 satisfy; and, to secm'e theii- attachment, he was 
 frequently obliged to go beyond those bounds of 
 moderation he was inclined to set for himself. A 
 most numerous troop of priests and monks had 
 come over from the Continent, and their avidity 
 was scarcely mferior to that of the barons and 
 knights. Nearly every one of them wanted a 
 cluu-ch, a rich abbey, or some higher promotion. 
 To pass over other wi-ongs and provocations in- 
 separable from foreign conquest, the people pre- 
 sently saw the coming on of that sad state of 
 things which they soon after suficred, " when 
 England became the habitation of new strangers, 
 in such -wise, that there was neither governor, 
 bishop, nor abbot remaining therein of the Eng- 
 lish nation." ' It was, however, to these foreign 
 churchmen that our coimtry was chiefly indebted 
 for whatever iatellectual improvement or civili- 
 zation was imported at the Conquest. 
 
 In the month of March, 1067, the English in 
 the north and west being yet untouched, and their 
 countiymen in the south beginning to harbour 
 violent feelings — while the Normans were anxious 
 to provoke an insurrection, and prosecute the war 
 in the land where so many bi-oad acres remained 
 to reward the victors — William resolved to pass 
 over into Normandy. Had he determined to vex 
 and rouse the English, he could scai-cely have 
 left a more fitting instrument than his half- 
 brother, Odo, to whom he confided the royal power 
 dui'ing his absence, associating with him as coun- 
 cillors of state, William Fitz-Osborn, Hugo of 
 Grantmesnil, Hugo de Montfort, Walter Giflbrd, 
 and WiUiam de Gareuue. On the other hand, 
 as if to make an English revolt hopeless, should 
 it be attempted, he can-ied in his train Stigand, 
 the Ai-chbishojj of Canterbmy, the abbot Egel- 
 noth, Edgar Atheling, Edwin, Earl of Mercia, 
 Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, Waltheof, Earl of 
 Northampton and Huntingdon, and many others 
 of high nobility. The place chosen for his em- 
 barkation was Pevensey, near Hastings ; and 
 when he had made a liberal distribution of money 
 and presents to a part of his army which had 
 followed him to the beach, he set sail with a fair 
 
 wind for Normandy, just .six months after liis 
 lauding in England. According to every account, 
 he was received with enthusiastic joy by his con- 
 tinental subjects, who were filled with wonder- 
 ment at his success, and the quantity of gold and 
 silver and other precioiis eflects he brought back 
 ■svith him. A part of this wealth, the fruit of 
 blood and plunder, w;us sent to the pope, witli the 
 banner of Harold, which had been taken at the 
 battle of Hastuigs, and another jiortion was dis- 
 tributed among the abbeys, monasteries, and 
 churches of Normandy; "neither monks nor 
 priests remaining without a guerdon." William 
 gave them coined gold, and gold in bars, golden 
 vases, and, above all, richly embroidered stuffs, 
 which, on high feast-days they hung up in their 
 chm'ches, where they excited the admii'ation of 
 all travellers and strangers. The whole of the 
 account given by William's chaplain tends to 
 raise our idea of the wealth of England. " That 
 land," says the Poitevin, "abounds more than 
 Normandy in the precious metals. If in fertility 
 it may be tei-med the gi-anaiy of Ceres, in riches 
 it should be called the treasury of Ai-abia. The 
 English women excel in the use of the needle, 
 and in embroidering in gold ; the men in every 
 species of elegant workmanship. Moreover, the 
 best artists of Germany live amongst them; and 
 merchants, who rejiair to distant countries, im- 
 port the most valu.able articles of foreign manu- 
 facture, unknown in Normandy." The same con- 
 temporary informs us that at the feast of Easter, 
 which William held with unusual splendour, a re- 
 lation of the King of France, named Raoul, came 
 with a numerous retinue to the Conqueror's court, 
 where he and his Frenchmen, not less than the 
 Normans, considered with a curiosity, mingled 
 with surprise, the chased vases of gold and silver 
 brought from England; and, above all, the drink- 
 ing-cups of the Saxons, made of large bufl'alo- 
 horns, and ornamented at either extremity with 
 precious metal. The French prince and his com- 
 panions were also much struck with the beauty 
 of couutenance and llie long flowing hair of the 
 young Englishmen whom William had brought 
 over with him as guests or hostages. 
 
 While all thus went on mei-rily in Normandy, 
 events of a very different natm-e were talcing 
 place on the other side of the Channel. The rule 
 of Odo and the barons left in England pressed 
 harshly on the people, whose complaints and cries 
 for justice they despised. Without punishment 
 or check, their men-at-arms were permitted to 
 insult and plunder, not merely the peasants and 
 burgesses, but peo2ile of the best condition, and 
 the cup of misery and degradation was filled up, 
 as usual in such cases, by violence offered to the 
 women. The English spirit was not yet so de- 
 pressed, and, in fact, never sank so low as to tole-
 
 A.D. 1066—1087 I 
 
 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 183 
 
 rate such wi-ongs. Several popiilai- x-isiii^ took 
 place in various i>arts of the subjugated territory, 
 and many a Norman, caught be^'ond the walls of 
 his castle or garrison-town, was cut to pieces. 
 These partial insurrections were followed by con- 
 certed and extensively combined movements. A 
 granil cousjiiracy wa.s formed, and the Conqueror's 
 throne was made to totter before it was nine 
 months old. The men of Kent, who had been 
 the first to submit, were the fii'st to attemjit to 
 throw off the yoke. A singular circumstance at- 
 tended their effort. Eustace, Count of Boulogne, 
 the same who had caused such a stir at Dover in 
 the time of Edw.ird the Confessor, was then in 
 open quarrel with William the Norman, who kept 
 one of his sons in prison. This Eustace was famoil 
 far and wide for his military skill; and his rela- 
 tionshipto the sainted King Edward, whose sister 
 he had married, made the English consider him 
 now in the light of a natm-al ally. Forgetting, 
 therefore, their old grievances, the people of Kent 
 sent a message to Count Eustace, promising to put 
 Dover into his hands, if he would make a descent 
 on the coast, and help them to wage war on their 
 Norman opjiressors. Eustace accepted the invi- 
 tation, and, crossing the Channel vnih a small but 
 chosen band, he landed, under favour of a dark 
 night, at a short distance from Dover, where he 
 was presently joined b}' a host of Kentish men in 
 arms. A contemporary says, that had they waited 
 but two daj'S, these insui'gents would have been 
 juined by the whole population of those parts; 
 but they imprudently made an attack on the strong 
 castle of Dover, were repulsed with loss, and then 
 thrown into a panic, by the false report that Bishop 
 Odo was approaching them with all his forces. 
 Count Eustace fled, and got safely on board ship, 
 but most of his men-at-ai-ms were slain or taken 
 prisoners by the Norman garrison, or broke their 
 necks by falling over the cliffs on which Dover 
 Castle .stands. The men of Kent, with a few 
 exceptions, found then- way home in safety, by 
 taking by-]iaths and roads with which the Nor- 
 mans were unac(iuainted. 
 
 In the west the Normans were much less for- 
 tunate. Edric the Forester, who had visited the 
 Conqueror at Barking, and done homage to him, 
 was the lord of extensive possessions that lay 
 on the Severn and the confines of Wales. This 
 powerful chief was at first desirous of living in 
 peace, but being provoked at the depredations 
 committed by some Norman captains who had 
 garrisoned the city of Hereford, he took nji arms, 
 and forming an alliance with two AVelsh piinccs, 
 he was enabled to shut the foreigners close up 
 within the walls of the to^vn, and to i-ange undi.-- 
 puted master of all the western part of Here- 
 fordshire. 
 
 At this favourable moment the two sons of 
 
 King Harold appeared in the west; but though 
 they were nearly a year older than at the time 
 they were passed over unnoticed by tlie AVitan 
 assembled at London, they soon showed that 
 neither of them had the qualities requisite for 
 the saviour of the Anglo-Saxon n.ation. Their 
 ]iroceedings would be altogether inexplicable if 
 we did not reflect tliat they were allied with, and 
 probably controlled by a liost of pii'atos. These 
 two young men sailed over from Ireland with 
 a considerable force, embarked in sixty shijis. 
 Tliey ascended the Bristol Channel and the river 
 Avon, and landing near Bristol, plundered that 
 fertile country. Wh.atever were their pretexts 
 and claims, they acted as common enemies, and 
 were met as such by the English ]ieop!e, who re- 
 pulsed them when they attempted to t.ake the city 
 of Bristol, .and soon after defeated them upon 
 the coast of Somersetshire, whither they had re- 
 j 'aired with theli- ships and plunder. The invaders, 
 who suffered severely, took to their shijis, and 
 returned immediately to Ireland. In Shropshire, 
 Nottinghamshire, and other parts of the kingdom, 
 both where they had felt the Norman oi>pres- 
 sion, and where, as yet, they only apprehended it, 
 bodies of English rose in arms, and urged their 
 neighbours to join them. The indignation of the 
 people was general, and encouraged by the Con- 
 queror's absence, efforts were made, and others 
 contemplated, for throwing off the yoke. Ru- 
 mours spread that a simultaneous m.assacro, like 
 that perpetrated on the Danes, was intended; and 
 it was equally n.atural that the English should 
 make use of such threats in their moments of r.age, 
 and th.at the Normans, conscious of oppression, 
 and well versed in the history of St. Brice's 
 Day, should believe them and tremble at them. 
 Letter after letter, and message after message, 
 were sent into Normandy; but the Conqueror, 
 either because he was insensible to the alarm, or 
 thought sufficient provocation had not been given, 
 lingered there for more than eight months. When 
 at last he departed, it was in hurry and agitation. 
 He embarked at Dieppe on the (ith of December, 
 and sailed for England by night. On arriving, 
 he placed new governors, whom he had brought 
 from Normandy, in his castles and strongholds 
 in Sussex and Kent. On reaching London he 
 was made fully sensible of tlie prevailing discon- 
 tent; but with his usual crafty prudence he applied 
 himself to soothe the storm for awhile, decuning 
 that the time had not yet arrived for Ins openly 
 decl.aring that the fickle, f.aithlcss Engli.sh were 
 to be exterminated or treated as slaves, and all 
 their possessions and honours given to the Nor- 
 mans. He celebrated the festival of C-'hristm.as 
 with unusual jjomp, and invited many Saxon 
 chiefs to London to ])artake in the celebr.ation. 
 He received these guests with .smiles and cai-esses,
 
 184 
 
 HISTORY OF ENCiLAND. 
 
 [C'lVII, AND MlLITAISY. 
 
 giving tlie kiss of welcome to every comer.' If 
 they asked for anytliing, he gi-anted it ; if they 
 announced or advised anything, he listened with 
 respectful attention; and it should seem that 
 they were nearly all the dupes of these royal 
 artifices. He then propitiated the citizens of 
 London by a proclamation, which was written in 
 the Saxon language, and read in all the churches 
 of the capital. "Be it known unto you," said 
 this document, " what is my will. I will that all 
 of you enjoy your national laws as in the days of 
 King Edward ; that every son shall inherit from 
 his father, after the days of his father; and that 
 none of my people do you wrong." William's 
 first public act after all these promises was to 
 impose a heavy tax, which was made more and 
 more burdensome as his power increased. 
 
 The war of 1068, or what may be called the 
 Conqueror's second campaign in England, opened 
 in the fertile province of Devonshire, where the 
 people, supported by their hai\ly neighbom-s of 
 Cornwall, and animated by the presence of the 
 mother and some other relations of King Harold, 
 refused to acknowledge his government, and had 
 prepared to resist the advance of his lieutenants. 
 Some of the thanes to whom the command of the 
 insurrection had been intrusted, proved cowards 
 or traitors; the Normans advanced, burning, and 
 desti-oying, and breathing vengeance; but the 
 men of Exeter, who had had a principal share in 
 organizing the patriotic resistance, were resolute 
 in the defence of their city. Githa or Editha, 
 Harold's mother, had fled there after the battle 
 of Hastings, and carried with her considerable 
 riches. When the Conqueror came within four 
 miles of Exeter, he summoned the citizens to 
 submit, and take the oath of fealty. They replied, 
 "We will not swear fealty to this man, who 
 pretends to be our king, nor will we receive his 
 garrison within om- walls ; but if he will receive 
 as tribute the dues we were accustomed to pay to 
 our kings, we will consent to pay them to him." 
 To this somewhat novel proposal WUliam said, 
 "I would have subjects, and it is not my custom 
 to take them on such conditions."- Some of the 
 magistrates and wealthiest of the citizens then 
 went to William, and, imploring his mercy, prof- 
 fered the submission of the city, and gave hos- 
 tages; but the mass of the population either did 
 not sanction this proceeding, or repented of it; 
 and when William rode up at the head of his 
 cavalry, he found the gates barred and the walls 
 manned with combatants, who bade him defiance. 
 The Normans, in sight of the men on the ram- 
 parts, then tore out the eyes of one of the hostages 
 they had just received; but this savage act did 
 not daimt the people, who wei-e well prepared for 
 
 defence, having rais-ed new turrets and battle- 
 ments on the walls, and brouudit in a number of 
 
 ' Dulciter ad osciila invitabat. — Orderic. 
 
 ■> Ibid. 
 
 RouHEMONT Castle, part of the old defences of Exeter.^ — From 
 a view in the King's Library, British Museum. 
 
 armed seamen both native and foreigners, that 
 happened to be in their port. The siege con- 
 tinued for eighteen days, and cost William a 
 gi-eat number of men; and when the city sur- 
 rendered at last, if we are to believe the Saxon 
 Chronicle, it was because their chiefs had again 
 betrayed them. The brave men of Exeter, how- 
 ever, obtained much more favom-able terms than 
 were then usual; for, though they were forced to 
 t,ake the oath, and admit a Norman garrison, 
 their lives, property, and privileges were secured 
 to them, and successful precautions were taken 
 by the Conqueror to prevent any outrage or 
 plunder. Having ordered a strong castle to be 
 built in the captured town, William returned 
 eastward to Winchester, where he was joined by 
 his wife Matilda, who had not hitherto been in 
 England. At the ensuing festival of Whitsun- 
 tide she was publicly crowned by Aldred, the 
 Ai-chbishop of York. On the siuTender of Exe- 
 
 3 Bishop Graudisson, on the authority of an old chronicle, 
 states that King Athelstaue founded a caitle here, which was 
 destroyed by the Danes in 1003. It was rebuilt by William the 
 Conqueror. After the surrender of Exeter to General Fairfa.T, 
 it was dismantled, and all its towers and battlements destroyed. 
 Tliere are now few remains of the builfling. The lofty giiteway 
 represented in the wood-cut is one of the most ancient vestiges. 
 The name Rougemont is considered to have been derived from 
 the red colour of the soil on wliich the castle st.and8. — Lyson'a 
 Magna Britannia.
 
 A.D. lOCG 1087. 
 
 WILLIAM Till'; CONQUEKOR. 
 
 185 
 
 ter, the aged Gitlia, with several lailies of rank, 
 escaped to Bath, and finding no safety there, 
 tliey fled to the small islands at the month of the 
 Severn, where they lay eoneealed until they found 
 an opportunity of passing over to Flanders. 
 
 Iliu-old's sons, Godwin and Ednaund, with a 
 younger brother named Magnus, again came 
 over from Ireland; and with a fleet hovered off 
 the coast of Devonshire and Cornwall, landing 
 occasionally, and inviting the people to join 
 them against the Normans. Nothing could be 
 more absurdly concerted than these movements. 
 Having rashly ventux'ed too f;u' into the country, 
 they were suddenly attacked by a Norman force 
 from Exeter, and defeated with great slaughter. 
 Their means were now exhausted, and, wearied 
 by their ill success, theii- Irish allies declined giv- 
 ing any further assistance to these exiles. The 
 sons of Harold next appeared as suppliants at 
 the court of Sweyn, King of Denmark. 
 
 During the spring and early summer of tliis 
 same j'ear (1068), William established his autho- 
 rity in De vonshii-e, Somersetshire, and Gloucester- 
 shire, and besides taking Exeter, made himself 
 master of Oxfoi-d and other fortified cities which 
 he had left in his rear wlien he advanced into 
 the west. V/herever his dominion was imposed, 
 the mass of land was given to his lords and 
 knights, and fortresses and castles were erected 
 and garrisoned by Normans and other foreigners, 
 wlio continued to cross the Channel in search of 
 employment, wealth, and honours. ^Meanwhile, 
 the accounts of the sufferings of the conquered 
 people, as given by the native chroniclers, are 
 thus condensed in a striking passage of Holin- 
 shed : — " He took away from divers of the no- 
 bility, and others of the better sort, all their 
 livings, and gave the same to his Noi-mans. 
 Moreover, he raised great taxes and subsidies 
 through the realm; nor anything regarded the 
 English nobility; so that they who before thought 
 themselves to be made for ever by bringing a 
 stranger into the realm, did now see themselves 
 trodden under foot, to be despised, and to be 
 mocked on all sides, insomuch that many of them 
 were constrained (as it were, for a fiu'ther testi- 
 mony of servitude and bondage) to shave their 
 beards, to round then- hah-, and to frame them- 
 selves, as well in apparel as in service and diet, 
 at their tables, after the Norman manner, very 
 strange and far differing from the ancient cus- 
 toms and old usages of their countty. Others, 
 utterly refusing to sustain such an intolerable 
 yoke of thi-aldom as was daily laid upon tliem 
 by the Noi-mans, chose rather to leave all, both 
 goods and lands, and, after the manner of out- 
 laws, got them to the woods with their wives, 
 children, and servants, meaning from thence- 
 forth to live upon the spoil of the country ad- 
 VOL. I. 
 
 joining, ami to take whatsoever came next to 
 hand. Whereupon it came to pass within a 
 while that no man might travel in safety from 
 his own liou.se or town to his next neighboui-s." 
 The bands of outlaws thus formed of imjiover- 
 ishod, des])erate men, were not 8Ui)pressed foi' 
 several successive reigns; and while the Normans 
 considered and treated them as banditti, the 
 English people long regai-<led them in the light 
 of unfortunate patriots. 
 
 Men of higher rank and more extended views 
 were soon among the fugitives from the pale of 
 the Conqueror. When in his conciliating mood, 
 William had promised Edwin, Earl of Mcrcia, 
 one of his daughters in inarri.-ige, and (lattered by 
 the prospect of such a prize, this ])owerf ul brother- 
 in-law of Harold liad rendered important services 
 to the Norman cause; but now, when he asked 
 his reward, the Conqueror not only refused the 
 fair bride, but insulted the suitor. Upon this, 
 Edwin, with his brother Morcar, absconded from 
 the Norman court, and went to the north of 
 England, there to join their incensed countrymen, 
 and make one general effort for the recovery of 
 tlieir ancient liberties. No foreign soldier had 
 as yet passed the Humber ; and it was behind 
 that river tliat Edwin and Morcar fixed the great 
 camp of independence, the most southern bul- 
 wark of which was the fortified city of York- 
 Among the men of Yorkshire and Northurabria 
 they found some thoTisands of hardy warriors, 
 who swore they would not sleep under the roof 
 of a house till the day of victory, and they were 
 joined by some allies from the mountains of 
 Wales and other parts. The ever active Con- 
 queror, however, came upon them before they 
 were prepared. His march, considering tlie 
 many obstacles he had to overcome, was wonder- 
 fully rapid. Advancing from Oxford, he took 
 Warwick and Leicester, the latter of which places 
 he almost entirely destroyed. Then crossing the 
 Trent, wliich he had not seen till now, he fell 
 upon Derby and Nottingham. From Nottingham 
 he marched upon Lincoln, which he forced to 
 capitulate and deliver hostages, and thence press- 
 ing forward might and main, he came to the 
 river Ouse, near the jjoint where it falls into the 
 Humber. Here he found Edwin and Morcar 
 drawn out to oppose him. The battle wliich 
 immediately ensued was fierce in the extreme ; 
 but, as at Hasting.s, then- superiority in num- 
 ber, arms, and discipline, gave the Normans the 
 victory. Many of the English perished; the rest 
 retreated to York, within tha walls of which they 
 hoped to find refuge; but the conquerors, follow- 
 ing them closely, broke through the walls and 
 entered the city, destroying everything with fire 
 and sword, and massacring all they found, from 
 the boy to the old man. The wi'eck of tlie pa- 
 24
 
 1S6 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and MiLiTAr.y. 
 
 triotic army lied to the Humbur, and descended 
 tliat estuai-y in boats ; they tlieu turned to tlie 
 nortli, and landed iu the country of the Scotch 
 or in the territory near the Borders, which became 
 the places of refuge of all the brave men of the 
 north, who did not yet desjiair of liberty.' 
 
 The victors, who were not prepared to advance 
 faa-ther, built a strong citadel at York, which 
 became their advanced post and bulwai'k towards 
 the north. A chosen garrison of 500 knights and 
 men-at-arms, with a host of squires and servants- 
 at-arms, was left at this dangerous post. So 
 perilous, indeed, was it considered, from the well- 
 known martial and obstinate chai'acter of the men 
 that dwelt beyond its walls, that the Normans 
 labom-ed day and night to sti-engthen their posi- 
 tion, forcing the poor inhabitants of York who 
 had escaped the massacre to dig deep ditches and 
 build strong walls for them. Fearing to be be- 
 sieged in their- tm-n, they also collected all the 
 stores and provisions they could. 
 
 In spite of his successes in the north, and his 
 firm establishment in the midland counties, where 
 he built castles and gave away earldoms, the 
 Comiueror's throne was still threatened, and the 
 country still agitated from one end to the other. 
 The English chiefs, who had hitherto adhered to 
 his cause, fell oif, at first one by one, and then 
 in troops together, following up their defection 
 with concerted plans of operation against him. 
 To these was added a fugitive of still higher ranlc, 
 of whose custody the Conqueror was very negli- 
 gent. At the instance of Marleswine, Cospatric, 
 and some otlier noblemen, Edgar AtheUug fled by 
 sea into Scotland, taking his mother, Agatha, the 
 widow of Edmund, son of Edmund Ironside, and 
 his two sisters, Margaret and Christina, with him. 
 These royal fugitives were received with gi-eat 
 honour and kindness, and conducted to his castle 
 of Dunfermline by the Scottish monarch, Mal- 
 colm Canmore. Edgar's sister Margaret was 
 young and handsome; "and in process of time, 
 the said King Malcolm cast such love unto the 
 said Margaret, that he took her to wife."- Some 
 of the English nobles had preceded Edgar to 
 Scotland ; many followed him ; and these emi- 
 grants, and others that arrived from the same 
 
 1 '< A more general proof of the i-uinous oppression of William 
 the Conqueror may be deduced from the comparative condition 
 of the English towns in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and 
 at the compilation of Doomsday, At the fonner epoch there 
 were, in York, G07 inhabited houses — at the latter, 967; at the 
 fonner there were, in Oxford, 721 — at the latter, 243; of 172 
 houses in Dorchester, 100 were destroyed; of 243 in Derby, 103; 
 of 4S7 in Chester, 205. Some other towns had suffered less, but 
 scarcely any one fails to exhibit marks of a deciyed population. 
 As to the relative numbers of the pe<Tsantry and value of lauds 
 at these two periods, it would not be easy to .issert anything 
 without .a laborious ei.amination of Doomsday Book. " — Ilallara, 
 Slate of Europe duriufj the Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 42G. 
 
 2 Grafton. 
 
 quarter on vai-ious subsequent occasions, became 
 the founders of a principal part of the Scottish 
 
 nobility. 
 
 It is probable that William did not mourn 
 much for the departure of the English thanes; 
 but presently he was vexed and embarrassed by 
 the depai'ture of some of his Norman chiefs who 
 had followed him from the Continent. These 
 warriors, wearied by the constant surprises and 
 attacks of the English, and seeing no term to 
 that desultory and destructive warfare, longed 
 for the quiet of then- own homes. Some con- 
 sidered themselves enriched enough by the phm- 
 der they had made; others thought that estates 
 in England were not worth the ti-ouble and dan- 
 ger with which they were to be obtained and se- 
 cured; others, again, wanted to join their wives, 
 who were constantly pressing them to return; 
 for it appears that few or none of them had as 
 yet thought it safe to bring then' families to Eng- 
 land. William tried to reanimate their zeal by 
 offers more boimtiful than ever, and by promis- 
 ing lands, money, and honours m abimdauce the 
 moment the conquest of England should be com- 
 pleted. In spite, however, of all these manoeu- 
 %Tes, Hugh de Grantmesnil, Eai'l of Norfolk, his 
 brother-in-law, Humphrey Tilleuil, the warden 
 of Hastings Castle, and a great number of others, 
 retu-ed from the service, and re-crossed the Chan- 
 nel. The king punished this desertion by imme- 
 diately confiscating all the possessions they had 
 obtained in om* island. Foreseeing, however, 
 that he was about to be suiTounded by gi-eat dif- 
 ficulties and dangers, he sent his own wife Ma- 
 tilda back to Normandy, that she might be in a 
 place of safety. At the same time he invited 
 fresh adventurers and soldiers of fortvme from 
 nearly every country in Europe; and, alhu-ed by 
 his brilliant offers, bands flocked to him from the 
 banks of the Khine, the Seine, the Loire, the Ga- 
 ronne, and the Tagus — from the Alps, and the 
 Italian peninsula beyond the Alps. 
 
 The strong gaiTison which the 
 A.D. 10G9. Conqueror had left at York could 
 scarcely adventure a mile in advance of that post 
 without being attacked by the natives, who lay 
 constantly in ambush in all the woods and glens. 
 The governor, AVilliam Malet, was soon fain to 
 declare that he would not answer for the secui'ity 
 of York itself imless prompt succom- was sent 
 him. On receiving this alarmmg news, William 
 marched in person, and arrived before York just 
 as the citizens, in league with all the country 
 people of the neighbourhood, were besieging the 
 Norman fortress. Having raised this siege by a 
 sudden attack, he laid the foundations of a second 
 castle in York, and, leaving a double garrison, re- 
 turned southward. Soon after his departm'e, the 
 English made a second attempt to drive the enemy
 
 A.D. lOGG— 1087.] 
 
 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 187 
 
 from their fortress, Vmt they were repulsed with 
 loss; and tlie second o.istle and other works were 
 finished without further interruption. Tliinkinjr 
 them.selves now secure in this advanced post, the 
 Normans resumed the oll'ensive, and made a des- 
 perate attempt to extend tlieir frontier as far 
 north as Durham. Tlie advance was made by a 
 certain Eobert de Comine, to whom William had 
 promised a vast territory yet to be conquered. 
 
 This Eobert set out from York with much 
 pomp and circumstance, having assumed, by an- 
 ticipation, the title of Earl of Northumberland. 
 EEis army was not large, consisting only of 1200 
 lances; but his confidence was boundless. He 
 crossed the Tees, and was within sight of the 
 walls of Durham, which the Normans called "the 
 stronghold of the rebels of the north," when 
 Egelwiii, the English bishop of that place, came 
 forth to meet him, and informed him that the na- 
 tives had vowed to destroy him, or be destroyed, 
 and warned him not to expose himself with so 
 small a force. Comine treated the warning with 
 contempt, and marched on. The Normans en- 
 tered Durham, massacring a few defenceless men. 
 The soliliei's quartered tliemselves in the houses 
 of the citizens, plundering or wasting theii- sub- 
 stance; and the chief himself took possession of 
 the bishop's palace. But when night fell, the 
 people lighted signal-fij-es on the hills, that were 
 seen as far as the Tees to the south, and as far 
 northward as the river Tyne; and, at the sum- 
 mons, the inhabitants gathered in great numbers, 
 and hurried to Durham. At the point of day 
 they rushed into the city, and attacked the Nor- 
 mans on all sides. Many were killed before they 
 could well rouse themselves from the deep sleep 
 induced by the fatigue of the preceding day's 
 mai'ch, and the i-evelry and debauch of the night. 
 The rest attempted to rally in the bishop's house, 
 where then- leader had established his quarters. 
 They defended this post for a short time, dis- 
 charging then- arrows and other missiles on the 
 heads of theu- assailants, but the English ended 
 the combat by setting fii-e to the house, which 
 was bm-ned to the ground, with Eobert de Comine 
 and all the Normans in it. The chroniclers re- 
 late, that of all the men engaged in the expedi- 
 tion only two escaped. 
 
 When the Northumbrians struck the blow at 
 Durham, they were expecting powerfid allies, 
 who soon arrived. As we have so often had oc- 
 casion to repeat, these men, with the inhabitants 
 of most of the Danelagh, were exceedingly fierce 
 and warlike, and chiefly of Danish blood. Many 
 of the old men had followed the victorious banner 
 of the gi-eat Canute into England, or had served 
 under his sons. Kings Hai-old Harefoot and Har- 
 dicanute ; and the sons of these old warriors were 
 now in the vigour of mature manhood. Tlun- 
 
 had always maintained an intercoui-se witli Den- 
 mark, and as soon as tliey saw themselves threat- 
 ened by llie Normans, they a])])lied to that coun- 
 try for a.ssistance. The coiu't of the Danisli king 
 was soon crowded by su]i])licants from the Dane- 
 lagh, from Norwich and Lincoln, to York, Dur- 
 ham, and Newcastle. There were also envoys 
 from other jiarts of the kingdom, where the Saxon 
 blood predominated, and the sons of King Harold 
 added their efforts to ui-ge the Danish monarch 
 to the invasion of England. At the same time 
 the men of Northumberland had opened a coiTe- 
 spondeuce with Malcolm Canniore and his guest 
 Edgar Atheling, and allied themselves with the 
 English refugees in Scotland and on the IJorder. 
 Even supposing that the sons of Harold made no 
 pretensions to the crown, there must have been 
 some jealousy and confusion in this confederacy; 
 for while one party to it held the weak Edgar as 
 legitimate sovereign, another maintained that by 
 right of succession the King of Denmark was 
 King of England. It seems well established that 
 the- Danish monarch, Sweyn Estridsen, held the 
 latter opinion; and the ill success of the confede- 
 racy may pi-obably be attributed to the disunion 
 inevitably arising from such clashing interests 
 and pretensions. As soon as the battle of Has- 
 tings was known, and before any invitations were 
 sent over, Sweyn had contemjjlated a descent on 
 England. To avert this danger, William had 
 recoui'se to Adelbert, the Ai-chbishop of Bremen, 
 who, won by pei-suasion and presents of large 
 sums of money, imdertook the negotiation, and 
 endeavoured to make the Danish king renounce 
 his jjroject. 
 
 Two years passed withoiit auj^thing more being 
 heard of the Danish invasion; but when in this, 
 the thu-d year after the battle of Hastings, the 
 solicitations of the English emigrants were more 
 m-gent than ever, and the men of the north, his 
 natural allies, were up in arms, the powerful 
 Dane despatched a fleet of 240 sail, with orders 
 to act in conjunction with the King of Scotland 
 and the Northumbrians. The army embarked 
 in this fleet was composed of almost as many 
 heterogeneous materials as the mercenary force 
 of WiUiam; besides Danes and Holsteiners, there 
 were Frisians, Saxons, Poles, and adventui-ei-s 
 from other countries, tempted by the hope of 
 plunder.' The Danish kmg gave the supreme 
 command of the fleet to his brother Csbeorn. 
 After alanning the Normans in the south-east, 
 at Dover, Sandwich, ami Ipswicli, the Danes 
 went northward to the Humber, and sailed up 
 that estuai-y to the Ouse, where they landed 
 about the middle of August. It appeai-s that 
 Osbeorn was not able to prevent his motley army 
 
 ' Sovitlioy, Ararat //tV(.
 
 1S8 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militart. 
 
 from plundering and wasting tlie country. As 
 soon, however, as the Anglo-Dauea, the men of 
 Yorkshire and Nortliumbcrland, were advised 
 of the arrival of the armament, they flocked to 
 join it from all jiarts of the country; and Edgar 
 Atheling, with Mai'leswme, Cospatrio, Waltheof 
 the sou of Si ward, the gi-eat enemy of Macbeth, 
 Archil, the five sons of Carl, aud many other 
 English nobles, arrived from the frontiers of 
 Scotland, bearing the consoling assurance that, 
 in addition to the force they brought with them, 
 Malcolm Canmore was advancing with a Scottish 
 army to support the insurgents. York was close 
 at hand, and they determined to commence ope- 
 rations by the attack of the Norman fortifications 
 in that city. The Normans had rendered the 
 walls of the town so strong that they defended 
 them seven days; on the eighth day of the siege 
 they set fii-e to the liouses that stood near their 
 citadels, in oi-der that then- assailants might not 
 use the materials to fill up the ditches of the 
 castles, and then they shut themselves up within 
 those lines. A strong wind arose — the flames 
 spread in all directions; the minster, or cathedral 
 church, with its famous library, and great part 
 of the city, was consumed; and even within then- 
 castles the Normans saw themselves thi-eatened 
 with a horrid death by the tLre they had kindled. 
 Preferring death by the sword aud battle-axe to 
 being biu-ned alive, they made a sally, and were 
 slain, almost to a man, by an enemy far superior 
 in number, and inflamed with the fiercest hatred. 
 They had suffered no such loss since the fight of 
 Hastings; 3000 Normans and mercenaries of dif- 
 ferent races fell; and only William Malet, the 
 governor of York, with his wife and chilch-en, 
 and a few other men of rank, were saved and 
 carried on board the Danish fleet, where they were 
 kept for ransom. Such pai-ts of the city of York 
 as escaped the conflagration were occupied by or 
 for Edgar Atheling. A rapid advance to the 
 south, after the capture of York, with no enemy 
 iu their rear, might have insured the confederates 
 a signal and perhaps a decisive success; but the 
 King of Scotland did not appear with his pro- 
 mised ai-my, and at the approach of winter the 
 Danes retired to then- ships in the Humber, or 
 took up quarters between the Ouse and the 
 Trent. William was thus allowed time to collect 
 his forces aud bring over fresh troops from the 
 Continent. 
 
 The Conqueror was himting in the forest of 
 Dean when he received the first news of the 
 catastrophe of York ; and then and there he 
 swore, by the splendom- of the Almighty, that 
 he would utterly exterminate the Northumbrian 
 people, nor ever lay down liis lance when he had 
 once taken it up, until he had done the deed. 
 He forthwith opened secret negotiations with 
 
 Osbeorn, and finally succeeded, by means of gold 
 and other presents, in inducing him to agi-ee to 
 withdraw his Danish fleet and army, and to give 
 no more assistance to the Northumljrians. With 
 the earliest spring William took the field, riding 
 at the head of the finest and most numerous 
 cavaliy that had ever been seen in England, and 
 causing his infantiy to follow by forced marches. 
 As he thus advanced the English rose nearly 
 everywhere in his real', i-e-commencing a war on 
 many different points at once. An inferior com- 
 mander would have Tieen confused by this multi- 
 plicity of attacks, and inevitably ruined; but Wil- 
 liam did not sufler his attention to be distracted, 
 and steadily pursued liis com'se to the north, 
 where he knew the great blow must be struck. 
 
 The defenders of York learned nearly at the 
 same moment that the ruthless Conqiieror was 
 approaching their walls, and tliat their faithless 
 allies, the Danes, had abandoned them, and wex-e 
 sailing awa}' for the south, where, according to 
 the compact they had made, they were to be per- 
 mitted to victual, and to phmder the English. 
 Abandoned as they were, aud ill provided with 
 defences — for in their rage they had utterly de- 
 stroyed the two castles — they made an obstinate 
 resistance; nor was York taken imtil many hun- 
 ch'eds of English and Normans lay dead together. 
 Edgar Atheling, escaiiing with his life, and little 
 else, fled for a second time to the court of the 
 Scottish king. Elated by his victory, William 
 spent but a short time in York, and then con- 
 tinued his march northward. His rage had not 
 moderated with time, and he thought it wise and 
 good policy to carry into effect the fearful vow 
 he had made iu the forest of Dean. His troops 
 required no excitement from him; the destruc- 
 tion of their comrades at Durham and York in 
 the preceding year, and the loss they had just 
 sustained themselves at the latter city, rankled 
 in then- savage minds, and they thi-ew themselves 
 on the territory of Northumbria in a frenzy of 
 vengeance, w.asting the cultivated fields, bui'uing 
 towns and villages, aud massacring indiscrimi- 
 nately flocks, herds, and men. To accomplish this 
 havoc over a great width of country, they mai'ched 
 iu separate columns. An English army, com- 
 manded by Cospatric, and very mferior iu num- 
 bers, retreated before the Normans into Scotland. 
 Egelwin, the Bishoj) of Durham — the .same who 
 had given the fruitless warning to Kobert de 
 Comine — assembled the mhabitants of that city, 
 and, like a good shepherd, proposed to conduct 
 his flock to a place of safety, out of the reach of 
 what an old rhyming chronicler calls " Noi-mans, 
 Burgolouns,' thieves, and felons." Leaving their 
 homes to become the prey of the enemy, but 
 
 ' Bvirgundians.
 
 A.u. UIC6-1087.] 
 
 WILLIAM THE COXQUEROK. 
 
 189 
 
 carrying witli them tlie body or bones of St. 
 Cutlibert, these wretclieil people followed their 
 bishop across the Tyiie to Lindisfarnc or Holy 
 Island, near the mouth of the Tweed; and the 
 Normans a second time entered DiU'ham, but in 
 such force as to leave thcni no grounds for appre- 
 hending a repetition of the tragedy that had ter- 
 minated their iu-st visit. Ilaving fortified Dur- 
 ham, the invaders pushed forward to the Tyne, 
 continuing their- work of devastation, and feeling 
 theii- thii-st for blood unslaked. A havoc more 
 complete and diabolical was never perpetrated. 
 The Normau and French chroniclers and histo- 
 i'i;ms join the English in naj'rating and deploring 
 (he catastrophe which, even in those times of 
 \ iolence and blood, seems to have overpowered 
 men's minds with a wild horror and wonderment. 
 William of Malmesbury, who WTote in the reign 
 of Stephen, about eighty years after, says, 
 "From York to Durham not an inhabited village 
 remained. Fire, slaughter, and desolation made 
 a vast -wilderness there, which continues to this 
 day." From Durham north to Hexham, from 
 the Wear to the Tj-ne, the remorseless Conqueror 
 continued the same infernal process. Orderic 
 Vitalis denounces the "feralis occisio" the dismal 
 slaughter; and says that more than 100,000 vic- 
 tims perished. The fields in culture were burned, 
 and the cattle and the corn in the barns carried 
 oft" by the conquerors, who made a famine where 
 they could not maintain themselves by the sword. 
 After eating the flesh of dead horses which the 
 Normans left behind them, the people of York- 
 shire and Northumberland, driven to the last 
 extremity, are said to have made many a loath- 
 some repast on human flesh.' Pestilence followed 
 in the wake of famine; and as a completion to 
 this picture of horror, we are informed that some 
 of the English, to escape death by hunger, sold 
 themselves, with theu- wives and children, as 
 slaves to the Noi-man soldiery, who were well 
 provided with corn and provisions, purchased on 
 the Continent with gold and goods robbed from 
 the English. 
 
 On his retm-n from Hexham to York, by an 
 imperfectly known and indirect ro^ite across the 
 Fells, AVilliam was well nigh perishing. The 
 snow was still deep in those parts, and the rivers, 
 torrents, ravines, and moimtains continually pre- 
 sented obstacles to which the Normans had been 
 little accustomed in the level coimties of Eng- 
 liind. The army fell into confusion, the king 
 lost the track, and passed a whole night with- 
 out knowing where he was, or what dii-ection his 
 troops had taken. He did not reach York with- 
 out a serious loss, for he left behind him most of 
 his horses, which were said to have perished in 
 
 1 Ftonnt. Wigorn, 
 
 the snow; his men also sulTered the severast pri- 
 vations. 
 
 Confiscation now became almost general. A 11 
 l)roperty in laud, whether belonging to patriotic 
 chiefs, or to men who had taken no active part iu 
 the conflict, began to pass into the possession of 
 the Normans and other foreigners. Nor was 
 movable property safer or more respected. Wil- 
 liam's commissioners, who in many places per- 
 formed their work sword in hand, did not alwayu 
 draw a distinction between the plate and jewels 
 left in deposit and the treasures that belonged to 
 the monasteries themselves, but carried off the 
 church ornaments and the vessels of silver or 
 gold that were attached to the service of the altar. 
 They also removed or destroyed all deeds and 
 documents, chartei's of immunities, and evidences 
 of property. The newly-conquered territoiy in 
 the north was distributed in immense lots. 
 William de Garenne had twenty-eight villages; 
 William de Percy more than eighty manoi-s. Iu 
 Doomsdaj/ Book, which was drawn up fifteen 
 
 Keep or Richmond Casti.e.'— Wliitakoi's History or Rich- 
 niondshire. 
 
 years after the Norman occupation of them, mast 
 of these domains are described as lying fallow or 
 waste. Vast tracts of country to the north of 
 the city of York fell to the lot of Allan the Bre- 
 
 - Eiclimond Ciutlo is undoretood to have been founded by 
 Al.in Rufiui, son of Hoel, Count of Bretagno, a kinsman of Wil- 
 liam tlie Comiuoror, by whom ho was created E.arl of Richmond. 
 It is situated on a precipitous rock, wliich rises upwai-ds of 
 100 ft. above the rivar Swale. The mccossors to the founder in 
 the earldom of Richmond .added to the e.\lerior defences, but 
 the Nonn.an keep, about 100 ft. high, with walla 11 ft. tluck, 
 remains unchanged, and almost entire.
 
 190 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 ton, who erected a castle and other works of de- 
 fence on a steep hill, nearly surrounded on all 
 sides by the river Swale. Like most of the chiefs 
 of the conquering army, he gave a French name to 
 the place — he called it RichemorU or Richmount, 
 now liiclimond. Dreux Bruere, the chief of a 
 band of Flemish auxiliaries, had the eastern part of 
 Yorkshire, between the rivers and the sea. The 
 territory of this Fleming was afterwards conferred 
 on Eudes of Champaign, who married a half- 
 sister of the Conqueror. When Eudes' wife was 
 delivered of a son, he represented to the king 
 that his lands were not at all fertile, producing 
 only oats, and prayed he would make him a grant 
 of an estate proper to bear wheat, that he might 
 have wherewith to make wheaten bread for his 
 infant, the king's nephew. King William pre- 
 sented him with some lands to his heart's wish, 
 in Lincolnshire. Gamel, who came from Meaux, 
 with a troop of his own townsmen, established 
 himself in lauds adjoining the Yorkshire posses- 
 sions of Eudes of Champaign; and Basin, Sivard, 
 Francon,and Richard D'Estouteville ai-e mentioned 
 as landholders and neighbours of Gamel of 
 Meaux. The vast domain of Poutefi-act was the 
 shai-e of Gilbert de Lacy, who soon afterwards 
 extended the Norman conquest in Lancashire 
 and Cheshii-c, and obtained three estates still 
 more extensive.' Every baron erected his castle; 
 and in every populous town there was a strong- 
 fortress, where the Normans confined the prin- 
 cipal natives as hostages, and into which they 
 could retire in case of an insmTection. William 
 did not advance farther than Hexham; but some 
 of his captains continued the progi-ess both to 
 the north and to the west, though their tenm-e 
 of the land was scaa-cely seom-ed imtil some years 
 latei-, when the mountainous country of West- 
 moreland and Cumberland, and the adjacent part 
 of Northumberland, were reduced by vai-ious 
 chiefs. The first Eai-1 of Cumberland was a cer- 
 
 ' Tliieny, Hitstoire de la Conqucte. 
 
 • "A peculiar aspect is given to the English annals by the 
 Norman conquest. In tracing the progress of the other gi-eat 
 nations of moJern Eui'ope, from their first establishment on the 
 ruins of the Roman empu'e to their fnU development as states 
 and kingdoms, we pursue our inquiries, amidst the changes and 
 revolutions of dynasties, with difficulty and hesit.ation; yet we 
 do_ not meet with any catastrophe occasioning so sudden and 
 jarring an interruption .as that great event, which, cousidered 
 as an historical incident, h.os no pjirallel in character. Even in 
 Spain, where so many kingdoms were rendered aliens to Christ- 
 endom, the lineal succession of the nation seems to be more un- 
 broken than in England. Wo arrive at the period when the 
 whole Gothic monai'chy is sheltered in the caverns of Covadonga, 
 yet it still survives ; Pelayo and his descendants are the la^vf ul 
 successors of Hermeneric and Athanagild; Clstde and Leon are 
 gradually reijeopled by those who, proud of the name of Goths, 
 issue forth from the mountain fastnesses, in whicli they have 
 preserved the laws which their ancestors .adopted .and the lan- 
 giuigo which they assumed. Not so in Engl.aud, where the Nor- 
 man conquest forma a dark, detennined boimdary-line — where 
 the accession of William becomes an era ul>on which we are ac- 
 
 tain Renouf Mescliines, who divided the domains 
 and handsome women of the country among his 
 followers, thus following out the feudal sj'stem 
 fully established by William. Simon, the son of 
 Thorn, the English proprietor of two rich manoi-s, 
 had three daughters ; one of these Meschinea 
 gave to Humjjhrey, his man-at-arms; the second 
 he gave to Eaoul, nicknamed Turtcs- mains 
 (crooked hands); and the thu'd he reserved for 
 his squire, William of St. Paul. In the north of 
 Northumbei'laud, Ives de Vescy took possession 
 of the town of Alnwick, along with the gi-aud- 
 daughter and all the inheritance of a Saxon who 
 had died in battle. Robert de Bruce obtained, 
 by conquest, several manors, and the dues of 
 Hartlepool, the seaport of Diu-ham. Robert 
 D'Omfreville had the forest of Riddesdale, which 
 belonged to Mildred the Saxon, the son of Ak- 
 man. On his receiving investiture of this domain, 
 D'Omfreville swore that he would clear the land 
 of wolves and the enemies of the Conqueror. 
 The nominal government of Noi-thumberland 
 was, however, intrusted to a native who had re- 
 cently borne arms against William. This was 
 Cospatric, who came in with Waltheof, the brave 
 son of Siward, with Morcar and Edwin, the bro- 
 thers-in-law of King Harold, and submitted to 
 WUIiam for the second time, being probably in- 
 duced thereto bj' liberal promises from the Con 
 queror, who then considered them as the main 
 projo of the English cause, wanting whom Edgar 
 Atheling would at once fall into insignificance. 
 The reward of Cospatric we have mentioned ; 
 Waltheof was made E;u-1 of Huntingdon and 
 Northampton, and received the hand of Judith, 
 one of King William's nieces; and Morcar and 
 Edwin were restored to their paternal estates. 
 In reality, however, these fom- men were little 
 better than prisoners, and three of them perished 
 miserably iu a very short time." 
 The insurrections which broke out in William's 
 
 customed to found chronologies and calcuLations — a term of 
 beginning and of ending. Hence it has become extremely diffi- 
 ciUt to disconnect the tr.ain of ideas suggested by the Conquest, 
 from the views which we t.ake of Anglo-S<axon history and of 
 the growth and progress of the law; and we should be always on 
 oiu- guard lest we shoidd be misled by the impressions wliich we 
 xincousciously receive. 
 
 " Wliatever colour of right may be given to the title by which 
 William cLaimed the crown — by whatever efforts he m.ay have 
 attempted to acquire the character of a lawful sovereign, and 
 not of an invader — still his triumph appeared toplacethe English 
 people in the lowest state of degradation. Even after the lapse 
 of centuries, the Conquest coiUd not be considered with impar- 
 tiality; for when England was contending against tliose sove- 
 reigns who labom-ed to subvert her civil and religioiis liberties, 
 the arguments founded upon the occupation of the kingdom by 
 the Normans were still mooted by the zealous advocates who 
 fanned the flames of mutual hostility, and who prosecuted their 
 discussions, not as points of abstriict mqiury, or as the themes of 
 historical research, but as subjects of vital and practical import- 
 ance. Doovuday was the authentic record of the entire and 
 unqualified subjection of the English r.ace in the eyes of the in-
 
 A.n. lOGG -10S7.J 
 
 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 IDl 
 
 rear, during bis march to York, were partially 
 suppressed by bis lieuteuauts, who suffered some 
 reverses, aud perpetrated great cruelties. The 
 garrison of Exeter, besieged by the people of 
 Cornwall, was relieved by l'"itz-Osbonie; IMouta- 
 cute repulsed the insurgents of Devonshire aud 
 Somersetshire; and Edrio the Forester, who took 
 the town of Shrewsbury, with the help of the 
 men of Chester aud some Welsh, was foiled in 
 his attempt to reduce the castle. The whole of 
 the north-west was, however, in a very insecure 
 state; aud the h.aste with which William miu-chcd 
 thither on his retiu'u to York from Hexham, 
 seems to denote some greater peril on the side of 
 the Normans than is expressed by any of the an- 
 nalists. Tlie weather was still inclement, and 
 
 his troops were fatigued by their recent exer- 
 tions, their rajnd mai-ches aud counter-marches 
 iu Northumberland; yet he led them, amidst 
 storms of sleet and hail, across the mountains 
 which divide our island lengthwise, and which 
 have been called, not inappropriately, the Appe- 
 nuies of England. The roads he took, as being 
 those which led direct to Chester, were scarcely 
 passable for cavalry, and his troops were annoyed 
 and disheartened by actual diliiculties and pro- 
 spective hardships and dangei-s. The auxiliaiies, 
 pai-ticularly the men of Anjou and Brittany, 
 began to murmm- aloud; and not a few of the 
 Normans, complaining of the hard service to 
 which their chief was exposing them, talked of 
 returning beyond sea. William silenced their 
 
 .:_" 1 4t^ta-'t-^i 
 
 Wateii Tower and Walls of Chkster.' — J. S. Prout, from his sketch on the spot. 
 
 murmiu-s with his wonted art; and on the rougn 
 way over the wealds he paitook in the fatigues 
 of the common soldiers, marching on foot with 
 them, aud faring as they fared. Chester, which 
 still retained the outer features of a Roman city, 
 aud where the Conqueror gazed on Roman walls 
 and gates then comparatively entire, had not yet 
 been invaded by the Normans. No defence, how- 
 ever, was attemiJted there ; aud, after entering iu 
 triumph, William proceeded to lay the founda- 
 tions of a new aud strong castle, while detach- 
 
 culcitors of indefeasible hereditai-y right, who sought to prove 
 that all the boasted franchises of England had proceeded from 
 the mere motion and bounty of the sovereign, and were there- 
 fore revocable at the will .and plcisuro of him who had m.ado 
 the grants. In reasoning .ag.ain3t these opinions, the earnest ant.a- 
 gonists of prerogative and arbitr.ai7 power sought to strengthen 
 th.e rights of the people by the assertion of their antiquity; thoy 
 discovered the English parliament, with all its powers and 
 members, in the obscure witenagemot of the Saxon ago, and 
 endeavoured to prove that the safeguards of liberty survived, 
 though Harold had fallen on the field."— Palgrave, The Rise and 
 Progress o/Uie Enpiish (hmmomcciiUh, vol. i. p. 51. 
 
 ments of his army reduced the surrounding coim- 
 try. During the Conqueror's stay Edric the Fo- 
 rester submitted, and was received into favom-. 
 From Chester William marched^to Salisbury, 
 where he distributed rewards among the merce- 
 naries, a part of whom he disbanded; and from 
 Salisbury he repaired to his strong citadel or 
 palace at Winchester, which city liecame a favour- 
 ite abode witli him, as it had been with his Saxon 
 predecessors. To retain the newly-conquered pro- 
 vince in the north-west, he had left a strong body 
 
 • Chester is conjectured to have had its origin in one of the 
 fortresses constructed by Ostorius Scapula, for the security of 
 the Roman .army after the discomfituro of C.aract.acus. It is 
 certam that Chester was a walled city before 90S, and there is 
 no reason to doubt that the walls were originally built by the 
 Romans. It had four principal gates, besides posterns — these 
 were the North-gate, E.ist-gato, Bridge-gate, .and W.ater-gato; and 
 on the walls there were formerly several toweiu The Water 
 Tower projects towards the river Deo, and large iix>n ringa ai-o 
 attached to it, for the purjioso of fastening vessels, wliich, before 
 the harbour w.as choked with saTid-s, came up to the walls, — . 
 Lyson's Marfna Lritannia.
 
 102 
 
 HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 fOll'IL AND MlLlTAnV. 
 
 of troojis lioliind him, under tl\e cominaiul of ii 
 Fleming, nauini.1 Glu-rbaiul, who became the first 
 Count or Earl of Chester. This Gherliaiul was 
 soon wearied by the constant fatigues and diuigers 
 of his post; for the English rose whenever they 
 found an opportunity, and the mountaineers from 
 North Wales harassed him incessantly, so that 
 lie was glad to resign his command, fiefs, and 
 honours, and retm'n to his own country. The 
 Conqueror then griinted tlie earldom of Chester 
 to Hugh D'Avranches, a more warlike and mucli 
 fiercer commander, who earned, even in that ago, 
 the surname of " the Wolf." Not satisfied with 
 defensive operations, the new earl immediately 
 crossed the Dee, invaded North Wales, made him- 
 self master of a part of Flintshirej and built a 
 
 RnuDDLAN Castle, Fiintsliiie. ' — Gixise's Antiqiiitiea. 
 
 castle at Ehuddlan, thus taking an important step 
 towards the subjugation of the Welsh, a project 
 the Normans never abandoned until it was com- 
 pleted, two centuries later, by Edward I. Hugh 
 the Wolf and his ferocious followers, roused to 
 even more than their usual ferocity by the obsti- 
 nate and fierce resistance they encountered, shed 
 the blood of the Welsh like water, and burned 
 and wasted their houses and lands. The fearful 
 tragedy of Northumberland and Yorkslm-e was 
 repeated on a smaller scale in this corner of the 
 island, and famine and pestilence stalked along 
 
 1 This castle stands on the eastern side of the river Clwyd, 
 within about two miies of its inflitx: into the sea. It was built, 
 according to Camden, by Llewellin ap Sitsliilt, Prince of Wales, 
 and is reported to have been a principal palace of the Welsh 
 princes; but was burned, a.d. 10G3, in an excursion made by Har- 
 old, afterwards King of England, in retaliation for the depre- 
 dations committed by the Welsh on the English bordem. It was 
 strengthened by Edward I. in 1273. It belongs to the crown. 
 
 the banks of the Clwj-d, the Dee, ami the ISfcr- 
 sey, as they had done hy the rivers of the north- 
 eastern coast. 
 
 The distiu-bances on the eastern coast, wliirli 
 had been overlooked, now grew to such import- 
 ance as to demand attention. Hereward, " Eng- 
 land's darling," as he was called by liis admiring 
 countrymen, was Lord of Brunn or Bourn, in 
 Lincolnshire, and one of the most resolute chiefs 
 the Normans ever had to encounter. Having ex- 
 pelled the foreigners, who had taken possession 
 of his patrimony, he assisted his neighbours in 
 doing the like, and then established a fortified 
 camp in the Isle of Ely, where he raised the ban- 
 ner of independence, and bade defiance to the 
 Conqueror. His power or influence soon extended 
 along the eastern sea-line, over 
 the fen ooimtry of Lincolnshire, 
 Huntingdon, and Cambridge ; 
 and English refugees of all 
 classes — thanes dispossessed of 
 their lands, bishops deprived of 
 their mitres, abbots driven from 
 their monasteries to make room 
 for foreigners — repaired from 
 time to time to his " camp of 
 refuge." The jealous fears of 
 the king increased the danger 
 they were intended to lessen. 
 Though Edwin and Morcar re- 
 mained perfectly quiet, and 
 showed every disposition to keep 
 their oaths of allegiance, he 
 dreaded them, on account of 
 their great popularity with their 
 countrymen, and he finally re- 
 solved to seize their persons. 
 The two earls received timely 
 notice of this intention, and 
 secreted themselves. When he 
 thought the vigilance of the Normans was lulled, 
 Edwin endeavoured to escape to the Scottisli bor- 
 der; but he was betrayed by three of his attend- 
 ants, and fell on the road, gallantly fighting 
 against his Norman pursuers, who cut oif his 
 head, and sent it as an acceptable present to the 
 Conqueror.- Morcar effected his escape to the 
 morasses of Cambridgeshii-e, and joined Here- 
 ward, whose camp was further crowded about this 
 time by many of the English chiefs of the north, 
 who had been di'iven homeless into Scotland. 
 Among the eecle.siastics of Northumbria who 
 took this course was Egelwin, the Bishop of 
 Durham. Even Stigand, the Primate of all 
 England, but now degi-aded by king and pope, 
 and replaced by Lanfranc, an Italian, is men- 
 tioned among the refugees of Ely.^ 
 
 - Orcleric. Vital.; H. Hvnt. 
 
 ^ M. Thien-y's view of the Nonnan conquest is, that it waij the
 
 A.n. 10GG^10S7,] 
 
 V; ILL] AM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 19.*^ 
 
 William at len«^th moved with a formidable 
 army. The difficulties of this war on the eastern 
 coast were different from, but not inferior to what 
 the Normans had encountered in the west and 
 the north. There were no mountains and defiles, 
 but the country was in good part a swamp, on 
 which no cavalry could tread; it was cut in all 
 directions by rivei*s. and streams, and broad 
 meres; and the few roads that letl through this 
 dangerous labyrinth were little known to the fo- 
 reigners. The country, too, where the banner of 
 iudepeudence floated was a sort of holy land to 
 the English; the abbeys of Ely, Peterborough, 
 Thorney, and Croyland, the most ancient, the 
 most revered of their establishments, stood within 
 
 resiilt of a conspiracy between Rome and William of Normandy, 
 which had been maturing for years, and which had for ita grand 
 object the humiliation of the Anglo-Saxon Church and people, by 
 subjecting the cue to the absolute empii-e of the pope, and the 
 other to the civil and military desix>tism of the Norman bastard. 
 This view he supports by special proofe: but the strongest is. 
 doubtless, to be found in the Normans in general, and William 
 in particular, being so largely endowed with those qtialities 
 which Rome required, and wliich she knew so well how to enlist 
 in her service. Rome's quarrel with Anglo-Saxon England, for 
 want of absolute submission to her will, bore a striking analogy 
 to her quarrel with the inhabitants of Dauphiny, Provence, and 
 Languedoc, not long after, for the same deadly offence. In both 
 cases the revenge taken by her wounded pride was fierce, bloody, 
 relentless; and in both her grand agents were the feudal cbiefa 
 of the porth of Fi'auce, whom she employed also in enslaving 
 Ireland to her will. 
 
 The following facts, from that author's Htstori/ of the Norma7i 
 Conquest, are in this view particularly memorable : — 
 
 " From the period of England's deliverance fi'om the Danish 
 domination. King Canute's law for raising the yearly impost of 
 Peter's pence, had sliared the fate of all the other laws decreed 
 by the foreign government. The public administration compelled 
 no one to observe it, and Rome now received from England only 
 the offerings and free gifts oi individual devotion. Thus the 
 ancient regard of the Romish Church for the English nation 
 rapidly declined. Conversations to their and their king's pre- 
 judice were held in enigmatical language, in the halls of St. 
 John of Lateran" 
 
 Rome, accustomed to sell all things herself, accused the Anglo- 
 Saxon bieihoi* of simony. Eldred, as Archbishop of Vork, went 
 to Rome for the pallium, and obtained itoiily on an Anglo-Saxon 
 chief, who had accompanied him, threatening that, if refused, 
 he woiUd obtain a law prohibiti-ng the sending of money to 
 Rome. Hence deep resentment was felt even in granting the 
 pallium. 
 
 "The Norman, Robert de Jurai^ges, expelled by the Anglo- 
 Saxon patriots from the see of Canterbury immediately went 
 to Rome, and denounced Stigand, the native churchman whom 
 the national desire had put in his place, and retui'ned to Nor- 
 mandy with papal lettera, declaring him to be lawful archbishop. 
 . . . The journey from Canterbury to Rome was in those 
 days a painful one; Stigand was in no haste to go and justify 
 himself before the fortunate rival of Benedict X.; and the old 
 leaven of hatred against the English people fermented more 
 strongly than ever." 
 
 Finally, Lanfranc, a monk of Lombard origin, famous for his 
 knowledge of the civil law, after having incurred William's dis- 
 pleasure, by blaming his marriage with Matilda, aa a kinswoman 
 within the forbidden degrees, found it convenient to seek a re- 
 conciliation with so powerful a prince, by pleading the cause of 
 that very marriage with the pope, and obtaining a formal dis- 
 pensation for it. Thus " he became the soul of Ida (WiUiam's) 
 coimcils, and his plenii)otentiary at the court of Rome. The 
 respective pretensions of the Romish clergy and the Duke of 
 Normandy, with regard to England, and the possibility of rea- 
 lizing them, and of meeting with joint success thfreui, were, it 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 it; and the monks, however professionally timid 
 or peaceful, were disposed to resistance — for they 
 well knew that the coming of the Normans would 
 
 be the signal for driving them from their monas- 
 teries. 
 
 During two or three years, the Conquest was 
 checked in tliis direction. The Normans, sur- 
 prised among the bogs and the tall rushes that 
 covered them, suffered many severe los.ses. The 
 sagacious eye of William at last saw that the 
 proper way of proceeding would be by a blockade 
 that should prevent provisions and succour from 
 reaching the Isle of Ely. He accordingly sta- 
 tioned all the ships he could collect in the Wash, 
 with orders to watch every inlet from tlie sea to 
 
 would appear, from that time the subject of serious negotiations. 
 An armed invasion was, perhaps, not 3'et tliought of; but Wil- 
 liam's relationship to Edward seemed one great cause for hope, 
 and, at the same time, an iucontestible title in the ej-es of the 
 Roman priests, who fayomcd, throughout Europe, the maxima 
 of hercdi'tary I'oyalty, in opposition to the jnactice of elec- 
 tion." 
 
 " The Duke of Normandy prefoiTcd an accusation of sacrilcgi: 
 against his enemy before the pontific<d court; he demanded that 
 England should be laid under interdict by the chuich, and de- 
 clared to be the property 01 him who shoidd first take posses- 
 ion, with the reservation of the pope's approval. . , . But 
 Harold was in vain cited to defend himself before the tiibunal 
 of Rome. He refused to acknowledge himself amenable to that 
 court; he deputed no ambassador thither, being too haughty to 
 submit the independence of his crown to any foreign dictation, 
 and, at the same time, possessed of too much good sense to con- 
 fide in the impartiality of judges appealed to by liis enemy." 
 
 Add to this, that Norman knights bad heen of gi-eat service to 
 the Roman see already in Italy. In short, Ilildebrand, whose 
 constant object it was to transform the reb'gious snprcraacy of 
 Rome into an xmiversal sovereignty over all Christian states, 
 began to consider the Nonuans as destined to fight all its battles, 
 and to do homage to it for its conquests. 
 
 Such, says ThieiTy, were the verj' singular relations which 
 accidental events had recently established, when tho complaints 
 and the appeal of tho Duke of Normandy were laid before tho 
 court of Rome. Fraught with his long-cherished hoj)©, Arch- 
 deacon Uildebrand thought the propitious hour had aiTived for 
 attempting, with regard to the kingdom of England, those do- 
 signs which bad been so happily carried into efi'ect in Italy, 
 llis most strenuous efforts were directed to substitute, instead 
 of ecclesiastical pleadings relative to the lukewaiinness of the 
 English people, the simony of its jirolates and the porjmy of its 
 king, a formal treaty with the Norman for (he conquist 0/ the 
 island at common cost and for mutual profit. Although the real 
 design w;is thus converted to a purely political purpose, tho 
 cause of Wilbam against Harold was examined in the conclave, 
 without other motive appearing than to sift the question of here- 
 ditary right, or to uphold the sanctity of an oath as inviolable, 
 and tha veneration for relics as obligatory. These pleas, to 
 many of the judges, seemed not enough to justify tho church in 
 sanctioning hostile aggression agabist a Chi"istian nation, or a 
 military invasion of its territory. When Hildebrand iusihtcil, 
 loud murmurs arose, the more conscientious prelatea declaring 
 that it would be infamous to authorize so murderous a course ; 
 but he was not to be moved, and his sentiments prevailed at 
 last. 
 
 " According to the terms of the Papal sentence, jironounced 
 by the pope himself, William, Duke of Normandy, had leave to 
 enter England, to brin{j it back to its obedience to the Holy See, and 
 to re-establish for ever the tax of St. Peter's pence. Harold and 
 all his adlierents were excommmiicated by a Papal bull, trans- 
 mitted to William by the b.ands of his envoy; and to it was 
 added the gift of a banner from the apostolical church, and a 
 ring, containing one of St. Peter's hail's, enchased beneath a 
 diamond of some price." 
 
 25
 
 19 + 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militaht. 
 
 the feus; and lie so stationed his anuy as to block 
 up every road that led into the feus by land. 
 When lie resumed more active operations, he 
 undertook a work of great note and difficulty. 
 In order to approach the fortified camp in the 
 midst of marshes, and an exjjanse of water in 
 some places shallow, in others deep, he began to 
 build a wooden causeway, two miles long, with 
 bridges over the beds of the rivers. Hereward 
 frequently interruptedthese operations, and in a 
 
 manner so murderous, sudden, and mysterious, 
 that the afirighted workmen and soldiers became 
 firmly convinced that he was leagued with the 
 devil, and aided by some necromancer. William, 
 
 ' This map is intended to exhibit, as nearly as e.xisting autho- 
 rities render possible, the extent of the fens, with the courses of 
 the rivers, and the direction of the adjacent se.vcoast, prior to 
 the works undeitaken for theii- drainage. The following maps, 
 compared with various historical notices, have served to supply 
 the materials for its construction ; — ' ' A General Plott and De- 
 scription of the Fennes and Surrounded Grounds," ttc. By H. 
 Hondius (Amstelodami, 16S0?). " A JI.app of the Gre.at LeveU 
 of the Fenns." By Sir Jonas Moore. SLxteen sheets. (London, 
 1684.) The roads that are indicated are mostly {if not all} of 
 ancient date — chiefly of Roman, or else of early British con- 
 struction. 
 
 who had brought over with him from Normandy 
 a conjuror and soothsayer as an essential part of 
 his army of invasion, was readily induced to em- 
 ploy a sorceress on the side of the Normans, in 
 order to neutralize or defeat the spells of the 
 Eugli--ih.- This sorceress was placed, with much 
 ceremony, on the top of a wooden tower at the 
 head of the works; but Hereward, the "cunning 
 captain," watching his opportunity, set fire to the 
 dry reeds and rushes; the flames were rapidly 
 
 1 spread by the wind, and tower 
 
 and sorceress, workmen and sol- 
 diers, were consumed. 
 
 When the Isle of Ely ha<l 
 been blockaded thi-ee months, 
 provisions became scai'ce there. 
 Those whose profession and 
 vowed duties included frequent 
 fasting were the first to become 
 impatient under privation. The 
 monks of Ely sent to the enemy's 
 camp, offering to show a safe 
 passage across the fens, if the 
 king would only promise to leave 
 them in undisturbed possession 
 of their houses and lands. The 
 king agreed to the condition, 
 and two of his barons pledged 
 their faith for the execution 
 of the treaty. Under proper 
 guides the Normans then found 
 their way into the Isle of Ely, 
 and took possession of the strong 
 monastery which formed part 
 of Hereward's line of defence. 
 They killed 1000 Englishmen, 
 that either occupied an advanced 
 position, or had made a sortie; 
 and then, closing round the 
 "camp of refuge," they finally 
 obliged the rest to lay down 
 their arms. Some of these brave 
 men were liberated on paying 
 heavy fines or ransoms ; some 
 were put to death; some de- 
 prived of then- sight ; some maimed and rendered 
 unfit for war, by having a right hand or a foot 
 cut off; some were condemned to perpetual im- 
 prisonment. Hereward, the soul of the con- 
 
 2 Croyland, it appears, had a particularly ill name in this 
 respect ; and evil spU-its, that did not respect the monks, might 
 weU be supposed to have no mercy on the Normans. Camden's 
 description of the place, however, even as it existed in his d.ay, 
 shows how admirably it was adiipted for defence ; wliUe the 
 abundance of water-fowl must h.ave made starving it out almost 
 impossible. He begins with its demonology ; — 
 
 '* If, out of the same author (InguJphiis), I shoiUd describe 
 the devils of Crowland (with their blubber lips, fiery mouths, 
 scaly faces, beetle heads, sharp teeth, long chins, hoaree throats, 
 black skins, hump shoulders, big bellies, burning loins, bandy 
 legs, tailed buttocks, &c.), which haunted these places, and vei7
 
 A.T). lOGG 1087.] 
 
 WILLIAM TIIK CONQUEROR. 
 
 195 
 
 feJeracy, would not submit; but, making au eftort 
 which appeared desperate to all, he rushed from 
 the beleaguered camp, and escaped by thi-owing 
 himself into the marshes, whore the Normans 
 would not venture to follow him. Passing from 
 fen to fen, he gained the low, swampy lands in 
 Lincolnshire, near his own estate, where he was 
 joined by some friends, and renewed a. partizau or 
 guerilla warfare, which lasted four or five years, 
 and cost the Normans many lives, but which 
 could not, under existing circumstances, produce 
 any great political residt. At last, seeing the 
 hopelessness of the struggle, he listened to terms 
 from William, who was anxious to pacify an 
 enemy his ai'mies could never reach, and who 
 probably admired, as a soldier, his wonderfid 
 courage and address. Hereward made his peace, 
 took the oath of allegiance, and was jiermitted 
 by the Couquei'or to preserve and enjoy the 
 estates of his ancestors. The exploits of the last 
 hero of Anglo-Saxon independence formed a 
 favourite theme of tradition and poetry; and 
 long after his death the iidiabitants of the Isle 
 of Ely showed with pride the ruins of a wooden 
 tower, which they called the castle of Hereward. 
 After the destruction of the camp of refuge in 
 Ely, the Norman forces, naval as well as military, 
 proceeded to the north, to disperse some bands 
 which had again raised the standard of indepen- 
 dence, and invoked the presence of Edgar Athe- 
 liug, who was enjoying the tranquillity and obscu- 
 rity for which he was fitted in Scotland. After 
 some bloody skirmishes, the confeilerates were 
 ch'iven beyond the Tweed; and then William 
 crossed that river, to seize the English emigrants 
 and pimish Malcolm Canmore. A Scottish army, 
 which had been so anxiously expected by the Eng- 
 lish insurgents at York two years before, when its 
 weight in the scale might have proved fatal to the 
 Normans, had tardily marched, at a moment when 
 the Northumbrians and people of Yorkshire were 
 almost exterminated, and when it could do little 
 more than excite the few remaining mhabitauts 
 to a hopeless rising, and burn the houses of siicli 
 as refused to join in it. The want of provisions 
 ill a land laid waste soon made the Scots re-cross 
 
 much annoyed GuthJacua aaid the monks, you would laugh at 
 the history, and much more at my m-idness in relating it. But 
 since the situation and mituro of tho place is strange, and dif- 
 ferent from all othei-s in England, and since the monastery was 
 particiUarly famous in foi-mer times, I shall give you the de- 
 scx-iption of it somewhat more at lai-ge. This Crowland (amio 
 ItiOT) lies in feus so inclosed and incompassed with deep bogs 
 and pools, that there is no access to it but on the north and east 
 sides, and there, too, only by narrow c:iusew.ays. This monas- 
 tery and Venice tif j>'e may compare small tldngs with great) 
 have the same sort of situation ; it consists of three streets, 
 separated from each other by water-courses planted witli wil- 
 lows, and raised on piles driven into the bottom of tlie pool, 
 having communication by a triangular bridge of curious work- 
 manship, under which the inhabitants say there was a very deep 
 pit, that was dug to receive the concoinse of watei-s there. Be- 
 
 the Border. To avenge this mere predatory in- 
 road, however, William now advanced from the 
 Tweed to the Frith of Forth, as if he intended 
 to subdue the whole of the " land of tho moun- 
 tain and flood," taking with him the entire m;uss 
 of his splendid cavalry, and nearly every Norman 
 foot-soldier he coidd ]irudently detach from gar- 
 rison duty in England. The emigrants escaped 
 hi.s pui-suit, nor woidd Malcolm deliver them up; 
 but, intimidated by the advance of an army infi- 
 nitely more numerous and better ai-nied than his 
 own, the Scottish king, says the Sa.von Chronicle, 
 " came and agreed with King William, and de- 
 livered hostages, and was his man; and the king 
 went home with all his force." 
 
 On his return from Scotland, during his stay 
 at Durham, the king summoned Cosjiatric to 
 ajipear before him, and, on the idle ground of old 
 grievances, which had been pardoned when that 
 nobleman surrendered with Edwin and Mo rear, 
 he deprived him of the eaiddom of Northumber- 
 land, for which, it appears, he had paid a large 
 sum of money. Cospatric, fearing worse conse- 
 quences, abandoning whatever else he had iu 
 England, fled to Malcolm Canmore, who gave 
 him a castle and lands. The eaiddom of North- 
 umberland was conferred on Waltheof, an Eng- 
 lishman like himself, but now the nephew of the 
 Conqueror, by marriage with his niece Judith. 
 
 The Normans had now been seven years in the 
 laud, engaged in almost constant hostilities; and 
 at length England, with the exception of Wales, 
 might fairly be said to be conquered. In most 
 abridgments and epitomes of history, the events 
 we have related, in not unnecessary detail, are so 
 faintly indicated, and huddled together in so nai-- 
 row a space, as to leave an impression that the 
 resistance of our ancestors after the battle of Has- 
 tings was trifling and brief — that the sanguinarv 
 drama of the Conquest was almost wholly in- 
 cluded in one act. Nothing can be more incor- 
 rect than this impression, or more unfair to that 
 hardy race of men, who were the fountain-source 
 of at least nine-tenths of the blood that flows in 
 the large and generous veins of the English 
 nation. 
 
 yond the bridge, where, as one wortis it, ' a bog is become firm 
 ground ' (in solum mutatur humus;, formerly stood that famous 
 monaster}', though of a small compass, about which, unless 
 on the side where the to\vn stands, the groimd is so rotten and 
 boggy, that a pole may bo thi-ust down 30 fc. deep ; and thei-e 
 is nothing round about but reeds, .and, ne.\t the church, a grove 
 of aldera. However, the to^vn is pretty well inliabited; but tlie 
 cattle are kept at some distance from it, so tliat, wlien the 
 owuera milk them, they go in boats which will hold but two, 
 called skerries. Their greatest gain is from tho fish and wild- 
 ducks that tlicy catch, which are so many, that in August they 
 can drive into a single not ."JOOO duclis at once; *uid they call 
 th&ie pools their conx-fields, there being no coi-n growing within 
 five miles of the place. l''or this liberty of catching fish and 
 wild ducks, they foimorly paid yearly to the abbot, aa they do 
 now to tho king, £.100 sterling "
 
 196 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militart. 
 
 Not long after his return from Scotland, cu'- 
 cumstances imperatively called for the presence 
 of William in his continental dominions. His 
 talents as a statesman and wanior are indisput- 
 able, yet few men have owed more to good for- 
 tune. Theu- wrongs and provocations were the 
 same then as now, and policy would have sug- 
 gested to the people of Maine to exert themselves 
 a year or two before, when William, engaged in 
 difKcult wai-s in England, would have been em- 
 barrassed by then- insm'rection on the Continent. 
 But they made then- gi-eat effort just as England 
 was reduced to the quietude of despair, and when 
 William could proceed against tliem unencum- 
 bered by an}' other war. Herbert, the last count 
 or national chief, bequeathed the county of Maine, 
 bordering on Normandy, to Duke William, who, 
 to the displeasiire of the people, but without any 
 important opposition, took possession of it several 
 years before he invaded England. Instigated by 
 Fulk, Count of Anjou, and vexed by a tyramii- 
 cal administration, the people of Maine now rose 
 against William, expelled the magistrates he had 
 placed over them, and di-ove out from their towns 
 the officers and gan-isons of the Norman race. 
 Deeming it imprudent to remove his Norman 
 forces from this island, he collected a consider- 
 able army among tlie English jjopulation, and, 
 carrying them over to Normandy, he joined them 
 to pome troops levied there, and, putting himself 
 at then- head, marched into the unfortunate pro- 
 vince of Maine. The national valour, which so 
 often opposed him, was now exerted, with a blind 
 fury, in his favour. The English beat the men 
 of Maine, burned their towns and villages, and 
 did as much mischief as the Normans (among 
 whom was a strong contingent from Maine) had 
 perpetrated in England. 
 
 While these things were passing on the Conti- 
 nent, Edgar Atheling received an advantageous 
 offer of services and co-operation from Philip, 
 King of France, who at last, and too late, roused 
 himself from the strange sloth and indifference 
 with wliich he had seen the progi-ess made b}' his 
 overgrown vassal, the Duke of Normandy. The 
 events in Maine, the dread inspired in all the 
 neighbouring country, even to the walls of Paris, 
 and William's exhibition of force, were probably 
 the immediate causes that dispelled Philip's long- 
 sleep. He invited Edgar to come to France and 
 be present at his council, promising him a strong 
 fortress, situated on the Channel, at a point 
 equally convenient for making descents upon 
 England, or incui'sions or forays into Normandy. 
 Closing with the proposals, Edgar got ready a 
 few ships and a small band of soldiers — being 
 aided thei-ein by his sister, the Queen of Scotland, 
 and some of the Scottish noliility — and made sail 
 for France. His usual bad luck attended him; 
 
 he hail scarcely gained the open sea when a storm 
 ai'ose, and drove his ships ashore on the coast of 
 Northumberland, where some of his followera 
 were drowned, !Uid others taken prisoners by the 
 Normans. He and a few of his friends of supe- 
 rior rank escaped and got into Scotland, where 
 they arrived in miserable plight, witli nothing 
 but the clothes on their backs, some walking on 
 foot, some motmted on sorry beasts. After this 
 misfortune, his brother-in-law. King Malcolm, 
 advised him to seek a reconciliation with William, 
 and Edgar accordingly sent a messenger to the 
 Conqueror, who at once invited him to Nor- 
 mandy, where he promised proper and honour- 
 able treatment. Instead of sailing direct from 
 Scotland, the Atheling, whose feelings were as 
 obtuse as his intellect, took his way thi'ough 
 England, the desolated kingdom of his ancestors, 
 feasting at the castles of the Norman invaders as 
 he went along. William received him with a 
 show of kindness, and allotted him an apartment 
 in the palace of Rouen, with a pound of silver 
 a-day for his maintenance; and there the descend- 
 ant of the great Alfred passed eleven years of his 
 life, occupying himself with dogs and horses. 
 
 The king, who had gone to the Continent to 
 quell one insiu-rection, was recalled to England 
 by another of a much more threatening natui'e, 
 jdanned, not by the English, but by the Norman 
 barons, their conquerors and despoilers. William 
 Fitz-Osborn, the prime favourite and counsellor 
 of the Conqueror, had died a violent death in 
 Flandei's, and had been succeeded in his English 
 domains, and the earldom of Hereford, by his 
 son, Roger Fitz-Osborn. This young nobleman 
 negotiated a marriage with Raoul or Raljih de 
 Gael, a Breton by birth, and Earl of Norfolk in 
 England by the right of the sword. For some 
 reason not explained, this alliance was displeas- 
 ing to the king, who sent from Noi-mandy to 
 prohibit it. The jmrties were enraged at this 
 prohibition, which they also determined not to 
 obey; and on the day which had been previously 
 fixed for the ceremonj-, Emma, the affianced, was 
 conducted to Norwich, where a wedding-feast 
 was celebrated, that was fatal to all who were 
 present at it.' Among the guests who had been 
 invited, rather for the after-act than to do honour 
 to the bride and bridegroom, were Waltheof, the 
 husband of Judith, sundry barons and bishojjs of 
 the Noi-man race, some Saxons who were friends 
 to the Normans, and even some chieftains from 
 the mountains of Wales, with whom their neigh- 
 bour, the Earl of Hereford, the brother of the 
 bride, had thought proper to cultivate amicable 
 relations. A sumptuous feast was followed by 
 copious libations ; and when the heads of the 
 
 ' Chiim. Soar.
 
 A D. lOCG -1087.] 
 
 WII.TJAM rriE CONQUEROR. 
 
 1!>7 
 
 guests were heated by wine, the Kurls of llere- 
 foi-d and Norwioli, ■who were alreatly committed 
 by carrying the forbidden marriage into ofleet. 
 and who kuew the im])lacable temper of William, 
 opened their plans with a wild and energetic 
 eloquence. They inveighed against the ai-bitrary 
 condiict of the king, his hai-sh and aiTogant be- 
 haviour to his noblest barons, and his apparent 
 intention of reducing the Normans to the same 
 condition of misery and servitude as the English, 
 whose wrongs and misfortunes they affected to 
 compassionate. Hereford complained of his con- 
 duct with regard to the marriage, saying it was 
 an insidt oll'ered to the memory of his father, 
 Fitz-Osborn, the man to whom the Bastard incon- 
 testably owed his crown. By degi'ees the excited 
 assembly broke forth in one general curse against 
 the Conqueror. The old repi-oach of his birth 
 was revived over and ovei' again. " He is a bas- 
 tai'd, a man of base extraction," cried the Nor- 
 mans; "it is in vain he calls himself a king; it 
 is easy to see he was never made to be one, and 
 that God hath him not in his grace." " He 
 poisoned oui' Conan, that brave Count of Brit- 
 tany," said the Bretons. " He has invaded our 
 noble kingdom, and massacred the legitimate 
 heirs to it, or driven them into exile," cried the 
 English, "He is ungrateful to the brave men 
 who have shed their blood for him, and raised 
 him to a higher pitch of greatness than any of his 
 predecessoi'S ever knew," said the f oreigii captains ; 
 "and what has he given to us conquerors covered 
 with wounds 1 Nothing but lands naturally ste- 
 rile or devastated by the war; and then, as soon as 
 he sees we have improved those estates, he takes 
 them from us, or diminishes their extent." The 
 guests cried out tumultuously that all this was 
 true — that William the Bastard was in oVlium 
 with all men — that his death would gladden the 
 hearts of many.' 
 
 The gi'eat object of the Norman consjiirators 
 was to gain over Earl Waltheof, whose warlike 
 qualities and great popularity with the English 
 were well known to them ; and, when they pro- 
 ceeded to divulge tlie particulars of their plan, the 
 Eiu-ls of Hereford and Norwich allured him with 
 the promise of a third of England, which was to 
 be partitioned into the old Saxon kingdoms of 
 VVessex, Mercia, and Northumberland. With 
 the fumes of wine in his head, and a general ar- 
 dour and enthusiasm around him, Waltheof, it is 
 said, gave his approval to the conspiracy; but, 
 according to one vei-sion of the story, the next 
 morning, " when he had consulted with his pil- 
 low, and awaked his wits to pei-ceive the danger 
 whereunto he was drawn, he determined not to 
 move in it," and took measures to prevent its 
 
 I IVm. Mabn.: Moll. Pari).: Ordtric. 
 
 breaking out. A more generally received ac- 
 count, liowever, is, that Waltheof, seeing from 
 the iirst the madness of the scheme, and the little 
 probability it olTered of benefiting the English 
 peojile, refused to engage in it, and only took an 
 oath of secrecy. The whole project, indeed, was 
 insane; the discontented barons had scarcely a 
 chance of succeeding against the established au- 
 thority and the geni\is of William ; and their 
 success, had it been possilile, would have proved 
 a curse to the country; a step fatally retrogi-ade; 
 a going back towards the time of tlie Saxon Hep- 
 tarchy, when England was fractured into a num- 
 ber of ]jetty hostile states. It is quite certain 
 that Waltheof never took up arms, nor did any 
 overt act of treason, but in his uneasmess of 
 mind, and his confidence in so dear a connection, 
 he disclosed to his wife Judith all that had been 
 done in Norwich Castle; and this confidence is 
 generally believed to have been the main cause 
 of his ruin. Roger Fitz-Osborn and Ralj^h de 
 Gael, the real heads of the confederacy, were 
 hurried into action before their scheme was ripe, 
 for their secret was betrayed by some one. The 
 first of these eai'ls, who had returned to his go- 
 vernment, and collected his followers and a con- 
 siderable number of Welsh, was checked in his 
 attemjit to cross the Severn at Worcester, nor 
 could he find a passage at any other point, as 
 Ours, the Viscount of Worcester, and Wulistan, 
 the bishop, occujjied the left bank of that river 
 with a gi'eat force of Norman cavalry. Egeiwin, 
 the abbot of Evesham, who, like Wulfstan, was 
 an Englishman, induced the population of Glou- 
 cester to rise and co-operate with the king's offi- 
 cers; and Walter de Lacy, a great baron in those 
 parts, soon brought up a ndxed host of English 
 and Nox-mans, that rendered the Earl of Here- 
 ford's project of crossing the Severn, to co-operate 
 with his brother-in-law in the heart of England, 
 ' altogether hopeless. Lanfranc, the Italian Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, who acted as viceroy dur- 
 ing William's absence, proceeding with the gi-eat- 
 est decision, also sent troojis fi-om London and 
 Winchester to oppose Fitz-Osborn, at whose head 
 he hurled, at the same time, the terrible sentence 
 of excommunication. In writing to the king in 
 Normandy, the primate said, " It would be with 
 pleasure, and as envoy of God, that we could wel- 
 come you among us: but," added the energetic old 
 priest, " do not hurry yourself to cross the sea, 
 for it would be initting us to shame to come and 
 aid us in destroying such traitors and thieves." 
 The E;u-1 of Hereford fell back from the Severn, 
 and his brother-in-law, the Earl of Norfolk, left 
 to himself, .and unable to procure in time as- 
 sistance, for which he had a]i]ilied to the J)aues, 
 was suddenly attacked by a royal ai-my of very 
 superior force, led on by Odo, the Bishop of
 
 198 
 
 niSTOlU' OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [ClVH, AND MlLlTART. 
 
 Bayeux, Geoffrey, Bishop nf CoutMioes, and Kicli- 
 ard de Bieufait and "William de Warenne, the 
 two justiciai-ies of the kingdom, who obtained a 
 complete victory, and cut off the right foot of 
 every prisoner they made. The eai-1 retreated to 
 Norwich, garrisoned his castle with the most 
 ti-usty of his followers, and, leaving his bride to 
 defend it, passed over to Brittany, in hopes of 
 obtaining succom- from his countrymen. The 
 daughter of William Fitz-Osborn defended Nor- 
 wicli Castle with great braverv; and when, at the 
 
 Norwich Castie.'— J. S. Prout, from an old view, 
 
 end of three months, she capitulated, she obtained 
 mild terms for her gaiTison, which was almost 
 entii-ely composed of Bretons. They did not suf- 
 fer in life or limb, but were shipped off to the 
 Continent within the term of forty days. The 
 Bretons generally had rendered themselves im- 
 popular at William's court. V,^ith the true cha- 
 racter of theu' race, they were u-aseible, tui-bulent, 
 factious, and much more devoted to the head 
 of their clan than to the king. When they were 
 embarked, Lanfrano wrote to his master, "Glory 
 be to God, yom- kingdom is at last pm-ged of the 
 filth of these Bretons." The king invaded Brit- 
 tany, in the hope of exterminating the fugitive 
 Earl of Norwich in his native castle, and reduc- 
 ing that pi-ovince to enth-e subjection; bat, after 
 laying an unsuccessful siege to the town of Dol, 
 he was obliged to retire before an army of Bre- 
 
 1 The site of Norwich Castle was probably occupied by one 
 belonging to the East Anglian liings. It bad thi'ee nearly cir- 
 cular concentric lines of defence, each consisting of a wall and 
 ditch, inclosing a coiirt. Beside these, there was the keep, the 
 only part now standing, and wliich has been covered by a mo- 
 dem casing of granite. The whole comprehended an area of 
 23 acres. The inner ditch and the bridge over it still remain. 
 The bridge is 150 ft. long, and has one arch of 40 ft. span, sup- 
 posed tx) be the liir^est and most perfect ai-cli remaining of what 
 
 tons, who were supported bj' the French king.^ 
 ^\'illiam then crossed the Channel to suppress 
 the insurrection in England; but by the time he 
 arrived, there was little left for him to do except 
 to punish the principal offenders. The Earl of 
 Hereford had been followed, defeated, and taken 
 prisoner, and many of his adherents, Welsh, 
 English, and Normans, hanged on high gibbets, 
 or blinded, or mutilated. At a royal court De 
 Gael was outlawed, and his brother-in-law, Fitz- 
 Osborn, condemned to perpetual imprisoimient 
 and the forfeiture of his pro- 
 perty. Scarcely one of the guests 
 at the ill-augured marriage of 
 a;-;"J:;s= Emma Fitz-Osborn escaped with 
 
 life, and even the inhabitants 
 of the town of Norwich felt the 
 weight of royal vengeance. The 
 last and most conspicuous vic- 
 tim was Waltheof, who had been 
 guilty, at most, of a misprision 
 of treason. His secret had been 
 betrayed by his wife Judith, 
 who is said, moreover, to have 
 accused him of inviting over the 
 Danish fleet, which now made 
 its appearance on the coast of 
 Norfolk. The motive that made 
 this heartless woman seek the 
 death of herbi'ave and generous 
 husband, was a passion she had 
 conceived for a Norman noble- 
 man, whom she hoped to mai-ry 
 if she could but be made a widow. Others, how- 
 ever, although acting under different impulses, 
 were quite as iirgent as the Conqueror's niece for 
 the execution of the English eai-1. These were Nor- 
 man barons, who had cast the eyes of affection on 
 his honom-s and estates — " his great possessions 
 being his greatest enemies." The judges were 
 divided in opinion as to the proper sentence, 
 some of them maintaining that, as a revolteil 
 English subject, Waltheof ought to die; others, 
 that as an officer of the king, and according to 
 Norman law, he ought only to suffer the minor 
 2)unishnient of perpetual imprisonment. These 
 difl'erenoes of opinion lasted nearly a whole year, 
 during which the earl was confined in the royal 
 citadel of Winchester. At length his wife and 
 other enemies prevailed, the sentence of death 
 was pronounced, and confirmed by the king, who 
 
 has been popularly but eiTOneously termed Saxon architecture. 
 The wall of the innermost ballium has long been destroyed, 
 but there are the remains of two round towers, pai-t of the ori- 
 ginal gateway at the inner end of the bridge. Tlie central keep 
 is a substantial quiidi-angular buil^ling. of 110 ft. from cost to 
 west, including a smaU tower, througli wliich was the princip.al 
 entrance. From north to south it is 93 ft.; its height to the 
 battlements is upwards of 69 ft. 
 - Dam, IliU. de la Bretagne.
 
 A.D. 106G-1087.] 
 
 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 !tf) 
 
 is said to Iiave long wisliej for the opportunity of 
 putting him out of his way. The unfortunate 
 son of that gi-eat and good Eai-l Siward, whom 
 Shakspeare has immortalized, was executed on 
 a hill, a short distance from the town of Win- 
 chester, at a very eai'Iy hour in the morning, and 
 in great haste, lest the citizens should become 
 aware of his fate, and .attempt a rescue.' His 
 body was thrown into a hole dug at a cross-road, 
 and covered with earth in a liurry; but the king 
 was induced to permit its removal thence, and 
 the English monks of Croyland, to whom the 
 deceased earl had been a benefactor, took it up, 
 and carried it to their abbey, where they gave it 
 a more honourable sepultvire. The patriotic su- 
 perstition of the nation soon converted the dead 
 warrior into a saint, and the universal gi-ief of 
 the English people found some consolation in 
 giving a ready credence to the miracles said to be 
 performed at his tomb. The Anglo-Saxon hagi- 
 ology seems to have abounded, beyond that of 
 most other nations, in unfortunate patriots and 
 heroes who had fallen in battle against the in- 
 vaders of the country. And what became of the 
 widow of the brave son of Siward — of the " infa- 
 mous Judith," as she is called by nearly all the 
 chroniclers? So far from permitting her to maiTy 
 the man of whom she was enamoured, her imclo 
 Willi.am, who was most despotic in those matters, 
 and claimed as part of his prerogative the right 
 of disposing of female wards, insisted on her giv- 
 ing her hand to one Simon, a Frenchman of Sen- 
 lis, a very brave soldier, but lame and deformed; 
 and when the perverse viadow rejected the match 
 with insulting language, he di'ove her from his 
 presence, deprived her of all Waltheof's estates, 
 and gave them to Simon, without the incum- 
 brance of such a wife. Cast from the king's fa- 
 vour, and reduced to poverty, she became almost 
 as unpopulai- with tlie Normans as she was with 
 the English; and the wretched woman, hated by 
 all, or justly contemned, passed the rest of her 
 life in wandei'ing in different corners of England, 
 seeking to hide her shame in remote and secluded 
 places. 
 
 The Normans had been gi'adually encroaching 
 on the Welsh territory, both on the side of the 
 Dee and on the side of the Severn, and now Wil- 
 liam in person led a formidable army into Wales, 
 where he is said to have struck such terror, that 
 the native princes performed feudal homage to 
 him at St. David's, and delivered many hostages 
 and Norman and I^uglish prisoners, with which 
 he returned as a " victorious conqueror." In the 
 north of England he made no further progress, 
 and had considerable difficulty in retaining the 
 land he had occupied. The Scots again crossed 
 
 A.D. 1077-!). 
 
 1 Orderic gives i 
 cutiou. 
 
 the Tweed and the Tync, and much liamssed the 
 Norman bai'ous. At the approach of a superior 
 army they retired; but William's ofHcers did not 
 follow them, and the only result of the expedition, 
 on the king's side, was tl\e founding of the city of 
 Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Tlie impression made 
 upon Scotland by the Conqueror when lie had 
 marched in person, must have been of the slight- 
 est kind, and his circumstances never permitted 
 him to return. 
 
 lie was now wounded by tlie 
 sharp tooth of filial disobedience, 
 and obliged to bo frequently, and for long inter- 
 vals, on the Continent, where a fierce and un- 
 natural war wa,s waged between father and son. 
 When William fii-st received the submission of the 
 province of Maine, he had promised the inhabi- 
 tants to make his eldest son, Robert, their prince; 
 and before departing for the conquest of England 
 he stijnilated that, In case of succeeding in his en- 
 terprise, he would resign the duchy of Normandy 
 to the same son. So confident was he of success, 
 that he permitted the Noriu^n chiefs, who con- 
 sented to and legalized the appointment, to swear 
 fealty and render homage to young Robert as their 
 futm-e sovereign. But all this was done to allay 
 the jealousy of the King of France and his other 
 neighbours, uneasy at the prospect of his vastly 
 extending power; and when he was firmly seated 
 in his concjuest, and had streng-thened his hands, 
 William ojjeuly showed his determination of keep- 
 ing and ruling both his insular kingdom and hip 
 continental ducliy. Grown iip to man's estate, Ro- 
 bert claimed what he considered his right. "My 
 son, I wot not to throw off my clothes till I go to 
 bed," was the homely but decisive answer of his 
 father. Robert was brave to rashness, ambitious, 
 impatient of command; and a young prince in 
 his cii'cumstances was never yet without ad- 
 herents and counsellors, to urge him to those ex- 
 treme measures on which they found their own 
 hopes of fortune and advancement. He was 
 susjteeted of faiming the fiames of discontent in 
 Brittany as well as in Maine, and to have had an 
 understanding with the King of France, when 
 that monarch frustrated William's attempt to 
 seize the fugitive Breton, Raoul de Gael, and 
 forced the King of England to raise the siege of 
 Dol. Some circumstani'os, which added to the 
 number of the unnatural elements already en- 
 gaged, made Robert declare himself more openly. 
 In person he was less favoured by nature than hi;; 
 two younger brothers, AV'illiam and Henry, who 
 seemed to engross all their father's favour, and 
 who probably made an impro]ier use of the nick- 
 name of Cowte-heusei' which was given to Robert 
 on account of the shortness of his legs. One daj', 
 
 s cui-ious particulars respecting the exe- 2 Literally "short-hose," or "short-boot" — JSirvit Ocrea. 
 
 — Orderic. Vital.
 
 200 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil. .\SD MiLiT.ir.r. 
 
 when the king and his court were staying in the 
 little town of L'Aigle, William and Henry went 
 to the house of a certain Roger Chaussicgue, 
 which had been allotted to their brother Robert 
 for his lodging, and installed themselves, without 
 his leave, in the upper gallery or balcony. After 
 playing for a time at dice, " as was the fashion 
 with military men,"' they began to make a gi-eat 
 noise and uproar, and then they finished their 
 boyish pranks by emptying a pitcher of water on 
 the heads of Robert and his comrades, who were 
 passing in the court below. Robert, naturally pas- 
 sionate, probably required no additional incentive; 
 but it is stated that one of bis companions, Alberic 
 de Grantmesuil, a son of Hugh de Grantmesnil, 
 whom King William bad formerly deprived of his 
 estates in England, instigated the prince to resent 
 the action of his brothers as a public afiront, 
 which could not be borne in honour. Robert 
 drew bis sword, and ran up stab's, vowing that he 
 would wipe out the insult with blood. A gi-eat 
 tumult followed, and the king, who rushed to 
 the spot, had much difficulty in quelling it. That 
 very night Robert fled with his companions to 
 Rouen, fully determined to raise the standai-d 
 of revolt. He failed in bis fii-st attempt, which 
 was to take the castle of Rouen; and, soon after, 
 some of his warmest partizans were surprised and 
 made prisoners by the king's officers. The prince 
 escaped across the frontiers of Normandy, into 
 the district of Le Perche, where Hugh, nejihew of 
 Albert le Riband, welcomed him, and sheltered 
 him in his castles of Sorel and Reymalard. By 
 the mediation of his mother, who seems to have 
 been fondly attached to him, Robert was recon- 
 ciled to his father; but the reconciliation did not 
 last long, for the prince was as impatient for au- 
 thority as ever; and the young counsellors who 
 sm-rounded him found it unseemly, and altogether 
 abominable, that he should be left so poor, through 
 the avarice of his father, as not to have a shilling 
 to give his faithful friends who followed his for- 
 tunes.^ Thus excited, Robert went to his father, 
 and again demanded possession of Normandy; 
 but the king again refused him, exhorting him, 
 at the same time, to change his associates for 
 serious old men, like the royal coimsellor and 
 prime minister, Ai-chbishop Lanfranc. "Sire," 
 said Robert bluntly, " I came here to claim my 
 right, and not to listen to sermons; I heard 
 plenty of them, and tedious ones, too, when I was 
 learning my gi'ammar;" and then he added that 
 he insisted on a positive answer to his demand of 
 the duchy. The king TVTathfully replied that he 
 would never give up Normandy, his native land, 
 nor share with another any pai-t of England, 
 which he had won with his own toil and peril. 
 
 I " Ibique super Bolarium (Bicut milltibus mos est} tesserlB 
 ludere coeperunt." — Ordcric. Vital. * - Ibid. 
 
 " Well, then," said Robert, " 1 will go and bear 
 arms among strangers, and perhajjs I shall ob- 
 tain from them what is refused to me by my fa- 
 ther."' He set out accordingly, and wandered 
 through Flanders, Lorraine, Gascony, and other 
 lands, visiting dukes, counts, and rich burgesses, 
 relating his grievances and asking assistance ; but 
 all the money he got on these eleemosynary cir- 
 cuits he dissipated among minstrels and jugglers, 
 parasites and prostitutes, and was thus obliged 
 to go again a-begging, or borrow money at an 
 enormous interest. Queen Matilda, whose ma- 
 ternal tenderness was not estranged by the follies 
 and vices of her son, contrived to remit him seve- 
 ral sums when he was in great distress. AVilliam 
 discovered this, and sternly forbade it for the 
 future. But her heart still yearning for the pro- 
 digal, the queen made further remittances, and 
 her secret was again betrayed. The king then 
 reproached her, in bitter terms, for distributing 
 among his enemies the treasures he gave her to 
 guard for himself, and ordered the arrest of Sam- 
 sou, her messenger, who had carried the monej', 
 and whose eyes he vowed to tear out as a proper 
 punishment. Samson, who was a Breton, took 
 to flight, and became a monk, " for the salvation 
 both of body and soul." ' 
 
 After leading a vagabond life for some time, 
 Robert repaired to the French com-t, and King 
 Philip, stiU finding in him the instrument he 
 wanted, openly espoused his cause, and established 
 him in the castle of Gerberoy, on the very con- 
 fines of Normandy, where he supported himself 
 by phmdering the neighbouring country, and 
 whence he corresponded with the disaffected in 
 the duchy. Knights and troops of adventurers 
 on horaeback flocked to shai-e the plunder and 
 the pay he now had to offer them: in the number 
 were as many Norman as French subjects, and 
 not a few men of King William's own household. 
 Burning with rage, the king crossed the Channel 
 with a formidable English army, and came in 
 person to direct the siege of the strong castle of 
 Gerberoy, where he lost many men in fruitless 
 operations, and from sorties made by the garrison. 
 With all his faults, Robert had many good and 
 generous qualities, which singularly endeared him 
 to his friends when living, and which, along with 
 his cruel misfortunes, caused him to be moiu'ned 
 when dead. Ambition, passion, and evd counsel 
 had lulled aud stupified, but had not extirjj.ated 
 bis natm-al feelings. One day, in a sally from his 
 castle, he chanced to engage in single combat with 
 a stalwart warrior clad in mail, and concealed, like 
 himself, wdth the visor of his helm. Both were 
 valiant and well skilled in the use of their wea- 
 pons; but, after a fierce combat, Robert wounded 
 
 * Orderic. 
 
 * Pro Ealvatione corporis et aiiim<c.- 
 
 -Ordenc. fUal.
 
 A.D. lOGfi — 1087. 
 
 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 201 
 
 jiiitl unhorsed his imtagouist. In the voice of the 
 fallen warrior, wlio shouted for assistance, the 
 prince, who was about to follow uji his advantage 
 with a death-stroke, recognized hia fatlier. and, 
 instantly dismounting, fell on his knees, ci-aved 
 forgiveness with teai-s, and helping him to his 
 saddle, saw him safely out of the nic'lee, wliich now 
 thickened. The men who were coming up to the 
 king's assistance, and bringing a second horse for 
 him to mount, were nearly all killed. \N'illiam 
 rode away to liis camp on Roberts horse, smart- 
 ing with his v.'ound, and still cursing his sou, who 
 had so seasonably mounted him.' He relinquished 
 the siege of Gerberoy in despau-, and went to 
 Rouen, where, as soon as his temper permitted, 
 his wife and bishops, with many of the Norman 
 nobles, laboured to reconcile him again to Eobei-t. 
 For a long time the iron-hearted king was deaf 
 to their entreaties, or only irritated by them. 
 " Why," cried he, " do you solicit me in favour of 
 a traitor who has seduced my men — my very 
 pupils in war, whom I fed with my own bread, 
 and invested with the knightly arms the}' wear ?"■ 
 At last he yielded, and Robert, having again knelt 
 and wept before him, received his father's par- 
 don, and accompanied him to England. But even 
 now the reconciliation on the part of the unfor- 
 giving king was a mere matter of policy, and 
 Robert, finding no symptoms of returning affec- 
 tion, and fearing for his life or liberty, soon fled 
 for the third time, and never saw his father's face 
 again. Ills departure was followed by another 
 paternal malediction, which was never revoked. 
 Walrher of Lorraine, installed in 
 the bishopi'ie of Durham and his 
 strong castle "on the highest hill," imited to Ids 
 episcopal functions the political and military go- 
 vernment of Northimiberland. The earl-bishop 
 boasted that he was equally skilful in repressing 
 rebellion with the edge of the sword, and re- 
 forming the morals of the Englibh by eloquent 
 discom-se. But the Lorrainer was a harsh ta.sk- 
 master to the English, laying heavy labouis and 
 taxes upon them, and permitting the officers un- 
 der him and his meu-at-aiTus to plunder, insult, 
 and kill them with impunity.^ Liulf, an Eng- 
 lishman of noble birth, and endeared to tlie whole 
 provmce, ventured, on being robbed by some of 
 Walcher's satellites, to lay his complaint before 
 the bishop. Shortly after making this accusa- 
 tion, Liulf was mvu'dered by night in his manor- 
 house, neai- the city of Durham, and it was 
 well proved that one Gilbert, and others in the 
 bishop's service, were the perpetrators of the 
 foul deed. " Hereupon," says an old writer, "the 
 
 * Chrtyn. Sax.: Florent. Wigorn. The story i£ told soniewliat 
 differently in the Chron. Lambardi. 
 
 '^ Tirones uieos, quoa alui et armis militaribus decoravi, ab- 
 iluxit. —Oi-d-'ri':. Vital. 3 j/(,(/_ Paris.; Anglia Sacra. 
 
 ■^"OL. I. 
 
 malice of the people was kindled against liini, 
 and when it was known that he had received tlie 
 murderers into his house, and favoured them 
 as before, they stomached the matter higldy." 
 Secret meetings wei-e held at tlie dead of night, 
 and the Nortliumbrlaus, who had lost none 
 of their old spirit, and were absolutely di'iven 
 to madness, because, among other causes of en- 
 dearment, Liulf had married the widow of Earl 
 Siward, the mother of the unfortunate Earl Wal- 
 theof, resolved to take a sanguinary vengeance. 
 Both parties met by agi-eement at Gatesliead;* 
 the bishop, vdio protested his innocence of the 
 homicide, in the pomp of power, surrounded by 
 his retainers ; the Nortlnunbrians in humble 
 guise, as if to petition their lord for justice, though 
 every man among them canned a sharp weapon 
 hid under his garment. The bishop, alarmed at 
 the number of English that continued to flock to 
 the place of rendezvous, retu-ed with all liis re- 
 tinue into the clim'ch. The people then signified 
 in ))lain terms that, unless he came forth and 
 showed himself, they would lire the place where 
 he stood. As he did not move, the threat was 
 executed. Then, seeing the smoke and flames 
 arising, he caused Gilbert and his accomplices to 
 be thrust out of -the church. The people fell with 
 savage joy on the murderers of Liulf, and cut 
 them to pieces. Half-sufibcated by the heat and 
 smoke, the bishop himself wrapped the skirts of 
 his govm over his face, and came to the threshold 
 of the door. There seems to have been a moment 
 of hesitation; but a voice was heard among the 
 crowd, saying, "Good rede, short rede! slay ye 
 the bishop!" and the bishop was slain accord- 
 ing!}'.* The foreigners had nolhing left but the 
 alternative of being burned alive or perishing by 
 the sword. The bishop's chaplain seemed to give 
 a preference to the former death, for he lingered 
 long in the Lm-ning church; but in the end he 
 was compelled, by the raging fu-e, to come out, 
 and was also slain and hacked to pieces — "as he 
 had well deserved," adds an old historian, " being 
 the main promoter of all the mischief that had 
 been done in the country." ° Of all who had ac- 
 companied the bishop to the tragical meeting at 
 Gateshead, only two were left alive, and these 
 were menials of English birth. Above 100 men, 
 Normans and Flemings, perished with Walcner.' 
 William intrusted to one bishop 
 A.D. lOS... j.|jg pjjj^g ^f avenging another. His 
 
 half-brother, Odo, the fierce Bishop of Bayeux, 
 niai-ched to Durham with a numerous army. He 
 found no force on foot to resist him, but he treated 
 the whole country as an insm-gcnt yirovince, and 
 making no distinction of persons, and employing 
 
 ■I The name means "goat's head;" 
 Floycnt. Wiporn. ' .Malt. Paris. 
 
 ^ Saxon ChronicU. 
 
 26 
 
 *ad caput capraj." — 
 « Holiiulted.
 
 50: 
 
 IIISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil akd Military. 
 
 no jiulicial forms, lie beheaded or mutilated all 
 the men he could find in their houses. Some 
 persons of proiicrty bought their lives by surren- 
 dering everything they possessed. By this exter- 
 minating expedition Odo obtained the rejmtatiou 
 of being one of the greatest "dominators of the 
 English;" but it seems to have been the last he 
 commanded, and disgraced with cruelty, during 
 the reign of Vrilliam. This churchman, besides 
 being Bishop of Bayeux in Normandy, was Earl 
 of Kent in England, and held many high offices 
 in this island, where he had accumulated enor- 
 mous wealth, chiefly by extortion, or a base sell- 
 ing of justice. For- some years a splendid dream 
 of ambition, which he thought he could realize 
 by means of money, increased his rapacity. There 
 were many instances in those ages of kings be- 
 coming monks, but not one of a Catholic priest 
 becoming a king. Profane crowns being out of 
 his reach, Odo aspired to a sacred one — to the 
 tiara — that triple crown of Rome, which gi-adually 
 obtained, in another shape, a homage more widely 
 extended than that paid to the Ca;sars. Ilis dream 
 was cherished by the predictions of some Italian 
 astrologers, who, living in his service, and being 
 well paid, assiu-ed him that he would be the suc- 
 cessor of Gregory VII., the reigning pope. Odo 
 opened a correspondence with the Eternal City by 
 means of English and Norman pilgrims who were 
 constantly flocking thither, bought a palace at 
 Home, and sent rich presents to the senators. His 
 project was not altogether so visionary as it has 
 been considered b}' most writers, and we can 
 hai'dly understand why his half-brother, William, 
 should have checked it, unless indeed his inter- 
 ference proceeded from his desire of getting pos- 
 session of the bishop's wealth. Ten years before 
 the Conqueror invaded England, Eobert Guis- 
 cai'd, one of twelve heroic Norman brothers, had 
 acquired the sovereignty of the greater part of 
 those beautiful countries that are now included 
 within the kingdom of Naples. The Norman 
 lance was di'eaded in all the rest of Italy, and 
 with a Norman pope established at Rome, the 
 supremacy of that people might have been ex- 
 tended from one end of the peninsula to the 
 other. The Bishop of Bayeux had some reason 
 for counting on the symijathy of his powerful 
 countrymen in the south, the close neighbour's of 
 Eome; and the influence of gold had been felt 
 before now in the college of cardinals, and the 
 elections of popes. It is quite certain that a con- 
 siderable number of the Norman chiefs entered 
 into Odo's views; and when he made up his mind 
 to set out for Italy in person, a brilliant escort 
 was formed for him. "Hugh the Wolf," the 
 famous Earl of Chester, who had a long account 
 of sin to settle — if he considered the butchering 
 of English and Welsh as crimes — was anxious to 
 
 go to Rome, and joined the bishu]), with some con- 
 siilerable bai'ons, his friends, ami niuch money. 
 
 The king was in Normandy when he heai'd of 
 this expedition, and being resolute in his deter- 
 mination of stoppjing it, he instantly set sail for 
 England. He sm-prised the aspii-ant to the pope- 
 dom at the Isle of Wight, seized his treasures, 
 and summoned him before a council of Norman 
 bai'ons hastily assembled at that island. Here 
 the king accused his half-brother of " imtruth 
 and sinister dealings" — of having abused his 
 power, both as viceroy and judge, and as an eai'l 
 of the realm — of having maltreated the English 
 beyond measure, to the gi-eat danger of the com- 
 mon cause — of having robbed the churches of 
 the laud — and finally, of having seduced and at- 
 tempted to carry out of England, and beyond the 
 Alps, the wai-riors of the king, who needed theii- 
 services for the safe keeping of the kingdom. 
 Having exposed his gi-ievauces, William asked 
 the council what such a brother deserved at his 
 hands? No one dm'st answer. "An-est him, 
 then !" ci-ied the Iving, " and see that he be well 
 looked to !" If they had been backwai'd iu pro- 
 nouncing an opinion, they were still more avei-se 
 to lay hands on a bishop; not one of the council 
 moved, though it was the king that ordered them. 
 William then advanced himself, and seized the 
 prelate by his robe. " I am a clerk — a priest," 
 cried Odo; "I am a minister of the Lord: the 
 pope alone has the right of judging me 1" But 
 his brother, without losing his hold, replied, " I 
 do not ai-rest you as Bishop of Bayeux, but as 
 Earl of Kent."' Odo was cai-ried forthwith to 
 Normandy, and, instead of crossing the Alps and 
 the Apennines, was shut u]) in a castle. 
 
 Soon after imprisoning his brother, William 
 lost his wife, Matilda, whom he tenderly loved; 
 and after her death it was observed or fancied he 
 became more suspicious, more jealous of the au- 
 thority of his old companions iu ai-ms, and more 
 av:u-icious than ever. The coming on of old age 
 is, however, enough in itself to account for such 
 a change in such a man. After a lapse of ten 
 years the Danes were again heard of, and their 
 tlu-eats of invading England kept William in a 
 state of anxiety for nearly two whole yeai-s, and 
 were the cause of his laying fresh burdens upon 
 his English subjects. He revived the odious 
 Danegeld; and because many lands and manors 
 which had been charged with it in the time of 
 the Anglo-Saxon kings had been specially ex- 
 emjjted from this tax when he granted them in 
 fief to his nobles, he made up the deficiency by 
 raising it upon the other lauds, to the rate of six 
 shillings a-hide. The money he thus obtained, 
 with part of the treasm-es lie had amassed, was 
 
 1 Chron. Sax.; FloraU.; Malviesb.; Ordcric.
 
 A.D. 1006-1087] 
 
 WW.LIA^t THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 203 
 
 employed in Im-iug and brinj,nng over foreign 
 auxiliaries; for though he could rely on iin Eng- 
 lish army when fighting against Frenchmen, or 
 the people of Normandy, !Maine, and Brittany, 
 he could not trust them at home; and he well 
 knew that many of them on the eastern and 
 north-eastern shores would join tlie Danish in- 
 vaders heart and hand, instead of ojiposing them. 
 He therefore collected, as he had done before, 
 men of all nations ; and these came across the 
 Channel in such numbers that, according to the 
 chroniclers, people began to wonder how the 
 land could feed so many hungry bellies. These 
 hordes of foreignei's sorely oppressed the na- 
 tives, for William quartered them tlu-oughout 
 the country, to be paid as well as supported. 
 
 To complete the miseries inflicted upon Eng- 
 land at this time, "William ordered all the land 
 lying near the sea-coast to be laid waste, so that 
 if the Danes should land, they would find no 
 ready supply of food or forage.' 
 
 The Conqueror had often felt the want of a 
 naval force, and knowing that to encom-age com- 
 merce was the best means of fostering a navy, 
 he repeatedly invited foreignei-s to frequent his 
 ports, promising that they and theu* property 
 should be perfectly secure. But he did not live 
 to possess a navy of his own. 
 
 Another domestic calamity afflicted the latter 
 yeai's of the Conqueror — for he saw a violent 
 jealousy growing up between his favourite sons, 
 William and Henry. Robert, his eldest son, 
 continued an exile or fugitive; and Richard, his 
 second son in order of bu-th (but whom some 
 make illegitimate), had been gored to death by a 
 stag,'' some years before, as he was hunthig in 
 the New Forest; and he was noted by the old 
 English annalists as being the first of sevei-al of 
 the Conqueror's progeny that perished in that 
 place — " the justice of God punishing in him his 
 father's dispeopling of that country." 
 
 Perhaps no single act of the Conqueror in- 
 flicted more misery within the limits of its opera- 
 tion, and certainlj' none has been more bitterly 
 stigmatized, than his seizure and wasting of the 
 lands in Ilampshh'e, to make himself a hunting- 
 ground. Like most of the great men of the time, 
 who had few other amusements, William w;is 
 jia-ssionately fond of the chase. The Anglo- 
 Saxon kings had the same taste, and left many 
 royal parks and forests in all parts of England, 
 
 • Saxon Chronicle. 
 
 -Other accounts say he was killed by a "pestilent blast" 
 which crossed him while hunting; but, we believe, all fix the 
 scene of his death in the New Forest. 
 
 ' Warner, Topographical Remarks on Ihe South-Wtskrii Parts 
 of Hampshire. 
 
 < The late William Stewart Rose, Esq. Tlie office of bow- 
 bearer for the Xew Forest is now, of coui-se, a sinecure, and it in 
 almost purely honorary, the salai-y being Aiis. in tlie year, and 
 
 wherein he might have gratified a rea-sonablo 
 passion; but he was not satisfied with the pos- 
 session of these, and resolved to have a vast 
 hunting-ground "for his insatiate and super- 
 fluous pleasm-e," in the close ueighboiu-hood of 
 the royal city, Winchester, his favourite place of 
 residence. In an early part of his reign he there- 
 fore seized all the south-western part of Ilamp- 
 shire, ino;isuring thirty miles fi-om Salisbury to 
 the sea, and in circumference not inucli less than 
 ninety miles. This wide district, before called 
 Ytene or Ytchtene (a name yet partially pre- 
 served), was to some extent uninhabited, and fit 
 for the purposes of the chase, abounding in sylvan 
 sjjots and coverts; but it included, at the same 
 time, many fertile and cultivated manors, which 
 he caused to be totally absorbed in the sur- 
 rounding wilderness, and many towns or villages, 
 with no fewer than thirty-six mother or parish 
 chm-ches, all which he demolished, and th-ove 
 away the people, making them no compensa- 
 tion. According to the indisputable authority 
 of Doomsday Book, in which we have an ac- 
 count of the state of this territory both before 
 and after its " aiforestation," the damage done to 
 private property must have been immense. In 
 an extent of nearly ninety miles in circumference, 
 one hundred mud eight places, manors, villages, 
 or hamlets suflfered in a greater or less degi-ee." 
 Some melancholy traces of these ancient abodes 
 of the Anglo-Saxons are still to be found in the 
 recesses of the New Forest, and have been de- 
 scribed by a gentleman* who passed much of his 
 life in and near those woods, and who was the 
 successor in office to Sir Walter Tyi-rel, as bow- 
 bearer to the king. In many spots, though no 
 ruins are visible above gi-ound, either the line of 
 erections can be traced by the elevation of the 
 soil, or fragments of building materials have been 
 discovered on turning up the surface. The tradi- 
 tional names of places still used by the foresters, 
 such as " Church-place," " Chm-eh-moor," "Thom- 
 son's Castle," seem to mark the now solitary si)0ts 
 as the sites of ancient buildings where the Eng- 
 lish people worshipped their God, and dwelt in 
 peace, before they were swept away by the Con- 
 queror; and the same elegant writer we have last 
 refeiTcd to suggests that the termination of ham 
 and ton, yet annexed to some woodlands, may be 
 taken as evidence of the former existence of 
 hamlets and towns in the Forest.'' 
 
 one buck in the season. In Iiis oath of office the bow-boarar 
 swears "to be of good behaviour towards his m.^jesty's wild 
 beasts." 
 
 » See notes to The Red King, a spirited poem, by William 
 Stewart Rose, Esq., the royal bow-boni-cr, in which the man- 
 ners and costume ot the period are carefully prcsoi-vcd. Mr. 
 Rose justly obsei-ves, " that this cannot be considered as one of 
 those ' liistorical doubts,' the solution of which involves nothing 
 beyond the mere disentanglement of an intricate knot. It may
 
 201. 
 
 We hare euU'reJ into these slight details be 
 cause some foi-cigu writers, at the head of whom 
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAXD. 
 
 [Civil and Militakt. 
 
 is Voltaire, have professed a disbelief of the early 
 history of the New Forest, aud because some 
 
 1. Ashley Walk. 
 
 2. AshurstWalk. 
 
 3. Baldenvood Walk. 
 
 4. BramWehill Walk, 
 fl. Broomy Walk. 
 
 6. BurleyWalk. 
 
 7. Castla MahvooJ Walk. 
 
 8. Tleiiny Lodge Walk. 
 
 9. Eyewortb Wali. 
 
 10. Holmsley Walk, 
 
 11. Irons Hill Walk. 
 
 12. Lady Cross Walk. 
 
 13. ItJiiefield Walk. 
 
 14. Whitley Ridja Walk. 
 
 15. Wilverley Walk. 
 Ifi. Beaulieu Manor. 
 17. Mmestead Llauor. 
 
 native wi'iters, including even Dr. V/^arton, who 
 was "naturally disposed to cling to the traditions 
 of antiquity," fancying there were no existing 
 ruins or traces of such desolation, have doubted 
 whether William destroyed village;, castles, and 
 chm-ches, though that demolition is recorded by 
 chroniclers who wrote a very short time after the 
 event, and is proved beyond the reach of a doubt 
 by Doomsday Book. If any other proof were 
 necessary, it ought to be found in the universal 
 tradition of the people in all ages, that on account 
 of the unusual crimes and cruelties committed 
 there hy William, God made the New Forest the 
 death-scene of three princes of his ov>'n blood. 
 The seizui'e of a waste or wholly uninhabited dis- 
 trict would have been nothing extraordinary : it 
 was the sufferings of the people, who were di-iven 
 from their villages — the WTOUgs done the clergy, 
 
 be considered as making one of a series of acts of tyranny, uu- 
 vai-nished with any plea wliich might palliate or disguise its 
 euorraity; aud, as such, foi-ming a curious feature in the hibtory 
 of maiuiera." 
 
 whose churches were destroyed — that made the 
 deep and ineffaceable impression. 
 
 At the same time that the Conqueror thus en- 
 larged the Held of his own pleasures at the ex- 
 pense of his subjects, he enacted new laws, by 
 which he prohibited hunting in any of his forests, 
 and rendered the penalties more severe than ever 
 had been inflicted for such offences. At this pe- 
 riod the killing of a man might be atoned for by 
 payment of a moderate fine or composition ; but 
 not so, by the New Forest laws, the slaying of 
 one of the king's beasts of chase. " He ordained," 
 says the Saxon Chronicle, "that whosoever should 
 kiU a stag or a deer should have his eyes toi'ji 
 out; wild boai's were protected in the same man- 
 ner as deer, and he even made statutes equally 
 severe to preserve the hai-es. This savage king 
 loved wild beasts as if he had been their father." 
 These forest laws, which were executed with 
 rigour against the English, caused gi'eat misery ; 
 for many of them depended on the chase as a 
 chief means of subsistence. By including in his
 
 A.D. 10C6— 10S7.] 
 
 VTILUAM THE CONQUEROn. 
 
 20o 
 
 roviil Joiuain all the great forests of EiiglauJ, 
 and insisting on his riglit to grant or refuse per- 
 mission to liiint in them, William gave sore of- 
 fence to many of his Norman nobles, who were 
 as much addicted to the sport as himself, but 
 who were prohibited from keeping sporting dogs, 
 even on their own estates, unless they subjected 
 the poor animals to a mutilation of the fore-juiws, 
 that rendered them unfit for hunting. From 
 their first establishment, and through their dif- 
 ferent gradations of "forest laws"aud "game- 
 laws," these jealous regulations have constantly 
 been one of the most copious sources of dissen- 
 sion, litigation, violence, and bloodshed.' 
 
 Towai-ds the end of the j'ear 10S6, William 
 summoned all the chiefs of the army of the Con- 
 quest, the sons of those chiefs, and every one to 
 whom he had given a fief, to meet him at Salis- 
 bury. All the barons and all the abbots came, 
 attended with men-at-arms and part of their vas- 
 sals, the whole assemblage, it is said, amounting 
 to 60,000 men. Tlie chiefs, both lay and church- 
 men, took agaii^ the oath of allegiance and ho- 
 mage to the king; but the assertion that they 
 rendered the same to Prince William, as his 
 successor, seems to be without good foundation. 
 Shortly after receiving these new pledges, Wil- 
 liam, accompanied by his two sons, passed over 
 to the Continent, taking with him "a mighty 
 mass of money fitted for some gi-eat attemjit," and 
 being followed by the numberless curses of the 
 English people. The enterprise he had on hand 
 was a war with Fi-ance, for the possession of the 
 city of Mantes, with the territory situated be- 
 tween the Epte and the Oise, which was then 
 called the country of Vexin. William at first 
 entered into negotiations for this territory, which 
 he claimed as his right; but Philip, the French 
 king, after amusing his rival for a while with 
 quibbles and sophisms, marched troops into the 
 coimtry, and secretly authorized some of his ba- 
 rons to make incursions on the frontiers of Nor- 
 mandy. During the negotiations William fell 
 sick, and kept his bed. As he advanced in years 
 
 1 These laws, however, did not much alTect the main fabric of 
 the iKitioual jurisprudence, as to wliichSir F. Palgvavo remarks 
 as follows : — '* Notwitlistanding the violence and desolation at- 
 tendant upon the Conquest, AVilliam the NoiTn-in governed with 
 as much equity and justice as was compatible with the forcible 
 assumption of the regal power; and the m.aiii fabric of the Anglo- 
 Sason jmisprudence remained unch.anged, although some altera- 
 tions had been effected in the executive details. If William ever 
 contemplated the introduction of the Nonnan jmisprudence as 
 the law of the whole people of England, that plan had been de- 
 feated, and probabl.v by the opposition of the Normans them- 
 selves, united to the unwillingness of the natives. Had the 
 Conqueror succeeded, the royal prerofj.atives would have gained 
 a great accession; for it was the English laws which protected 
 the Xomian barons, whose franchises were established by plead- 
 ing the usages wliich liad prevailed under Edward the Confessor. 
 So great, indeed, w.-is the traditionary veneration inspired by 
 the hallowed ujime of the last legitim.ate Anglo-Sa.xon king. 
 
 he grew excessively fat; and, spite of his \inlont 
 exercise, his indulgence in the ple;isures of the 
 table had given him considerable rotundity of 
 person. On the score of many grudges, his 
 hatred of the French king was intense; and Philip 
 now drove him to frenzy by saying, as a good 
 joke among his courtiers, that his cousin William 
 was a long while lying-in, but that no doubt 
 there would be a fine churching when he was de- 
 livered. On liearing this coarse and insipid jest, 
 the conqueror of England swore by the most ter- 
 rible of his oaths — by the .splendour and birth of 
 Chi-ist — that he would be churched in Notre 
 Dame, the cathedral of Paris, and present so 
 many wax torches that all France should be set 
 in a blaze.- 
 
 It was not until the end of July (1087) that he 
 was in a state to mount his wai'-horse, though it 
 is asserted by a cotemporary that he was con- 
 valescent before then, and expressly waited that 
 season to make his vengeance the more dreadful 
 to the country. The corn was almost ready for 
 the sickle, the grapes hung in rich ripening clus- 
 ters on the vines, when William marched his ca- 
 valry through the corn-fields, and made his sol- 
 diery tear up the vines by the roots, and cut 
 down the pleasant trees. His destructive host 
 was soon before Mantes, which either was taken 
 by surprise and treachery, or oflered but a feeble 
 resistance. At his orders the troops fired the 
 unfortunate town, sparing neither church nor 
 monastery, but doing their best to reduce the 
 whole to a heap of ashes. As the Conqueror 
 rode up to view the ruin he had made, his horse 
 put his fore-feet on some embers or hot cin- 
 ders, which caused him to swerve or plunge so 
 violently, that the heavy rider was thrown on 
 the high pummel of the saddle, and grievously 
 bruised. The king disinoimted in great pain, and 
 never more put foot in stirrup.^ He was carried 
 slowly in a litter to Rouen, and again laid in his 
 bed. The bruise had produced a rujjture; and 
 being in a bad habit of body, and somewhat ad- 
 vanced in years, it was soon evident to all, and 
 
 that the Xornians themselves were willing to claim him .as the 
 author of the wise customs of their native country. And we 
 m.ay be also inclined to believe that notwitlistanding the veij 
 strong terms in which the chroniclers describe the despotism of 
 the Conqueror — 'all things," it is s.litl, 'Divine a}ui human, 
 obeyed his beck and nod' — his supremacy over the church w:ifi 
 the principal oppression of which they complained. But the 
 employment of foreign functionaries was followed by new forms 
 of proceeding, not accompanied, perhaps, by any decided hitcn- 
 tion of innovating, and dictated merely by the pre^uro of cir- 
 cumstances, which, nevertheless, had afterwards the effect of 
 displacing much of the old jurisprudence .as it existed befora 
 the invtision, or of causing it to assume another guise." — Pal- 
 grave's iii«t- and Progress of the Eii'jluh C'ommonicealth, part i. 
 p. 240. 
 
 - Cliron. de Norriiand.: Brompton. It was the custom ffT 
 women, at their chiu'ching, to cai'ry lighted tapers in th'-'ir 
 hauJa. ^ Orderic; Anglia Saaa.
 
 206 
 
 HISTOnV Oi" ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and ]\Iii.it vky, 
 
 even to himself, that the consequeuce would be 
 fatal. Being disturbed by the noise and bustle 
 of Rouen, and no dovibt desirous of dying in a 
 lioly place, he had himself carried to llie monas- 
 tery of St. Gervas, outside of the city -n-alls. 
 There he lingered for six weeks, surrounded by 
 doctors, who could do Iiim no good, and by priests 
 and monks, who, at least, did not neglect the 
 opportunity of doing much good for themselves. 
 
 Becoming sensible of the approach of death, his 
 heai-t softened for the first time; and though he 
 preserved his kingly decorum, and conversed 
 calmly on the wonderful events of his life, he is 
 said to have felt the vanity of all human gran- 
 deur, and a keen remorse for the crimes and 
 cruelties he had committeil. He sent money to 
 Mantes, to rebuild the churches he had burned, 
 and he ordered large sums to be paid to the 
 
 MANfEa.'— iinnvii bv H. G. Hiiie, from his sket;!i on the spot. 
 
 chui'ches and monasteries in England. It was 
 represented to him that one of the best means of 
 obtaining mercy from God was to show mercy to 
 man; and at length lie consented to the instant 
 release of his state-prisoners, some of whom had 
 pmed in dungeons for more thau twenty yeai-s. 
 Of those that were English among these captives, 
 the most conspicuous wei-e — Earl Morear, Beorn, 
 and Ulnoth or Wuluot, the brother of Harold; 
 of the Normans — Eoger Fitz-Osboru, formerly 
 Earl of Hereford, and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, his 
 own half-brother. The pai-don which was -rn-ung 
 from him with most diificulty was that of Odo, 
 whom, at iii-st, he excepted in his act of grace, 
 saying he was a fii-ebrand, that would ruin both 
 England and Normandy if set at large. 
 
 His two younger sons, William and Henry, 
 were assiduous round the death-bed of the Ising, 
 waiting impatieutly for the declaration of his last 
 will. A day or two before his death, the Con- 
 qiieror assembled some of his chief prelates and 
 
 ' M.antes is situated on the left bank of tlie Seine. Two fine 
 stone bridges communicate, by an intervening island, with the 
 small to^TO of Limay, on the opposite bank of the river. The 
 town is well built, and the streets are adorned with four public 
 fountains. The church is a fine Gothic edifice, with two lofty 
 toweiB, and there is another more ancient tower, wluch belonged 
 to the old church of 8t. M.aclou, In the infancy of the Krench 
 monarchy, Mantes was one of its bulw-arks towards Normandy. 
 
 bai'ous in his sick chamber, and declai-ed in their 
 presence that he bequeathed the duchy of Nor- 
 mandy, with llaine and its other dependencies, 
 to his eldest son, Robert, whom, it is alleged, he 
 could not put aside in the order of succession, as 
 the Normans were mindful of the oaths they had 
 taken, with his father's consent, to that unfortu- 
 nate prince, and were much attached to him. 
 " As to the crown of England," said i\\e dying 
 monarch, " I bequeath it to no one, as I did not 
 receive it, like the duchy of Normandy, in inhe- 
 ritance from my father, but acquired it by con- 
 quest and the shedding of blood with mine own 
 good sword. The succession to that kingdom I 
 therefore leave to the decision of God, only desii'- 
 iug most fervently that my son William, who has 
 ever been dutiful to me in all things, may obtaiu 
 it, and prosper in it." "And what do you give 
 unto me, O my father ?" impatiently cried Prince 
 Henry, who had not been mentioned in this dis- 
 tribution. "Five thousand pounds' weight of sil- 
 ver out of my treasury," was his answer. " But 
 what can I do with five thousand pounds of silver, 
 if I have neither lauds nor a home ?" " Be pa- 
 tient," rejjlied the king, "and have trust in the 
 Lord ; suffer thy elder brothers to precede thee — 
 thy time will come after theirs."- Henry went 
 
 2 0,deric.
 
 A.D. 1066—1087.] 
 
 ^V!LLIAM Tlir. CONQUEROR. 
 
 207 
 
 straight, and drew tbe silvei', which lie weighed 
 with gi-eat eai-e, and then furnislied himself with 
 a strong coiier, well protected with locks and iron 
 bindings, to keep his treasure in. William left 
 the king's bedside at the same time, and, without 
 waiting to see the breath out of the old man's 
 body, hastened over to England to look after his 
 crown. 
 
 About sunrise on the 9th of September, the Con- 
 queror was for a moment roused from a stupor into 
 which he had fallen, by the sound of bells; he 
 eagerly inquired what the noise meant, and was 
 answered that they were tolling the hour of ]3rinie 
 in the church of St. Mary. He lifted his hands 
 to heaven, and saying, "I recommend iny soul to 
 my Lady Maiy, the holy mother of God," instantly 
 expired. The events which followed his dissolu- 
 tion not only give a striking picture of the then 
 unsettled state of society, but also of the char- 
 acter and aflections of the men that waited on 
 princes anci conquerors. William's last faint sigh 
 was the signal for a general flight and sci-amble. 
 The knights, priests, and doctors v.'ho had passed 
 the night near him, put on theii- spurs as soon as 
 they saw him dead, mounted their horses, and 
 galloped off to their several homes, to look after 
 their pi-operty and their own interests. The 
 king's servants, and some vassals of minor rank, 
 left behind, then proceeded to I'ifle the aj)art- 
 ment of the arms, silver vessels, linen, the royal 
 dresses, and everything it contained, and then 
 were to horse, and away like the rest. From 
 prime to tierce,' or for about three hoiu's, the 
 corpse of the mighty Conc^ueror, abandoned by 
 all, lay in a state of almost perfect nakedness on 
 the bare boai'ds. The citizens of Rouen were 
 thrown into as much constei-nation as could have 
 been excited by a conquering enemj' at their 
 gates; they either ran about the streets, asking 
 news and advice from every one they chanced to 
 meet, or busied themselves in concealing then- 
 moveables and valuables. At last the clergy and 
 the monks thought of the decent duties owing 
 to the mortal remains of their sovereign ; and, 
 forming a procession, they went with a crucifix, 
 burning tapers and incense, to pray over the di.s- 
 hououred body for the peace of its sold. The 
 Ai-chbishoji of Eouen ordained that the king 
 should be interi-ed at Caen, in the church of St. 
 Stejihen's, which he had built and royally en- 
 dowed. But even now it should seem there were 
 none to do it honour; for the minute relater of 
 these dismal ti-ansactions, who was living at the 
 time, says that his sons, his brothers, his rela- 
 
 ' The chroniclers, who were all mnnks or priests, always couut 
 by these and the other canonical hours, a2 sejcts, nones, ve^pcri', 
 (kc. The chui-ch service called prime or pnma^ and which im- 
 meiliately succeeded matinx. began about six a.m., and lasted 
 to tierce or tei-tia, which comaienced about nine ,i,,M. 
 
 tions were all absent, and that of all his officere, 
 not one was found to take charge of the obse- 
 quies, and that it was a poor knight who lived 
 in the neighbourhood who chai'ged himself with 
 the trouble and expense of the funeral, "out of 
 his natm'al good nature and love of God." The 
 body was cai-ried by water, by the Seine and the 
 sea, to Caen, where it w;is received by the abbot 
 and monks of St. Stejihen's ; other churchmen 
 and the inhabitants of the city joining these, a 
 considerable procession was formed; but as they 
 went along after the coffin, a fire suddenly broke 
 out in the town ; laymen and clerks ran to ex- 
 tinguish it, and the brothers of St. Stephen's 
 were left alone to conduct the corpse to the 
 chm-ch. Even the last burial service did not 
 pass undisturbed. The neighbom-ing bishops 
 and abbots assembled for this ceremony. The 
 mass had been performed; the Bi.shop of Evreux 
 had pronounced the panegj'ric, and the body was 
 about to be lowered into the grave prepared for 
 it in the church, between the altar and the choir, 
 when a man, suddenly rising in the crowd, ex- 
 claimed with a loud voice, "Bishop, the man 
 whom 3'ou have praised was a robber; the very 
 ground on which we are standing is mine, and is 
 the site where my father's house stood. He took 
 it from me by violence, to build this church on 
 it. I reclaim it as my right; and, in the name of 
 God, I forbid you to bury him here, or cover 
 him with my glebe." The man who spoke thus 
 boldly was Asseline Fitz-Ai'thur, who had often 
 asked a just compensation from the king in his 
 lifetime. Many of the persons present confirmed 
 the truth of his statement; and, after some pai-- 
 ley, the bishops paid him sixty sliillings for the 
 grave alone, engaging, at the same time, to jjiro- 
 cure him the full value of the rest of his land. 
 The body, dressed in royal robes, but without a 
 coffin, was then lowered into the tomb; the rest 
 of the ceremony was hmu-ied over, and the as- 
 sembly disjjersed." 
 
 The personal character of William is inscribed 
 so distinctly in the pai'ticulars of his eventful 
 history, that any further detail of it is unneces- 
 saiy. As a brave soldier, he was distinguished 
 at a period when mere personal bravery was of 
 the highest account ; as a sagacious leader, he 
 was so far superior to any of his cotemporaries, 
 that for his equal in English history we must 
 pass onward to the days of Ci'ecy and Azincom't. 
 Even tliese qualities, however, would not have 
 sufficed to win for him the proud title of the 
 "Conqueror," had he not excelled in jiolitieal 
 craft and cunning as much as in military skill. 
 
 ' Orderic; Waco. Roman, de Rou.; CUron. dt Ii'ormand. Or- 
 deric gives furtlier details respecting the lowering of the body 
 into the grave, but they are too revolting to bo translated for 
 general readers of the nineteenth conliu-y.
 
 208 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Mimtahy. 
 
 .ii'oviuces 
 attempt against En, 
 
 Dynasties have been cliangeJ and \ 
 
 won by war, but AVilliam's attempt agai — .^ 
 
 land was the last gn\it and pei'mauent conquest 
 of a whole nation achieved in Kurojie. The com- 
 panions of his conquest became one people with 
 
 ^ Of William the Conqueror, M. Bonnechose says :— " His in- 
 satiable ambition was served by an invincible pei-severance ; he 
 bad fi'om his infancy to face innumerable difficiiltiea; cveiything 
 was at fii-st against him — his illegitimate buth, hi3 tender age, 
 tlio ambition of relatives disputing his paternal inlieritance ; he 
 gi-ew np araid the severest trials ; he inui'ed his soul, in sup- 
 pressing rebellion, to the employment of the most violent mea- 
 sures, and he learned, in reg;uning his own patrimony, how to 
 appropriate that of others. 
 
 "With what sagacity did he foresoe remote co:itiiigoncie9! 
 with what consummate skill did he so arrange overji.hiug as to 
 insure success ! When Ids rival is in his hands, he caresses in- 
 stead of threatening him, in order to obtain fi-om him an oath 
 which would make him Ids subject if he kept it, and would dis- 
 grace him if he broke it ; afterwards, when llarold occupied the 
 throne that William claimed, the latter still temporizes, and 
 when at the point of employing violence, studies to maintain a 
 show of justice. With what prudence does lie secui-e that aid 
 from Rome which his rival disdains '. how he avails himself of 
 the passions that he needs to serve his pm-poses t One after 
 auothtr, he addresses him-xlf to men's cupidity, to their feara, 
 to their supei-stition, to their prejudices, and tvirns all to ac- 
 count. At last the moment for action comes, and that same 
 man, whom we have seen so temporizing, so measured, and as 
 cunning as a fox, at once becomes a lion ; to him we may apply 
 the words of Bossuet : 'The promptitude of his action affords no 
 time for counteraction, and in the tluckest of the fight at Has- 
 tings he displays a com\ige which would have been rash, liad 
 not the extremity of the peril been such as to reader the excess 
 of courage indispensable," 
 
 "After gaining the battle, he trusts nothing to chance, and 
 before risking himself in the interior, he subdues and fortifies 
 the whole of the coast; next h« establishes himself as strongly 
 to the north of the capital as t" tlie south, and after encompass- 
 ing the city on all sides, just as lie seems to have only to march 
 in order to effect its reduction, he restrains himself. Ilia language 
 is not that of a conq.uoror or a mivster; William caresses the lead- 
 ing men among his enemies, ho solicits their suH'rages, he allures 
 to him the descendant of the old Saxon kings, he give:i the titles 
 of father and bishop to the vei-y priest who, at his own pressing 
 reciuest, has been declai'ed at Rome to be an intnider and a 
 rebel ; he lays no violent hand on the crown of Cerdic, he con- 
 trives to have it offered to him ; lie accex^ts it, and swears he 
 will govern England as tlie best of her kings. . . . When 
 threatened with a formidable insurrection, we have seen how 
 he conjm"ed the stomi, by promising to imiuire into the old laws 
 of the country, and to cause them to be observed ; but the na- 
 tional law, as intei'preted by a conqueror, is the law of the 
 strongest. We shall see with what unheaid-nf ability, with what 
 a despot's tact, M'illiam contrives to extract from ancient insti- 
 tutions whatever could consolidate his power, and how, in evok- 
 ing from their' tombs all the kings whose memoiy had retained 
 popularity, from Arthur to Kdward, he made all speak so as to 
 favour his views. At last, when he found Ins authority fully 
 established — when he had all England within his powerful gi-asp, 
 and had made all resistance hopeless— he seizes his vast prey, he 
 tears it to pieces as it suits Ids humour, and of all those i>oi-tions, 
 still reeking with the blood of a whole people, he appropriates 
 tlie largest to himself. He possessed coimtless domains ; heaps 
 of gold were yeaily pourevl into his treasuiy ; inimcutie foreita 
 
 those tliey subdued; bis power was transmitted 
 to Ids posterity; and after :dl the changes and 
 revolutions that have ha]>peucd in the course of 
 seven centuries and a half, the blood of our reigia- 
 ing family is still kihdi'ed to his.' 
 
 grew by his command, on what were once the sites of thriving 
 towns; and herds of game, for his gratification, found a haunt 
 in tracts of land laid waste for the pmiiose, and from wldch man 
 was expelled. . . . Taught by long practical acquaintance 
 with men and affau-s, he thoroughly know human natme and 
 desjilsed it ; neverthele-ss, he believed also in the existence of 
 virtiio; and when he any^vhore discovered it, his confidence 
 became as boundless as Ids esteem ; extraordinary merit, oven 
 in his enemies, never found him indifferent or insensible, and 
 his admiration disarmed his wrath. If he often employed 
 criminal means to raise and etrengtlien Idmself, he also exhi- 
 bited, in several acts of his life, a serious regard and sincere 
 zeal for religion and justice ; his wisdom, in fine, consolidated 
 what violence had established."— its Quutre Conqiicta de I'Angle- 
 terre, livre iv. ch. iii. 
 
 Tliieny, on the subject of the Conquest, has the following re- 
 marks : — " If, in collecting in his own mind all the facts detailed 
 in the foregoing narration, the reader wishes to fonn a just idea 
 of England upon its conquest by William of Normandy, he must 
 figure to himself not a mere cliange of political rule— not the 
 triumph of one of two competitora— but the inti-usion of a nation 
 into the bosom of another people, which it came to destroy, and 
 the scattered fragments of which it retained as an iutegi'al por- 
 tion of the new system of society, in the status merely of per- 
 sonal in-opcrty, or, to use the stronger language of records and 
 deeds, of a 'clothing to the soil.' He must not picture to him- 
 self, on the one hand, William, the king and despot ; on the 
 other, simply Ins subjects, high and low, rich and pour, all 
 inhabiting England, and, consequently, all English ; he must 
 bear in mind tliat there wei-e two distinct nations, the old Anglo- 
 Saxon race and the Norman invaders, dwelling intermingled on 
 the same soil ; or rather he might contemplate two countries— 
 the one possessed by the Normans, wealthy and exonerated fi'om 
 capitation and public burdens — the other, the Anglo-Saxon, 
 enslaved and oppressed with a land-tax ; the former fidl of spa- 
 cious mansions, of walled and moated castles ; the latter scat- 
 tered over with thatched cabins and ancient walls, in a state of 
 dilapidation ; this peopled with the happy and the idle, with 
 soldiers and couitiere, with knights and nobles; that with men 
 in misery and condemned to labom", with peasants and aitisans; 
 on the one he beholds luxuiy and insolence — on the other, 
 poverty and envy ; not the envy of the poor at the sight of the 
 opulence of men born to opulence, but that malignant envy, 
 although justice be on its side, which the despoiled cannot but 
 entertain in looking upon tlie spoilei-a. Lastly, to complete the 
 pictme, these t^^'o lands iire in some sort interwoven with each 
 other ; they meet at every point ; and yet they are more distinct, 
 more completely separated, than if the ocean roUed between 
 them. Each has its own tongue, and spe^iks a tongue that is 
 strange to the other. French is the coui't language — used in all 
 the palaces, castles, and mansions, in the abbeys and monas- 
 teries, in all places where wealth and power offer their attrac- 
 tions; wliile the ancient language of the countiy is heard only 
 at the firesides of the poor and the serfs. For a long time these 
 two idioms were propagated without intonnixture — the one 
 being the mask of noble, the other of ignoble bii'th. as is ex- 
 pressed with bitterness in the vei-ses of a poet of the oldon time, 
 who complains that England in his day exhibited the spectacle 
 of a land that had repudiated its mother tongue." — IliSt. 0/ 
 Ihe Nonnan CQnqv£st, conclusion of book vi.
 
 A.D. 1087—1100.] 
 
 WILLIAM lUIFUS. 
 
 209 
 
 CHAPTER II.— CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. 
 
 WILLIAM 11., SURSAMED UUFUS. A.D. 1087-1100. 
 
 Accession of Willi.am II., surnanied Kufus— Opposition made to his succession — Claim of liis eUler brother, Robert, 
 to tlie crown — Oilo, who assists him, is bauislied — Fl.aiiibaril, the rapacious luiuister of Rufus — Contentions 
 between Rnfus and his brotliers — AVar between England and Scotland — War between En^daud and Wales — 
 Conspiracy in Northumberland against Rufus defeated — Departure of Robert of Normandy to the Crusade — 
 Kufus invades Slaiue— His death in the New Forest — His character. 
 
 ILLIAIM EUFUS, or A\'iniam 
 the Red, who left his father 
 at the point of death, was in- 
 formed of his decease as he 
 igMK^jl^^«j was on the point of embark- 
 
 \fy ' -^__>-\-^- ^ ijjg g^ Wissant, near Calais. 
 
 The news only made him the more anxious to 
 reach England, that he might, by the actual 
 seizure of the succession, set at defiance the pre- 
 tensions of any other claimant to the crown. Ar- 
 riving in England, he secured the important 
 fortresses of Dover, Peveusey, and Hastings, 
 concealhig his father's death, and pretending to 
 be the bearer of orders from him. He tlien has- 
 tened to Winchester, where, with a proper con- 
 viction of the efficacy of money, he claimed his 
 father's treasui-es, which were deposited in the 
 castle there. WiUiam de Pont-de-l'Arche, the 
 royal treasurer, readUy delivered him the keys, 
 and Rufus took possession of £60,000 in pure 
 silver, with much gold and many precious stones. 
 His next step was to repair to Laufranc, the 
 primate, in whose hands the destinies of the king- 
 dom may almost be said to have at that mo- 
 ment been. Bloet, a confidential messenger, had 
 ah'eady delivered a letter from the deceased 
 king, commending the cause and guidance of liis 
 son William to the arclibishop, already disposed 
 by motives botli of affection and self-interest in 
 favour of William, who had been his pupil, and 
 for whom he had performed the sacred cere- 
 monies on his initiation iuto knighthood. It is 
 stated, however, that Liinfrauc refused to declai-e 
 himself in favour of Rufus tUl that prince pro- 
 mised, u])on oath, to govern according to law 
 and right, and to ask and follow the advice of 
 the ju-imate in all matters of importance. It aji- 
 peai-s that Lanfranc then proceeded with as much 
 activity as Rufus could desire. He fii'st hastily 
 summoned a council of the .prelates and barons, 
 to give the semblance of a free election. The 
 former he knew he could influence, and of the 
 latter many were absent in Normandy. Some 
 prefeiTed William's claim and character ujion 
 principle, and others were silenced by his ]ire- 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 sence and promises. Though a strong feeling of 
 opposition existed, none was shown at this meet- 
 ing; and Lanfranc crowned his pvipil at West- 
 minster, on Sunday, the 26th of Se])tember, 1087, 
 the seventeenth day after the Conqueror's death. 
 William's first act of royal authority speaks 
 little in his favour either as a man or a sou — it 
 was the imprisonment of the unfortunate Eng- 
 lishmen whom his father had liberated on his 
 death-bed. Earls Morcar and Wulnot, who liad 
 followed him to England, in the hope of obtaining 
 some part of the estates of their fathers, were ;u-- 
 rested at Winchester, and confined in the castle. 
 The Norman state prisoners, however, who had 
 been released at the same time by the Conqueror, 
 re-obtained possession of their estates and hon- 
 ours. He then gave a quantity of gold and silver, 
 a part of the ti'easure found at Winchester, to 
 " Otho, the goldsmith," with orders to work it 
 into ornaments for the tomb of that father whom 
 he had abandoned on his death-bed. 
 
 When Robert Courtehose lieard of his father's 
 death, he was living, an impoverished exile, at 
 Abbeville, or, according to other accounts, in 
 Germany. He, however, soon appeared in Nor- 
 mandy, and was joyfully received at Rouen, the 
 capital, and recognized as their duke by the pre- 
 lates, barons, and chief men. Henry, the young- 
 est brother of the three, put himself and his five 
 thousand pounds of silver Ln a place of safety, 
 waiting events, and ready to seize every chance 
 of gaining either the royal crown or the ducal 
 coronet. 
 
 It was not perhaps easy for the Conqueror to 
 make any better arrangement, but it was in the 
 higliest degree unlikely, under tlie division he 
 had made of Enghind and Normandy, that peace 
 should be presei-ved between the brothers. Even 
 if the unscrupulous Rufus had been less active, 
 and the pereonal qualities of Robert altogether 
 difl'erent from what they were, causes indepen- 
 dent of the two princes thi-eatened to lead to in- 
 evitable hostilities. The great barons, tlie fol- 
 lowers of the Conqvieror, were almost sill pos- 
 sessed of estates and fiefs in both countries: they 
 £7
 
 210 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militabt. 
 
 were naturally uneasy at the separation of the 
 two territories, and foi-esaw tliat it would be 
 impossible for them to preserve their allegiance 
 to two masters, ami that they must very soon 
 resign or lose either their ancient patrimonies in 
 Nornimidy, or their new acquisitions in England. 
 A war between the two brothers wouUl at any 
 time embaiTass them as long as they held teiri- 
 toiy under both. The time, also, was not yet 
 come to reconcile them to the thought of their 
 native Normandy as a separate and foreign land. 
 In short, every inducement of interest and of 
 local attachment made them wish to see the two 
 countries united under one sovereign ; and their 
 only gi-eat dilTerence of opiuion on this head -was, 
 as to which of the two brothers should be that 
 so-i'ereign ; some of them adhering to William 
 while others insisted that, both by right of birth, 
 and the honourableness, generosity, and popu- 
 larity of his character, Eobert was the proper 
 prince to have both realms. A decision of the 
 question was inevitable; and the first step was 
 taken, not in Normandy, to expel Robert, but in 
 England, to dethrone William. Had he been 
 left to himself, the elder brother, from his love 
 of ease and pleasure, would in all probability 
 have remained satisfied vnth his duchy, but he 
 was beset on all sides by men who were con- 
 stantly repeating how unjust and disgraceful to 
 him it was to see a younger brother possess a 
 kingdom while he had only a duchy; by Nor- 
 man nobles that went daUy over to him com- 
 plaining of the present state of aftairs in Eng- 
 land ; and by his uncle Odo, the bishop, who 
 moved with all his ancient energy and fierceness 
 in the matter, not so much out of any preference 
 of one brother to the other, as out of his hatred 
 of the primate Lanfranc, whom he considered as 
 the chief cause of the disgrace, the imprisonment, 
 and all the misfortunes that had befallen him in 
 the latter years of the Conqueror. 
 
 Robert piomised to come over with an army 
 in all haste, and Odo engaged to do the rest. 
 At the Easter festival, the Red King kept his 
 court at Winchester. Odo was there with his 
 friends, and took that opportunity of ai'ranging 
 his plans. From the festival he departed to 
 raise the standard of Robert in his old earldom 
 of Kent, while Hugh de Grantmesuil, Roger 
 Bigod, Robert de Mowbray, Roger de Mont- 
 gomery, William, Bishop of Durham, and Geof- 
 frey of Coutances, repaired to do the like in then- 
 several fiefs and governments. A dangerous 
 rising thus took place simultaneously in many 
 parts of England; but the insurgents lost time, 
 and alienated the hearts of the English inhabi- 
 tants by paltiy acts of depredation, while the 
 army from Nomiandy, with which Robert had 
 promised to come over, and which Odo was in- 
 
 sfruited to look out and proviile for U])on the 
 south coast of Enghuid, was slow in making its 
 appearance. The Courtehose, a slave to his ha- 
 bitual indolence and indecision, was, as usual, in 
 great straits for money; but those who acted for 
 him had raised a considerable force in Normandy, 
 and but for the adoption by the new king of a 
 novel measure, and a confidence timely placed in 
 the natives, England would have been again 
 desolated by a foreign army. Rufus, on learning 
 the preparations that were making for this arma- 
 ment, permitted his English subjects to fit out 
 cruisers; and these adventurers, who seem to 
 have been the first that may be called " priva- 
 teers," rendered him very important service; for 
 the Normans, calculating that there was no royal 
 na'sy to oppose them, and that when they landed 
 they would be received by their friends and con- 
 federates, the followers of Odo and his party, 
 began to cross the Channel in small companies, 
 each at their own convenience, without concert 
 or any regard to mutual support in case of being 
 attacked on their passage; and so many of them 
 were intercepted and destroyed by the English 
 cruisers, that the attempt at invasion was aban- 
 doned.' But Rufus was also greatly indebted to 
 another measure which he adopted at this impor- 
 tant crisis. Before the success of the jirivateer- 
 ing experiment could be fully ascertained, seeing 
 so many of the Normans arrayed against him, 
 he had recourse to the native English; he armed 
 them to fight in their own countiy against his 
 own countrymen and relatives; and it was by 
 this confidence in them that he presei-ved his 
 crown, and probably his life. He called a meet- 
 ing of the long-despised chiefs of the Anglo-Saxon 
 blood, who had survived the slow and wasting 
 conquest of his father; he promised that he would 
 rule them with the best laws they had ever known ; 
 that he would give them the right of hunting in 
 the forests, as their forefathers had enjoyed it; 
 and that he would relieve them from many of 
 the taillages and odious tributes his father had 
 imposed.' " Contested titles and a disputed suc- 
 cession," as Sir James Mackintosh has remarked, 
 " obliged Rufus and his immediate successors to 
 make concessions to the Anglo-Saxons, who so 
 much surpassed the conquering nation in num- 
 bers; and these immediate sources of terrible evils 
 to England became the causes of its final deliver- 
 ance."' Flattered by his confidence, the thanes 
 and franklins who had been simimoned to attend 
 him, zealously promoted the levy; and when Ru- 
 fus proclaimed his ban of war in the old Saxon 
 foi-m — " Let every man who is not a man of no- 
 thing,' whether he live in burgh or out of burgh, 
 
 ' Southey, I^'avol Hiit.: Dr. Campbell. 
 
 "^ Chron. Sax.; Waverley Annals. ^ Hht. England. 
 
 * In Auglo-Sason, a "nidering," or " mmithing," ono of tLe
 
 A.D. 1087—1100.] 
 
 WILLIAM Rl'FUS. 
 
 211 
 
 leave his house and come'' — there came 30,000 
 stout Englishmen to the jihice appointed for the 
 muster. 
 
 Kent, with the Sussex coast, was the most vul- 
 nerable part of the islaud, and Odo, the king's 
 uucle, the most dangerous of his enemies; Kufns, 
 therefore, marched against the bislio]!, wlio had 
 strongly fortified Rochester Castle, and then 
 thrown liimself into Peveusey, there to await the 
 arrival of the tai-dy and never-coming Robert. 
 After a siege of seven weeks, the bishop was 
 obliged to surrender this stronghold, and his 
 nephew granted him life and liberty, on his tak- 
 ing an oath that he would put Rochester Castle 
 
 RocnESTER Castle, Kent.'- J. S, Prout, from a photographic view 
 
 into his hands, and then leave the kingdom for 
 ever. Relying on his solemn vow, Rufus sent 
 the prelate, with an inconsiderable escort of Nor- 
 man horse, from Pevensey to Rochester. The 
 strong castle of Rochester, Odo had intrusted to 
 the cai-e of Eustace, Earl of Boulogne. When 
 now reciting the set form of words, he demanded 
 of the eai-1 the surrender of the castle, Eustace, 
 pretending great wrath, ai-rested both the bishop 
 and his guards, as traitors to King Robert. The 
 scene was well acted, and Odo, trusting to be 
 
 screened from the accusation of perjnry, remained 
 in the fortres-s. His loving nephew soon em- 
 braced him with a close environment, drawing 
 round him a great force of English infantry and 
 foreign cavalry. But the castle w.as strong and 
 well garrisoned, for 500 Norman knights, with- 
 out counting the meaner sort, fought on the 
 battlements; and after a long siege the place was 
 not taken by assault, but forced to surrender 
 either by pestilential disease or famine, or pro- 
 bably by both. The English would have granted 
 no terms of capitulation; but the Norman portion 
 of William's army, who had countrymen, and 
 many of them friends and relations in the castle, 
 entertained very different senti- 
 ;^- nients, and at their earnest in- 
 
 stance, the Red King allowed the 
 besieged to march out with their 
 _ arms and horses, and freely depart 
 
 " ^ the land. The unconscionable 
 
 Bishop of Bayeux would have in- 
 cluded in the capitulation a pro- 
 viso that the king's army should 
 not cause tlieii- band to play in 
 sign of victory and triumph as the 
 garrison mai-ched out, but this 
 condition was refused, the king 
 saying in gi'eat auger he would 
 not make such a concession for 
 1000 marks of gold. The pai-ti- 
 zans of Robert then came forth 
 with banners lowered, the king's 
 music playing the while. As 
 Odo api^eared, there was a louder 
 crash; the trumjiets screamed, and 
 the English shouted as he passed, 
 "O ! for a halter to hang this per- 
 jured, murderous bishop!" It 
 was with these and still woree 
 imjirecalions, that the priest who had blessed the 
 Norman army at the battle of Hastings, departed 
 from England never more to enter it." 
 
 Having disposed of Odo, Rufns found no veiy 
 great difficulty in dealing with the other conspi- 
 rators, who began to feel that Robert was not the 
 man to re-unite the two countries, or give them 
 security for their estates and honouj-s in both. 
 Roger Montgomery, the powerful Eai-1 of Shrews- 
 bury, was detached from the confederacy by a 
 peaceful negotiation; others were won over by 
 
 atroDgest tei-ms of contempt. The expressions of the Saxon 
 ehrouicler are, " Baed thaet aelc man the waere uiuiitliing 
 3ceolde cuinan to him — Frenci^ce and Englisco — of porte and of 
 uppbinde." 
 
 I Rochester Castle was erected by William the Conqueror ou 
 what is believed to have been the site of an earlier fortress. 
 Tlie west wall of the castle overhangs the Medw.'ty, just above 
 the ancient bridge erected in the reign of Richard 11. The walls 
 inclosed a quadrangular area nearly 300 ft- square. Tlie keep 
 stands in the south-castem angle of this area, and is about TO ft. 
 
 sqiure, and rises about 104 ft. from the base, having a tower at 
 each angle rising 12 ft. above tlie rest of tiio biulding. On the 
 uoi-th side is anotlier tower, about two-thirds tlie height of the 
 keep, which guarded tho entrance. The walls of this castle are 
 of Kentish rag-stone, with quoins of Caen stone. Tho building, 
 with tho exception of a circular tower at tho Bouth-o.ifiteru angle, 
 which was rebuilt after King John had besieged and taken the 
 castle, is of pure Norman construction. It was di-nmautlod iu 
 the reign of James I., and tho roof and floors are entirely gono. 
 '■' Tkicrri/; Chron. Sax.; Ordcric. Vital.
 
 212 
 
 IIISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Mu.iTAnr. 
 
 LlanJishments; the Bishop of Durham was de- 
 feated by a divisiou of William's army, and the 
 Bishop of AVorcester's English tenants, adhering 
 to William, killed a host of the insurgents. The 
 remaining chiefs of the confederacy either sub- 
 mitted on proclamation or escaped into Nor- 
 mandy. A few of them received a pardon, but 
 the greater part were attainted, and Rufus be- 
 stowed their Englisli estates on such of the barons 
 as had done him best service. 
 
 In the course of the following year (10S9), 
 Laufranc, who was in many respects a gi'eat and 
 a good man, departed this life. A change was 
 immediately observed in the king, who showed 
 himself more debauched, tyrannical, and rapa- 
 cious than he had been when checked by the 
 primate's virtues and abilities. He appointed no 
 successor to the head office in the church, but 
 seized the rich i-evenues of the archbishopric of 
 Canterbury, and spent them in his unholy revel- 
 ries. Lanfranc had been, in fact, chief minister, 
 as well as primate of the kingdom. As minister, 
 he was succeeded by a Norman clergyman of low 
 bii'th and dissolute habits, but gifted with an 
 aspiring spirit, great readiness of wit, engaging 
 manners, and an unhesitating devotion to the 
 king in all things. He had fii-st attracted atten- 
 tion in the English court of the Conqueror as a 
 skilful spy and public informer. His name was 
 Ealph, to which, in his capacitj- of minister, and 
 through his violent measures, he soon obtained 
 the significant addition of le Flamhard, or " the 
 destructive torch." His nominal offices in the 
 court of the Eed King were, royal chaplain, tre'a- 
 sui-er, and justiciary; his real duties, to raise as 
 much money as he could for his master's extra- 
 vagant pleasures, and to flatter and share his 
 vices. He was ingeniously rapacious, and seems 
 almost to have exhausted the art of extortion. 
 Under this priest the harsh forest laws were 
 made a source of pecuniary profit; new offences 
 were invented for the multiplication of fines; 
 another survey of the kingdom was begun, in 
 order to raise the revenues of the crown from 
 those estates which had been underrated in the 
 record of Doomsday;'' and all the bishoprics and 
 abbeys, that fell vacant by death were left so by 
 the king, who di'ew their revenues and applied 
 them to his own use. These latter proceedings 
 
 * The measxirements in Doomsday appear to have been made 
 with a reference to the q^uality as weU as the-quantity of the 
 land in each case, whereas Flamhard is said to have caused the 
 hides to be measui-ed exactly by the line, or without regard to 
 anytliing hut their superficial extent. Sir Francis Palgrave be- 
 lieves that a fragment of Flambard's Doomsday is presened in 
 an ancient lieger or register book of the mouasteiy of Eves- 
 ham, now in the Cottonian Library, in MS. Vespasian, B. xxiv. 
 It relates to the county of Gloucester, and must have been com- 
 piled between 1096 and 1112. See an account of this curious 
 and hitherto minoticed relic, with extracts, in Sir Francis' iitie 
 and Frogrees of t/ie English CommoiiwealUi, ii. 448, iSic. 
 
 A.D. 1090. 
 
 couhl hardly fail to offend the monastic chro- 
 niclers, and the character of the lied King has 
 in consequence come down to us darkened with 
 perhaps rather more than its real depravity. 
 There is, however, no reasonable ground for 
 doubting that he was a licentious, violent, and 
 rapacious king, nor (as has been well observed) 
 is there either wisdom or liberality of sentiment 
 in excusing his rapacity because it comprehended 
 the clei'gy, who, after all, were the best friends 
 of the people in those violent times." 
 
 The barons who had given the 
 preference to Robert having failed 
 in their' attempts to deprive William of Eng- 
 land, the friends of William now determined to 
 drive Robert out of Normandy, which country 
 had fallen into a state of complete anarchy. The 
 turbulent barons expelled Robert's troops from 
 neai'Iy all the fortresses, and then made war with 
 one another on their o\vu private account. Many 
 would have preferred this state of things, which 
 left them wholly independent of the sovereigu 
 authority ; but those of the great lords who chiefly 
 resided in England, were greatly embarrassed by 
 it, and resolved it should cease. By treachery 
 and bribery possession was obtained of Aumale, 
 or Albemarle, St. Vallei-y, and other Noi-man 
 foi'tresses, which were forthwith strongly garri- 
 soned for Rufus. Robert was roused from his 
 lethargy, but his coffers were empty, and the 
 improvident grants of estates he had ab-eady 
 made left him scai-cely anything to promise for 
 futui"e services; he t'aerefore applied for aid to 
 his friend and feudal superior the French king, 
 who marched an army to the confines of Nor- 
 mandy, as if to give assistance, but marched it 
 back again on receiving a large amount of gold 
 from the English king. At the same time the 
 unlucky Robert nearly lost his capital by a con- 
 spiracy, Conan, a wealthy and powerful burgess, 
 having engaged to deliver up Rouen to Reginald 
 de Warenne for King Rufus. In these difficulties 
 Robert claimed the assistance of the cautious 
 and crafty Henry. Some very singular transac- 
 tions had ah'eady taken place between these two 
 brothei'S. While Robert was making his pre- 
 parations to invade England, Henry advanced 
 him £3000, in return for which slender sujsply 
 he had been put in possession of the Cotentin 
 country, which comprehended nearly a third pai't 
 of the Norman duchy. Dissensions followed this 
 unequal bargain, and Robert, on some other sus- 
 picions, either threw Hemy into prison for a 
 short time, or attempted to ai-rest him. Now, 
 however, the youngest brother listened to the 
 call of the eldest, and joined him at Rouen, whei-e 
 he chiefly contributed to put down the conspi- 
 
 2 Mackintosh, Bist. of Eiig. i. 119 ; Sitgeri Vii. Lvdovic. Grossi; 
 fngulph.; Mabnesb.: OfdcHc.
 
 A.D. 10S7— iioo; 
 
 WILLIAM RUFUS. 
 
 213 
 
 A.D. 1091. 
 
 racy, to repulse King William's adherent, Regi- 
 nald de Warenne, and to take Conan, the great 
 burgess, prisoner. The forgiving nature of Eo- 
 bert was averae to cajiital pinii.slnuent, and he 
 condemned Conan to a perpetual imprisonment; 
 but Henr}', some .short time after, took the cap- 
 tive to the top of a high tower on pretence of 
 showing him the beauty of the surrounding 
 scenery, and while the eye of the unhappy man 
 rested on the pleasant landscape, he suddenly 
 seized him by the waist and iluug him over the 
 battlements. Conan was dashed to pieces by 
 the fall, and the prince coolly observed to those 
 who saw the catastrophe that it was not fitting 
 that a traitor should escape condign punishment.' 
 In thefollowiijg January,William 
 Eufus appeared in Normandy, at 
 the head of an army chiefly English. The afl'airs of 
 the king and duke would have now come to extre- 
 mity, but Robert again called in the French king, 
 by whose mediation a treaty of peace was concluded 
 at Caen. Ruf us, however, gained almost as much 
 by this treaty as a successful war could have given 
 him. He retained possession of all the fortresses 
 he had acquired in Normandy, together with the 
 territories of Eu, Aumale, Fescamp, and other 
 places; and secured, in addition, the formal re- 
 nimciation on the part of Robert of all claims and 
 pretensions to the English throne. On his side, 
 WUliam engaged to indemnify his brother for 
 what he resigned in Normandy by an equivalent 
 in territorial property in England, and to restore 
 the estates to all the barons who bad been at- 
 tainted in Robert's cause. It was also stipulated 
 between the two parties that the king, if he out- 
 lived the duke, should have Normandy; and the 
 duke, if he outlived the king, should have Eng- 
 land; the kingdom and duchy thus in either case 
 to be united as imder the Conqxieror; and twelve 
 of the most powerful bai'ons on each side swore 
 that they would do their best to see the whole of 
 the treaty faithfully executed. 
 
 The family of the Conqueror were not a family 
 of love. No sooner were the bonds of fraternal 
 concord gathered up between Robert and William 
 than they were loosened between them and then- 
 younger brother Henry. The united forces of 
 the duke and king proceeded to take possession 
 of his castles; and Heniy was obliged to retire to 
 a fortress on Mount St. Michael, a lofty i-ock on 
 the coast of Normandy, insulated at high water 
 by the sea. In this almost impregnable position 
 he was besieged by Robert and William. In the 
 end, Prince Henry was obliged to capitulate. He 
 obtained with difficulty ]5ermission to retire into 
 Brittany; he was despoiled of all he possessed, 
 and wandered about for two years, with no better 
 
 ^OycUfic; MalnusO. 
 
 attendance than grim poverty, one knight, three 
 squires, and a chai)lain. But in this, the lowest 
 stage of his fortunes, he impressed men with a 
 notion of his political abilities; and he was in- 
 vited by the inhabitants of Damf i-ont to take upon 
 himself the government of that city. 
 
 Duke Robert accompauieil the king to England, 
 to take possession of those territories which were 
 promised by the treaty. During his stay Rufus 
 was engaged in a war with Malcolm Canmore, 
 who, while William was absent in Normandy, had 
 invaded England, and "overrun a great deal of 
 it," says the Saxon Chronicle, "until the good 
 men that governed this land sent an army against 
 him and repulsed him." On his return, William 
 collected a great force, both naval and military, 
 to avenge this insult; but his ships were all de- 
 stroyed before they reached the Scottish coast. 
 The English and Scottish armies met, however, 
 in Lothian, in England, according to the Saxon, 
 Chronicle — at the river called Scotte Uatra (per- 
 haps Scotswater) saysOrdericus Vitalis — and were 
 ready to engage, when a peace was brought about 
 by the mediation of Duke Robert on one side, 
 and his old friend Edgar Atheling on the other. 
 "King Malcolm," says the Saxon Ch ronicle, " came 
 to om- king, and became his man, promising all 
 such obedience as he formerly rendered to his 
 father, and that he confirmed with an oath. And 
 the King William jn-omised him in laud and in 
 all things whatever he formerly had under his 
 father." By the same treaty, Edgar Atheling was 
 permitted to retiu-n to England, where he received 
 some paltry com-t appointment. 
 
 Retui-ning from Scotland, Rufus was much 
 struck with the favourable position of Carlisle; 
 and, exjielling the lord of the district, he laid the 
 foundation of a castle, and soon after sent a strong 
 Eugli.sh colony from the southern counties to set- 
 tle in the town and its neighbourhood. Carlisle, 
 with the whole of Cumberland, had long been an 
 ajipanage of the elder son of the Scottish kings; 
 and this act of Rivfus was speedily followed by a 
 renewal of the quarrel between him and Malcolm 
 Canmore. To accommodate these diflerenoes, 
 Malcolm was invited to Gloucester, whei-e Wil- 
 liam was kee23ing his court; but, before imder- 
 taking this joiuuiey, the Scottish king demanded 
 and obtained hostages for his security — a privi- 
 lege not gi-anted to the ordinaiy vassals of the 
 English crown." On arriving at Gloucester, how- 
 ever, Malcolm was requu'ed by Rufus to do hun 
 right, that is, to make him amends for the injuries 
 with which he was charged, in his court there, 
 or, in other words, to submit to the ojjinion and 
 decision of the Anglo-Norman barons. Malcolm 
 rejected the proposal, and said that the Kings of 
 
 - Allan's VindiccUum of the Ancient Independence <^ Scotland; 
 
 i'^kra; Chron. Sax.
 
 2H 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 Scotliuul luul ucver been accustomed to do right 
 to the Kings of England except on the frontiers 
 of the two kmgdoms, and by the judgment of the 
 bai-ons of both.' He then hurried northward, and, 
 having raised an army, burst into Northumber- 
 land, where he soon afterwards fell into au am- 
 bush, and was slain, together with Edward, his 
 eldest son. Broken-hearted by this calamity, his 
 amiable queen, Margaret, died only four days 
 after. 
 
 Duke Robert had returned to the Continent in 
 disgust, at having pressed his claims for the pro- 
 mised indemnity in England without any success. 
 He afterwards despatched messenger after mes- 
 senger from the Continent, but still William would 
 give up none of his domains. At last, in 1094, 
 Robert had recourse to a measure deemed very 
 efficacious iu the court of chivalry. He sent two 
 heralds, who, having found their way into the 
 presence of the Red King, denounced him before 
 his chief vassals as a false and perjured knight, 
 with whom his brother, the duke, would no longer 
 hold friendship. To defend his honour, the king 
 followed the two heralds to Normandy, where, 
 hoping at least for the majority of voices, he 
 agreed to submit the matter in dispute to the 
 ai-bitration of the twenty-four barons, who had 
 sworn to do their best to enforce the faithful ob- 
 servance of the treaty of Caen. The barons, how- 
 ever, decided in favour of Robert; and then Wil- 
 liam appealed to the sword. The campaign went 
 so much in favour of the Red King, that Robert 
 was again obliged to apply for assistance to the 
 King of France; and Philip once more marched 
 with an army into Normandy. Rufus then sus- 
 tained some serious losses ; and trusting no longer 
 to the appeal of the sword, he resolved to buy oil' 
 the French king. He sent his commission into 
 England for the immediate levymg of 20,000 men. 
 By the time appointed these men came together 
 about Hastings, and were ready to embai'k, 
 "when suddenly there came his lieutenant with a 
 counter-order, and signified to them, that the 
 king, minding to favour them, and spare them 
 for that jom-ney, would that every of them shoidd 
 give him ten shillings towards the charges of 
 the war, and thereupon depart home with a suf- 
 ficient safe conduct ; which the most part were 
 better content to do than to commit themselves 
 to the fortune of the sea and bloody success of 
 the wars in Nonnandj'."^ The king's lieutenant 
 and representative in this cunning device, was 
 Ralph Flambard. Some considerable sum was 
 raised, and King Philip accepted it, and withdi-ew 
 from the field, leaving Robert, as he had done 
 before, to shift for himself. Rufus would then 
 
 • Flor. Wigom; Sim. Dun. 
 
 2 Hoiinshed. The old authorities are Matthew Tans and Simeon 
 Duiielmeusis. 
 
 A.D. 1094-5. 
 
 in all probability have made Inmself ma.ster of 
 Normandy, had he not been recalled to England 
 by important events. 
 
 The Welsh, " after their accus- 
 tomed manner, began to invade 
 the English marches, taking booty of cattle, and 
 destroying, killing, and sjioilmg many of the 
 king's subjects." Laying siege to the castle of 
 Montgomery, which had been erected on a re- 
 cently oceuiiied part of Wales, they took it by 
 assault, and slew all whom they found within it. 
 Before William could reach the scene of action 
 ail the Welsh were in arms, and had overi-un 
 Cheshire, Shropshire, and Herefordshh-e, besides 
 reducing the Isle of Anglesey. To chastise them, 
 he determined to follow them, as Harold had 
 done before,^ for he saw that the Welsh " would 
 not join battle with him in the plain, but kept 
 themselves stiU aloof within the woods and 
 marches, and aloft upon the mountains: albeit, 
 oftentimes when they saw advantage they would 
 come forth, and, taking the Normans and the 
 English unawares, kQl many and woimd no small 
 numbers."'' Stimulated, however, by the exam- 
 ple of Harold, who had penetrated into the inmost 
 recesses m Wales, the Red King still pursued 
 them by hill and dale: but by the time he reached 
 the mountains of Snowdon, he found that his loss 
 was tremendous, and " not without some note of 
 dishonour," began a retreat which was much more 
 rapid than his advance. The next summer he 
 entered the mountains with a stiU more numerous 
 army, and was agiiin forced to retire with loss 
 and shame. He seems to have forgot that the 
 invasions of Harold were made with light ai-med 
 troops, and he foimd that his heaA^- Norman ca- 
 vaby was ill suited for such a wtu-fare. He turned 
 from AVales in despaii', but ordered the immediate 
 erection of a chain of forts and castles along the 
 frontier. 
 
 Before he was free from the troubles of this 
 Welsh war his throne was threatened by a for- 
 midable conspiracy in the north of England. 
 The exclusive right claimed by Rufus over all 
 the forests continued to ii-ritate the Norman 
 barons, and other causes of discontent were not 
 wanting. At the head of the disaffected was 
 Robert Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, a 
 most powerful chief, possessing 280 English ma- 
 nors, whose long-continued absence from court 
 created suspicion. The king pubUshed a decree 
 that every baron who did not present himself at 
 court on the approaching festival of Whitsuntide 
 should be outlawed. The festival came and 
 passed ^vithout any tidings of the Earl of Nor- 
 thumberland, who feared he should be cast into 
 prison if he went to the south. The king marched 
 
 3 See vol. i. p. 125. 
 
 * Holimhed.
 
 A.D. 1087-1100.' 
 
 W 1 1,1,1 AM RUFUS. 
 
 21J 
 
 with ail army into Northumberland, and after 
 taking several of his less important fortresses, 
 shut up the earl within the walls of Bam- 
 horo\itrh Castle. I'"indiiig he could neither besiege 
 
 fi 3 
 
 
 I 
 
 ^^ if »..j 
 
 BA.\iBOROuan Cactle, Northxunberiaud.' — J. B. Prout, from a photographic view 
 
 nor liloc-kade this impregnable place, he built 
 another castle close to it, in which leaving a 
 strong garrison, he returned to the south. The 
 new castle, which was hastily constructed of 
 wood, was called "Malvoisin" (the bad neigh- 
 bour), and such it proved to Earl Mowbray. Be- 
 ing decoyed from his safe retreat by a feigned 
 ofter of placing the town of Newcastle-upon-Tjaie 
 in his hands, he was attacked by a large party of 
 Normans from ISIalvoisin, who lay in wait for 
 him. The earl, with thirty horsemen, fled to the 
 monastery of St. Oswin, at Tynemouth. The 
 sanetuaiy was not respected; but Mowbray and 
 his few followers defended it with desperate 
 valour for six days, at the end of which the earl, 
 sorely wounded, was made prisoner. But Bam- 
 borough Castle was even more valuable than the 
 person of this noble captive, and the Red King, 
 who had laid the snare into which the earl had 
 fallen, had also arranged the plan upon which 
 the captors now acted. They carried Mowbiay 
 to a spot in front of his castle, and invited his 
 countess, the fair jMatilda, to whom he had been 
 married only a few months, to a parley. When 
 the countess came to the outer walls, she saw 
 her husband in the hands of his bitter enemies, 
 who told her they would put out his eyes before 
 her face, unless she instantly delivered up the 
 castle. It was scarcel}' for woman to hesitate in 
 such an alternative: Matilda threw open the 
 gates. Within the walls the king's men found 
 more than they expected, for Eai'l Mowbray's 
 
 1 The castla is considered to retain masonry of the sixth cen- 
 tury, when it was founded, according to the Saxon CUronkU, by 
 Ida, King of Nortliuniborland. It is founded "pon .1 platfonn of 
 lorty basaltic cliffs, and is only accessible on the south-east aide. 
 
 lieutenant betrayed to them the whole secret of 
 the conspirac)', the object of wliich wa.s to place 
 upon tlie throne of England, Stephen, Count of 
 Auniale, ncjihew of the Conqueror, and brother 
 to the infamous Judith. The 
 extensive conspiracy included, 
 among others, William, Count 
 of Eu, a rclalion of the king's?, 
 William of Aldcric, the king's 
 goil - father, Hugh, Earl of 
 ■Shrewsbury, Odo, Earl of 
 Iloldemcss, and Walter de 
 I,acey. The fates of these 
 men were various: Earl 
 Mowbray was condemned to 
 ]5erpetual imjirisonmcnt, and 
 died in a dungeon of Windsor 
 Castle, about thirty years 
 after; the Count of Eu rested 
 his justification on the issue 
 of a duel, which he fought 
 with his accuser in the pre- 
 sence of the king and court; 
 but being vanquished in the combat, he was con- 
 victed, according to the prevailing law, and con- 
 demned to have his eyes torn out, and to be 
 otherwise mutilated.' William of Alderic, who 
 was much esteemed and lamented, was hanged; 
 the Earl of Shrewsbury bought his pardon for 
 an immense sum of money; the Earl of Holder- 
 ness was deprived of all he possessed and im- 
 prisoned; the rest escaped to the Continent, leav- 
 ing their estates in England to be confiscated. 
 
 At a moment when the Red King 
 <ad successfully disposed of all his 
 enemies in England, and was in a condition to 
 renew the war in Normandy, his thoughtless 
 brother resigned that duchy to him for a sum of 
 money. The Christians of the West, no longer 
 content to appear at Jerusalem as despised and ill- 
 treated pilgrims ^vith beads and crosses in their 
 liands, resolved to repair thither with swords and 
 lances, and conquer the whole of Palestine and 
 Syi-ia from the infidels. The pi'eaching of Peter 
 the Hermit, the decisions of the council of Cler- 
 mont, and the bulls of Pope Urban II., had 
 kindled a warlike Hame throughout Europe. 
 Duke Robert liad early enlisted in the crusade, 
 engaging to take with him a numerous and well- 
 armed body of knights and vassals; but wanting 
 money, "no news to his cofl'crs," he applied to his 
 brother the Red King, who readily entered into 
 a Viargain which was concluded on terms most ad- 
 vantageous to himself. For the sum of i^lO,000, 
 the duke resigned tlie government of Normandy 
 to his brother. This act is generally consiilered by 
 historians not as a sale, but as a mortg:ige, which 
 
 ' CaicatiB ot "itusUcuIatus est.— Jl/a(m(i6, 
 
 A.D. 1096.
 
 216 
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civ:l and Military. 
 
 was to expire iu five yeai-s. But it is alino.-t 
 idle to talli of conditions in such a strange trans- 
 action, which eonld have left Eobert but a slight 
 chance of ever recovering his dominion from his 
 unscru])idous brother, had Kufus lived. When 
 tlie bargain was struck, Rufus was almost as 
 penniless as Eobert. According to an old his- 
 torian, to make up this sum with despatch, " he 
 did not only oppress and fleece his poor subjects, 
 but rather with importunate exactions, did, as it 
 were, flea ofi' theii- skins. All this was grievous 
 and intolerable, as well to the spirituality as tem- 
 porality; so that divers bishops and abbots, who 
 had already made away with some of their cha- 
 lices and church jewels to pay the king, made 
 now plain answer that they were not able to 
 help him with any more; unto whom, on the 
 other side, as the report went, the king said again, 
 ' Have you not, I beseech you, coffins of gold and 
 silver full of dead men's bones?"" meaning the 
 slu-ines wherein the relics of saints were inclosed. 
 Soon after receiving his JlO,000, Robert de- 
 pai'ted for Palestine, flattering himself with a 
 splendid futurity; and then William, indulging 
 iu the less fantastic prospect of near and solid 
 advantages, sailed to the Continent to take im- 
 mediate possession of Normandy. He had long 
 held many of the fortresses, his partizans among 
 the nobility were numerous, and he was received 
 by the Normans without opposition. But it was 
 far otherwise with the people of Maine, who 
 burst into a universal insurrection, and by rally- 
 ing round Helie, Lord of La Fleche, a young 
 and gallant adventurer, who had some claim to 
 the country himself, gave Rufus much trouble, 
 and obliged him to carry over an army from 
 England more than once. About three years 
 after Robert's departure, the brave Helie was 
 surprised iu a wood with only seven knights in 
 company, and made prisoner by one of the Eng- 
 lish king's officers. Rufus marched into Maine, 
 soon after, at the head of a large force of cavalry; 
 but the French king and the Count of Anjou in- 
 terfering, he was induced to negotiate, and Helie 
 obtained his liberty by delivering up the town 
 of Mans. In the following year (1100), as the 
 Red King was hunting iu the New Forest, a 
 messenger arrived with intelligence that Helie 
 had surprised the town of Mans, and was besieg- 
 ing the Norman garrison in the castle, being 
 aided therein by the inhabitants. WiUiam in- 
 
 > HoUnshed; Speed. The old authorities are Eadnier, Orderic, 
 Matt. Pari», and Wm. Malmesb. " Win. Malmcsb. 
 
 3 " The Red Kiug lies in Malwood-keep, 
 To drive the deer o'er lawn and steep, 
 
 He's bound him with the mom. 
 His steeds are swift, his hounds are good ; 
 The like in covert or high-wood. 
 Were never cheer'd with horn. 
 
 — Jr. SteicaH Rose. 
 
 stantly turned his horse's head, and set off for 
 the nearest sea-port. The nobles who were huntr 
 ing with him reminded him that it was neces- 
 sary to call out troops, and wait for them. " Not 
 so," rejilied Rufus, '■ I shall see who will follow 
 me; and, if I understand the temper of the youth 
 of this kingdom, I shall have ijeojjle enough." 
 Without stopping or turning he reached the port. 
 and embarked in the fir.st vessel he found. It 
 was blowing a gale of wind, and the sailors en- 
 treated him to have patience till tlie storm should 
 abate. " Weigh anchor, hoist sail, and begone," 
 cried Rufus; "did you ever hear of a king that 
 was drowned?"^ Obeying his orders, the sailors 
 put to sea, and safely landed their royal passen- 
 ger at Barfleur. The news of his landing sufficed 
 to raise the siege of the castle of Mans; and 
 Helie, thinking he must have come in force, dis- 
 missed his troops and took to flight. The Red 
 King then barbarously ravaged the lands of his 
 enemies; but being wounded while laying siege 
 to an insignificant castle, he retm-ued suddenly 
 to England. 
 
 William's lavish expenditure continued on the 
 increase; but by his exactions and in-egular way 
 of dealing with church property, he still found 
 means for gratifying his extravagance, and en- 
 joyed abroad the reputation of being a rich, as 
 well as a powerful king. But the dread credi- 
 tor was now at hand, whom even kings cannot 
 escape. Popular superetition had long darkened 
 the shades and solitudes of the New Forest, and 
 peopled its glades with horrid spectres. The 
 fiend himself, it was said and believed, had ap- 
 peared there to the Normans, announcing the pun- 
 ishment he had in reserve for the Red King and 
 his wicked counsellors. The accidents that hap- 
 pened in that Chase, which had been so barbar- 
 ously obtained, gave strength to the vulgar belief. 
 In tiie mouth of May, Richard, an illegitimate son 
 of Duke Robert, was killed while hunting in the 
 forest by an arrow, reported to have been shot 
 at random. This was the second time the Con- 
 queror's blood had been poured out there, and 
 men said it would not be the last time. On the 
 1st of August following, William lay at Malwood- 
 keep, a hunting-seat in the forest,' with a goodly 
 train of knights. A reconciUation had taken 
 place between the two brothers, and the astuci- 
 ous Henry, who had been some time in England, 
 was of the gay pai-ty. The circumstances of the 
 
 " Malwood Castle or Keep, seated upon an eminence, em- 
 bosomed in wood, at a smaU distance from the village of Mine- 
 stead, in the New Forest, was the residence of this prince, when 
 he met with the accident which tei-minated his life. No remains 
 of it exist, but the circumference of a building is to be traced; 
 and it yet gives its name to the walk in which it was situated." 
 —Notes to the Red King. This spirited and beautiful poem, illus- 
 trative of the age and its events, is published in the same volume 
 with ParlcnojKX de Btois.
 
 A.D. 1087—1100.] 
 
 WILLIAM RUFUS. 
 
 217 
 
 story, as tokl by the monkish chroniclers, are 
 sufficiently reniai'kable. At the dead of uiglit 
 the king was licard invoking the blessed Virgin, 
 a thing strange in him; and then he called aloud 
 for lights in his chamber. His attendants ran 
 at his call, and found him disturbed by a fright- 
 ful vision, to prevent the return of which he 
 ordered them to pass the rest of the night by 
 his bedside, and divert him with pleasant talk. 
 As he was dressing in the raoruing an artisan 
 brought him six new arrows: he examined them, 
 praised the woi-kmanship, and keeping four for 
 himself, gave the other two to Sir "Walter Tyrrel, 
 otherwise called, from his estates in France, Sir 
 Walter de Poix, saying, as he presented them — 
 " Gtood weapons are due to the sportsman that 
 knows how to make a good use of them.'" The 
 tables were spread with an abundant collation, 
 and the Ked King ate more meat and drank even 
 more wine than he was wont to do. His sph'its 
 rose to their highest pitch ; his companions still 
 passed the wine cup, whilst the grooms and 
 huntsmen prepared their horses and hounds for 
 the chase; and all was boisterously gay in Mal- 
 wood-keep, when a messenger arrived from Ser- 
 lon, the Norman abbot of St. Peter's, at 
 Gloucester, to inform the king that one of his 
 monks had dreamed a dream foreboding a sud- 
 den and awful death to him. " The man is a 
 right monk," cried Rufus, " and to have a piece 
 of money he dreameth such things. Give him, 
 therefore, an hvmtU-ed pence, and bid him dream 
 of better fortune to our person." Then turuiug 
 to Tyrrel, he said — " Do they tliiuk I am one of 
 those fools that give up their plea- 
 sure or theu' business because an 
 old woman happens to dieam or 
 sneeze ? To horse, Walter de 
 Poix!" 
 
 The king, with his brother 
 Henry, William de Breteuil, and 
 many other lords and knights, 
 rode into the forest, where the 
 company dispersed here and there, after the man- 
 ner used in hunting; but Sir Walter, his especial 
 favourite in these sjiorts, remained constantly near 
 the king, and their dogs hunted together. As the 
 sim was sinking low in the west, a hart came 
 boimdmg by, between Rufus and his conu-ade, 
 who stood concealed in the thickets. The king 
 drew his bow, but the string broke, and the arrow 
 took no eflect. Startled by the sound, the hart 
 paused in his speed and looked on all sides, as if 
 doubtful which way to turn. The king, keeping 
 his attention on the quarry, raised Ms bridle-hand 
 above his eyes, that he might see clear by shading 
 them from the glare of the sun, which now shone 
 
 almost horizontally through the glades of the 
 forest; and at the same time, being unprovided 
 with a second bow, he shouted, " Shoot, AValter I 
 — shoot, in the devil's name !"' Tyrrel drew his 
 bow — the arrow departed — was glanced aside in 
 its flight by an intervening tree, and struck 
 William in the left breast, which was left ex- 
 posed by his raised arm. The fork-head pierced 
 his heart, and, with one groan, and no woi-d or 
 prayer uttered, the Itcd King fell, and expired. 
 Sir Walter Tyi-rel ran to his master's side, but, 
 finding him dead, he remounted his horse, and, 
 without informing any one of the cat;istrophe, 
 galloped to the sea-coast, embarked for Nor- 
 mand)', whence he fled for sanctuary into the 
 dominions of the French king, and soon after de- 
 parted for the Holy Land. According to an old 
 chronicler, the spot where Rufus fell had been 
 the site of an Anglo-Saxon church, which his 
 father, the Conqueror, had pulled down and de- 
 stroyed for the eidarging of his chase." Late in 
 the evening, the royal corpse was found alone, 
 where it fell, by a poor charcoal-burner,* who put 
 it, still bleeding, into his cart, and drove towards 
 Winchester. At the earliest rejjort of his death, 
 his brother Henry flew to seize the royal trea- 
 sury; and the knights and favourites who had 
 been hunting in the forest dispersed, in several 
 directions, to look after their interest, not one of 
 them caring to render the last sad honours to 
 then- master. The next day the body, still in the 
 charcoal-burner's cart, and defiled with blood and 
 dirt, was carried to St. Swithin's, the cathedral 
 church of Winchester. There, hov.-ever, it wa-s 
 
 Tomb of Wjlliam IUifus, Wiiiclitster CathoaniL— Gouyh a Suyuklii-.a .Muiiumuiu, 
 
 treated with proper respect, and buried in tlio 
 centre of the cathedral choii', many persons look- 
 ing on, but few grieving. A proof of the bad 
 ojjiniou which the jjeople entertained of the de- 
 ceased monarch is, that they intcri)reted the fall 
 of a certain tower in the cathedral, which hap- 
 pened the following year, and covered his tomb 
 with its ruins, into a sign of the displeasure of 
 Heaven that he had received Chi-istiau burial.'' 
 
 ' Orderic. VUal. 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 - "Trahe, tralie arcum e.ic parte diaboli." — Ilm, Knyghton, 
 
 3 Walter Hemyngfurde, (ixioted iu Grafton's ChronicU. 
 
 * '* Tills mau'3 name w.ia Purkoss. He is the aucestor of a 
 very uiuuerous tribe. Of his lijieal desceudantfl it is rei>orted 
 tliat, living on the same spot, tliey have constantly been pro- 
 prietors of a horee and cart, but never attained to the jioasesbiou 
 of a team."— W. S. Huso, notes to the Red King. 
 
 ^ Dr. Milner, IlUt. U'inchat. 
 
 28
 
 218 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militaut. 
 
 The second king of the Norman line reigned 
 thirteen years, all but a few weeks, and was full 
 of healtli and vigour, and only forty years of age, 
 when he died. That he was shot by an arrow in 
 the New Forest — that his body was abandoned 
 and then hastily interi'ed — are facts perfectly well 
 authenticated; but some doubts may be enter- 
 tained as to the precise circumstances attending 
 his death, notwithstanding their being minutely 
 related by writers who were living at the time, 
 or who flourished in the course of the following 
 ceutuiy. Sii' Walter Tyrrel afterwards swore, in 
 France, that he did not shoot the arrow; but he 
 was probably anxious to relieve himself from the 
 odium of killing a king, even by accident. It is 
 quite possible, indeed, that the event did not arise 
 from chance, and that Tyrrel had no part in it. 
 The remorseless ambition of Henry might have 
 had recourse to murder, or the avenging shaft 
 might have been sped by the desperate hand of 
 some Englishman, tempted by a favoui-able oppor- 
 tunity and the traditions of the place. But the 
 most charitable construction is, that the party 
 were intoxicated with the wine they had di'unk 
 
 ' William of Malmesbxiry, who was bora in the reign of Wil- 
 liam Rufus, gives this graphic description of him : — " Greatness 
 of soul was pre-eminent in the king, which, in process of time, 
 he obscured by excessive seveiity — vices, indeed, in place of vir- 
 tues, so insensibly crept into his bosom that he could not dis- 
 tinguish them. ... At last, however, in his latter years, 
 the desii'e after good grew cold, and the crop of evil increased to 
 ripeness ; his liberality became prodigality — his magnanimity, 
 pride — liis austerity, cruelty. . . . He was, when abroad, and 
 in public assemblies, of superciliouB look, darting his threaten- 
 ing eye on the bystander ; and with assumed severity and fero- 
 cious voice, assailing such as conversed with him. From appre- 
 hension of poverty and of the treachery of others, as may be 
 conjectured, he was too much given to lucre and to cruelty. 
 At home and at table, with his intimate companions, he gave 
 loose to levity and to mirth. He was a most facetious railer at 
 anything he had himself done amiss, in order that he might 
 
 thxis do away obloquy, and make it matter of jest 
 
 Military men came to him out of every province on this side of 
 the mountains, whom he rewarded most profusely. In conse- 
 quence, when he had no longer aught to bestow, poor and ex- 
 hausted, he turned his thoughts to rapiues. The rapacity of 
 Lis disposition was seconded by Ralph, the inciter of hia covet- 
 ousneas, a clergyman of the lowest origin, but raised to eminence 
 by his vrit and subtUty. If, at auy time, a royal edict issued 
 that England should pay a certain tribute, it was doubled by 
 this plunderer of the rich — this exterminator of the poor — this 
 coufiacator of other mens inheritauc'j. Jle was an invincible 
 
 at Malwood-keep, and that, in the confusion con- 
 sequent on drunkenness, the king was hit by a 
 random an*ow. 
 
 The lied King was never mirried; and his 
 example is said to have induced all liis young 
 courtiers to prefer the licentious liberty of a 
 single life. In describing his libertinism, the 
 least heinous charge of the monkish historians is, 
 that he respected not the vii-tue of other men's 
 wives, and was " a most especial follower of le- 
 mans." For the honour of human nature we 
 hope the picture is overcharged; but there are 
 proofs enough to convince us that but little order 
 or decorum reigned in the court of Kufus. In- 
 deed, all writers agi-ee in their accounts of the 
 dissolute manners of his household and adherents. 
 Uis rapacity is equally unquestionable; but this 
 charge may be partially explained, if it cannot 
 be excused, by his taste and magnificence. He 
 did not spend all his money in his wai-s, his 
 foreign schemes, his pleasm'es and debaucheries; 
 but devoted large sums to the building of royal 
 palaces, and to several works of great pulilic 
 utility.' 
 
 pleader, as unrestrained in his words as in his actions; and 
 efiuaUy furious against the meek or the turbulent. ... At 
 this person's suggestion, the sacred honours of the church, as the 
 pastoi-s died out, were exposed to sale. . . . These tilings 
 appeared the more disgraceful, because in his father's time, after 
 the decease of a bishop or abbot, all rents were reserved entire, 
 to be given up to the succeeding pastor ; aad persons, truly meri- 
 torious on account of their religion, were elected. But in the 
 
 lapse of a very few years, everything was changed 
 
 Men of the meanest comlition, or guilty of whatever crime, were 
 listened to, if they could suggest anything likely to be advan- 
 tageous to the king ; the halter was loosened from the robber's 
 neck, if he could promise any emolument to the sovereign. All 
 military discipline bemg relaxed, the courtiers preyed upon the 
 property of the country people, and consumed their substance, 
 taking the veiy meat from the mouths of these wretched crea- 
 tures. Then was there flo^ving hair and extravagant di-ess ; and 
 then was invented the fashion of shoes with curved points ; then 
 the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of per- 
 son — to mince their gait, to walk with loose gesture, and half 
 naked. Enervated and effeminate, they unwillingly remained 
 wliat nature had made them — tlie assailers of others' chastity, 
 prodigal of their own. Troops of pathics and droves of hailots 
 followed the court ; so that it was said, with justice, by a wise 
 man, ' That England would be fortimarte if Henry could reign ;' 
 led to such an opinion, because he abhorred obscenity from his 
 youth." Such was the improved morality introduced by the 
 Normans 1
 
 A.D. 1100—1135.] 
 
 HENRY r. (BEAUCLERK). 
 
 219 
 
 CHAPTER III.— CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. 
 
 IIENRT I., SURNAMED CEAUCLEIiK.— A.U. 1100— IIS.'S. 
 
 HcJirj. snrnaraed Beauclerk, seizes tlie crown — Ilia endeavours to conciliate his English Buhjects — He marries the 
 I'rincess Maud, the descendant of Alfred — The marriage opposed, from the report that Maud had taken 
 the veil — Flambard's imprisonment and escape — Eeturn of Robert of Normandy from tlio Crusade— FTo de- 
 maud.-) the crown of England — His claim defeated and relinquished — Rebellion of the Earl of Shrewsbury 
 suppressed — Henry Eeauclerk invades the territory of bis brother Robert — He defeats Robert, and takes liini 
 prisoner — Miserable end of Robert — Henry Beauclerk takes possession of Xonnandy — Marriage of bis daughter 
 Jfatilda to the Emperor of Germany — Henry's successful wars and negotiations on the Continent — His only 
 son, "William, drowned while returning to England — His new plans to settle the succession of the crown — 
 Procures Matilda, his daughter, to be acknowledged his successor — Ilis proceedings to insure her succession — 
 Death of Henry Beauclerk — His character. 
 
 ?^'ENRY was not unopposed in tlie 
 first step he took to secure tlie 
 crown. While he was imperiously 
 demanding the keys of the royal 
 treasury, and the officers, in whose 
 charge they were placed, were hesi- 
 tating whether they should deliver them or not, 
 William de BreteuU, tlie royal treasurer, who had 
 also been of the fatal hunting party, arrived with 
 breathlesi? speed from the forest, and opposed his 
 demand. '•' You and I," said he to Henry, "ought 
 to remember the faith we have pledged to youi- 
 brother, Duke Robert; he has received om* oath 
 of homage, and, absent or present, he has a right 
 to this money." Henry attempted to shake the 
 fidelity of the treasurer with arguments, but 
 William de Breteuil resolutely maintained that 
 Robert was the lawful sovereign of England, to 
 whom, and to no one else, the money in Winches- 
 ter Castle belonged.' The altercation gi-ew vio- 
 lent, and Heniy, who felt he had no time to lose, 
 drew his sword, and threatened immediate death 
 to any that should oppose liim. He was sup- 
 ported by some powerfid barons who happened 
 to be on the spot, or who had followed him from 
 the forest. De Breteuil was left almost single in 
 his honourable opposition, the domestics of the 
 late king taking part against him; and Henry 
 seized the money and crown-jewels before his 
 eyes. Pai-t of the money seems to have been 
 distributed among the barons and churchmen at 
 Winchester. He immediately gave the bishopric 
 of Winchester to Hem-y Gifford, a most influen- 
 tial adherent, and then proceeded, with all speed, 
 to London, where he made a skilful use of his 
 treasiu'es, and was proclaimed by an assembly of 
 noblemen and prelates, no one challenging his 
 title, but all acknowledging his consummate 
 abilities and fitness for government. On Sun- 
 
 ' Malmub. 
 
 day, the 5th of Au<:;U3t, only three days after the 
 death of Eufus, standing before the altar in 
 Westminster Abbey, he promised God and all 
 the people to annul all the unrighteous acts that 
 took place in his brother's time; and after this 
 declaration, ^Maurice, the Bishop of London, con- 
 secrated him king.- Anselm, the Aj-chbishop of 
 Canterbury, who, according to ancient i-ule, should 
 have performed the ceremony of the coronation, 
 had been driven out of the kingdom some three 
 yeai-s before; and the archbishopric of York had 
 been left vacant for some time. A popular re- 
 commendation was, that Henry was an English- 
 man, born in the country,' and after the Conquest; 
 and some of his partizans set up this circumstance 
 as being, in itself, a sufficient title to the crown. 
 But he himself, in a charter of liberties issued 
 on the following day, and diligently promulgated 
 throughout the land, represented himself as 
 being crowned " by the mercy of God, and by 
 the common consent of the barons of the king- 
 dom." 
 
 The claims of Duke Eobert were not forgotten ; 
 but Hem-y, who "had aforehand trained the 
 people to his humom- and vein, in bringing them 
 to think well of him," had also caused to be re- 
 jiorted, as a certain fact, that Eobert was already 
 created King of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, and 
 would never leave the Holy Land for an oixlinary 
 kingdom. Although the law of succession re- 
 mained almost as loose as under the Saxon 
 djTiasty, and the crown of England was still, in 
 form at least, an elective one, Hem-y, who, more- 
 over, was bound by oaths to his elder brother 
 Eobex-t, seems himself to have been conscious of 
 a want of validity or security in his title, and to 
 have endeavoured to strengthen his throne by 
 reforms of abuses, and by large concessions to the 
 
 2 Sax. Chron. 
 
 ^ Henry waa bom .at Selby, in Yoikehire, a.d. 1070, in tlw 
 fourth year of his fatlier's reign as King of England.
 
 220 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 (Civil and Military. 
 
 nation. Tlie charter of liberties passeil by Henry 
 on his accession, forms an important feature in 
 our progressive law and government. He restored 
 all the rights of the cluirch, promised to require 
 only moderate and just reliefs from his vassals, 
 to exercise his powers in wardships and marriages 
 with equity and mildness, to redi'ess all the gi-iev- 
 ances of the former reign, and to I'estore the laws 
 of King Edward the Confessor, subject only to 
 the amendments made in them by his father. 
 
 Still faa-ther, to conciliate his Anglo-Saxon sub- 
 jects, Henry, who, on all necessary occasions, 
 boasted of his English birth, determined to es- 
 pouse an English wife. This marriage is a most 
 important historical event, being a step made to- 
 wards that intermixture and fusion of the two 
 races which destroyed, at a much earlier period 
 than is generally imagined, the odious distinction 
 between Saxons and Normans. It is also exceed- 
 ingly interesting in some of its details, and par- 
 ticularly those which have been transmitted by 
 the pen of Eadmer,' who was living at the time, 
 and who, as an Englishman himself, entertained 
 a lively sympathy for the fortunes of the young 
 princess. The lady of Heniy's choice was, to use 
 the words of the Saxon Chronicle, " Maud, daugh- 
 ter of Malcolm, King of Scots, and of Margai-et, 
 the good queen, the relation of King Edward, 
 and of the right kingly kin of England." This 
 descendant of the gi-eat Alfred had been sent 
 from Scotland at a very early age, and committed 
 to the care of her aunt Christina, Edgar Atheling's 
 second sistei', who was abbess of Wilton, or, as 
 others say, of Eumsey, in Hampshire. As she 
 gi-ew up, several of the Norman captains aspired 
 to the honom- of her hand. She was asked in 
 marriage by Alan, the Lord of Eichmond; but 
 Alan died before he could receive any answer 
 from the king. William de Garenne, Eaid of 
 Sm-rey, was the next suitor, but the mai-riage was 
 not allowed by Eufus. A cotemporary wi-iter" 
 says, he knows not why the marriage with the 
 Earl of Surrey did not take jiiace; but the policy 
 of forbidding a imion between a powerful vassal, 
 and a princess of the ancient royal line, is evident; 
 and the Eed King, like his father, held it as pai-t 
 of his prerogative to give or refuse the hands of 
 his fair subjects. AVhen proposals were made on 
 the part of King Henry, the fair Saxon, not 
 being dazzled with the prospect of sharing with 
 a Norman the throne on which her ancestors had 
 sat for centui'ies, showed a decided aversion to 
 the match. But she was assailed by arguments 
 difficult to resist. " 1 most noble and fair 
 
 ' Thia liistorian was the scholar and inmate of Archbishop 
 Anselm, who celebrated the marriage, and afterwax-ds crowned 
 the yoimg queen. 
 
 - Ordericus. This chronicler says she bad formerly gone by 
 the more Saxon name of Edith. 
 
 among women," said her Saxon advisers, "if thou 
 wilt, thou canst restore the ancient honour of 
 England, an<l be a pledge of reconciliation and 
 friendship; but if thou art obstinate in thy re- 
 fusal, the enmity between the two races will be 
 everlasting, and the shedding of human blood 
 know no end." ' When her slow consent was ob- 
 tained, another impediment was raised by a 
 strong Norman party, who neither liked to see 
 an Englishwoman raised to be their queen, nor 
 the power of their king confirmed by means which 
 would endear him to the native race, and render 
 him moi-e and more independent of the Normans. 
 They asserted that Maud, who had been brought 
 up from her infancy in a convent, was a nun, and 
 that she had been seen wearing a veil, which 
 made her for ever the spouse of Christ. Such 
 an obstacle would have been insurmountable; and 
 as there were some seeming grounds for the re- 
 port, the celebration of the marriage was post- 
 poned, to the great joy of those who were opposed 
 to it.* 
 
 Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who 
 had returned from Italy at the pressing invita- 
 tion of the new king, was a zealous promoter of 
 the marriage — for his soul was kind and benevo- 
 lent, and he was interested in favour of the 
 English people; but, when he heard the reports, 
 he declared that nothing could induce him to 
 unite a nun to a carnal husband. The arch- 
 bishop, however, determined to question the 
 maiden herself; and Matilda, or Maud, in reply, 
 denied she had ever taken the vows, or even worn 
 the veil of her free will; and she offered to give 
 full proof of this before all the prelates of Eng- 
 land. " I must confess," she said, " that I have 
 sometimes appeared veiled; but listen to the 
 cause: in my first youth, when I was living 
 under her care, my aunt, to save me, as she said, 
 from the lust of the Normans, who attacked all 
 females, was accustomed to throw a piece of 
 black stuff over my head ; and when I refused to 
 cover myself with it, she treated me vei-y roughly. 
 In her presence I woi'e that covering, but as soon 
 as she was out of sight, I threw it on the gi-ound, 
 and trampled it under my feet in childish anger." 
 To solve this gi-eat difficulty, Anselm called a 
 coimeil of bishops, abbots, and monks. Wit- 
 nesses summoned before this council confirmed 
 the truth of Matilda's words. Two archdeacons, 
 who had been sent to the convent where the 
 young lady was brought up, deposed that public 
 report, and the testimony of the nuns, agi-eed 
 with her declaration. The decision, given imani- 
 mously, was, " We, the bishops, &c., are of 
 opinion that the young lady is free, and can dis- 
 pose of herself; and we have a precedent in a 
 
 3 Natl. Paris. > Hadiiur.
 
 A.D, 1100—1130.] 
 
 HENRY I. (BEAUCLERK). 
 
 221 
 
 jiulgment, remleveil, iu a similar cause, by the 
 venerable Lanfranc, when the Saxon women, who 
 had taken refuge iu the convent out of fear of 
 the soldiers of the gi'eat William, reclaimed and 
 obtained their liberty." On Sunday, the 11th of 
 November, the man-iage was celebrated, and the 
 queen was crowned with great pomp and solem- 
 nity. But so wisely cautious was the prelate, 
 and so anxious to dissipate all suspicions and 
 false reports, that, before pronouncing the nuptial 
 benediction, he moiinted on a bench in front of 
 the church door, and showed to the assembled 
 people the debate and decision of the ecclesiasti- 
 cal council. The Normans, who had opposed the 
 union, now vented their spite in bitter railleries. 
 Henry dissembled his rage till a convenient mo- 
 ment, and, in public, laughed heartily at the in- 
 solent jests. Matilda, who had given her consent 
 to the maiTiage with reluctance, and who found 
 a most unfaithful husband, proved a " right lov- 
 ing and obedient wife." She was beautiful in 
 person, and distinguished by a love of learning 
 and gi-eat charity to the poor. Her elevation to 
 the throne filled the heai-ts of the English with 
 a momentary joy. 
 
 Another proceeding which greatly increased 
 the new king's popularity with the Engli-sh, and 
 with all who entertained resj^ect for vii-tiie and 
 decency, was his expulsion of his brother's 
 minions. If half of the detestable vices attri- 
 buted by the churchmen, their cotemporaries, 
 to these favourites, were really prevalent among 
 them, they miist have been a cm-se and an abomi- 
 nation to the land. 
 
 It was scarcely possible that Ralph FlamVuu-d, 
 the obnoxious minister of the late king, should 
 escape in this general purgation. The Bishop of 
 Durham — for such was the ecclesiastical promo- 
 tion Ralph had attained under Rufus — was 
 thrown into the Tower, where he lived most 
 luxm-iously, and captivated the affections of his 
 keepers by his conviviality, generosity, and wit. 
 In the Februai-y following Henry's coronation, a 
 good rope was conveyed to the bishop, hid in the 
 bottom of a huge wine flagon. His guards drank 
 of the wine until their senses forsook them; and 
 then Ralph, under favour of the night, and by 
 means of the rope, descended from his prison 
 window, and escaped. Some friends in attend- 
 ance put him on board ship, .and the active bishop 
 made sail for Noiinandy, to see what fortune 
 would offer him as the servant of Robert Courte- 
 hose. 
 
 When Heniy caused the report to be circulated, 
 that Robert had obtained the crown of Jerusalem, 
 and thought not of returning to England, he 
 knew right well that another than he had been 
 elected sovereign in the Holy Land, and that his 
 brother was actually in Europe, and on his way 
 
 back to Normandy, in which country lie arrived 
 within a month or six weeks after the death of 
 Rufus. The improvident duke had greatly dis- 
 tinguished himself in the conquest of Palestine, 
 and the taking of Jerusalem, performing prodi- 
 gies of valour, which were only surpassed, in 
 hiter times, by Rich.ard CVeur de Lion. Though 
 valued for the good qiialities he possessed, the 
 Crusadei-s never thought seriously of electing so 
 imprudent a prince to the difficult post of secur- 
 ing and governing the conquests they had made; 
 nor does Robert appear ever to have fixed his eye 
 on the tlxrone of Jerusalem, which, by universal 
 consent, fell to Godfrey of Bouillon, a man " born 
 for command," and as wise and prudent as a 
 statesman as he was gallant and fearless as a 
 knight.' Soon after the capture of Jerusalem, 
 which happened on the 15th of July, 1099, some- 
 what more than a year before the death of the 
 English king in the New Forest, Duke Robert 
 left the Holy Land covered with holy laurels, 
 and crossed the Mediten-anean to Brundusium, 
 the nearest port of Italy, intending to travel 
 homeward, by land, through that beautiful and 
 luxurious coimtry. The Norman lance, as we 
 have already mentioned, had won the fairest por- 
 tion of Southern Italy some years before the con- 
 quest of England; and as Duke Robert advanced 
 into the land, he was eveiywhere met by Noi-man 
 barons, and nobles of Norman descent. At every 
 feudal castle the duke was hailed and welcomed 
 as a countryman, a friend, a hero, a Crusader 
 returning with victory, whom it was honour- 
 •able to honour; and so much was their hospi- 
 tality to the taste of the thoughtless prince that 
 he lingered long and well pleased on his way. 
 Of all these noble hosts was none more noble 
 or more powerful than William, Count of Con- 
 versano; he was the son of Geoffrey, who was 
 nephew of Robert Guiscard, the founder of the 
 Norman dynasty in Naples; his vast possessions 
 lay along the shores of the Adriatic, from Otranto 
 to Bari, and extended far inland in the direction 
 of Lucania and the other sea. He was, Lu short, 
 the most powerful lord in Lower Apulia. Ilis 
 castle, which stood on an eminence surrounded 
 hj olive gi-oves, at a short distance from the 
 Aih'iatic, had many attractions for the pleasui-e- 
 loving and susceptible son of the Conqueror. 
 There were minstrels and jongleurs; there were 
 fine horses and hounds, and hawks, in almost 
 
 ' " Veramente 6 costxii nato all' impero, 
 &i del re^ar, del comm.audar sa I'ai-ti ; 
 E non mmor che duce e cavaliero ; 
 BI.a del doppio valor tutte lia le parti." 
 
 — Tasso, QtTusalanmt, 
 
 " Well iieems he born to be with honour crown'd, 
 So well the lore ho knows of regiment ; 
 Peerless in fight, in counsel grave and sound — 
 The double gift of glory excellent." — Fairfax,
 
 99^ 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and lIiLiTARr. 
 
 royal abundance; ami the vast plains of Apulia, 
 with the forests and mountains that encompass 
 them, offered a variety of the linest sport. But 
 there was an attraction, even greater than all 
 these, in the person of a beautiful maiden, the 
 young Sibylla, the daughter of his host, the 
 Count of Conversano. Robert became ena- 
 moured, and such a suitor was not likely to be 
 rejected. Robert received the hand of Sibylla, 
 who is painted as being as good as she was fan-, 
 together with a large simi of money as her dowiy. 
 Happy in the present, careless of the future, and 
 little thinking that a man so young as his brother, 
 the Red King, would die, he lingered several 
 months in Apulia, and finally travelled thence 
 without any eagerness or speed; and at the criti- 
 cal moment when the English throne fell vacant, 
 his friends hardly knew when they might expect 
 him. On his arrival, however, in Normandy, he 
 appears to have been received with great joy by 
 the people, and to liave obtained peaceful posses- 
 sion of the whole of the country with the excep- 
 tion of the forti-esses surrendered to Rufus, and 
 which were now held for Henry. He made no 
 secret of hia intention of prosecuting his claim on 
 England; but here again he lost time and threw 
 away his last remaining chance. He was proud 
 of showing his beautiful bride to the Normans, 
 and, with his usual imprudence, he spent her for- 
 tune in feasting and pageantry. Ralph Flam- 
 bai-d was the first to wake him from this splen- 
 did but evanescent dream, and at the earnest 
 suggestion of the fugitive bishop-minister he pre- 
 pared for immediate war, knowing it was vain to 
 plead to Henry his priority of birth, his treaty 
 with Rufus, or the oaths which Henry himself 
 had taken to him. 
 
 When Ids ban of war was proclaimed, Robert's 
 Noi-man vassals showed the utmost readiness to 
 fight under a prince who had won laurels in the 
 Holy Land; and the Norman barons expressed 
 the same discontent at the separation of the duchy 
 and kingdom which had appeared on the acces- 
 sion of WilUam Rufus. If the nobles had been 
 mianimous in then- preference to Robert as sove- 
 reign of the country, on either side the Channel 
 where they had domains, the dispute about the 
 English throne must have been settled in his fa- 
 vom-; but they were divided, and many preferred 
 Henry (as they had foi-merly done Rufus) to Ro- 
 bert. The fi-iends of the latter, however, were 
 neither few nor powerless: several of high rank 
 crossed the Channel from England, to urge him 
 to recover the title which belonged to him in 
 vu'tue of the agreement formerly concluded be- 
 tween him and the Red King; and Robert de 
 Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury and Armidel, Wil- 
 liam de la Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, Aruulf de 
 Montgomery, Walter Gifford, Robert de Ponte 
 
 fract, Robert de Mallet, Yvo de Grantmesnil, and 
 many others of the principal nobility, promised, 
 on his landing, to join him with all theii- forces. 
 Henry began to tremble on the tlu-one he had so 
 recently acquired. His fears of the Nonnans 
 threw him more than ever on the su]iport of the 
 English people, whom he now called his friends, 
 his faithful vassals, his countrymen — the best and 
 bravest of men — though liis brother, he insidi- 
 ously added, treated them with scorn, and called 
 them cowards and gluttons.' At the same time 
 he paid diligent court to Ai-chbishop Anselm, 
 who, by the sanctity of his character and his un- 
 deniable virtues and abilities, exercised a great 
 influence in the nation. 
 
 The effect of all this was, that the bishops, the 
 common soldiers, and the native English, with a 
 curious exception, stood firmly on the side of 
 Henry, who could also count, among the Nor- 
 man nobility, Robert de Slellent, his chief mini- 
 ster, the Earl of Warwick, Roger Bigod, Rich- 
 ard de Redvers, and Robert Fitz-Hamon, all 
 powerful barons, as his unchangeable adherents. 
 The exception against him, on the part of the 
 native English, was among the sailors, who, af- 
 fected by Robert's fame, and partly won over by 
 the fugitive Bishop of Dm'ham, deserted with 
 the greater part of a fleet, which had been hastily 
 equipped, to intercept the duke on his passage, or 
 oppose his landing. Robert sailed from Nor- 
 mandy in these very ships, and while Henry was 
 expecting him at Pevensey, on the Sussex coast, 
 he reached Portsmouth, and there landed. Be- 
 fore the two armies could meet, some of the less 
 violent of the Normans from both parties had 
 interviews, and agreed pretty well on the ne- 
 cessity of putting an end to a quarrel among 
 countiymen and friends. When the hostile forces 
 fronted each other, there was a wavering among 
 his Noi-maus; but the English continued faithful 
 to Henry, and Anselm threatened the invaders 
 with excommunication. To the surprise of most 
 men, the duke's great expedition ended in a hiu-- 
 ried peace and a seemingly affectionate reconcilia- 
 tion; after which the credulous Robert returned 
 to the Continent, renouncing all claim to Eng- 
 land, and having obtained a yearly payment of 
 3000 marks, and the cession to him of all the 
 castles which Heniy jjossessed in Normandy. It 
 was also sti]nilated, that the adherents of each 
 should be fully pardoned, and restored to all 
 their possessions, whether in Normandy or in 
 England; and that neither Robert nor Henry 
 should thenceforward encom'age, receive, or pro- 
 tect the enemies of the other. There was another 
 clause added, which, even without counting how 
 much older he was than Henry, was not worth, to 
 
 ' Matt. Parit.
 
 A.D. 1100—113^.] 
 
 HENEY I. (BEAUCLERK). 
 
 223 
 
 Robert, the piece of piircluuent it was written 
 upon; it imported tliat, if either of tlie brotliei-s 
 died without legitimate issue, the survivor shouUl 
 be lieu- to his dominions. 
 
 Robert was scarcely returned to Normandy 
 when Ilenry began to take measures against the 
 bai'ons, his partizans, whom he had promised to 
 pai'don. He appointed spies to watch them in 
 their castles, and, artfully sowing dissensions 
 among them, and provoking them to breaches of 
 the law, he easily obtained, fi'om the habitual 
 violence of these unjjopular chiefs, a plausible 
 pretence for his prosecutions. He summoned 
 Robert de Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbm-y, to an- 
 swer to an indictment containing forty-five seri- 
 ous charges.' De Belesme appeared, and, accord- 
 ing to custom, demanded that he might go freely 
 to consult with his friends and an-ange his de- 
 fence; but he was no sooner out of the court than 
 he mounted his horse and galloped off to one of 
 his strong castles. The king summoned him to 
 appear within a given time, under pain of out- 
 lawry. The earl responded to the siunmons by 
 calling his vassals around him, and preparing for 
 open war. This was meeting the wishes of the 
 king, who took the field with an army, consisting 
 in good part of English infantry, well disposed to 
 do his will, and dehghted at the prospect of pvm- 
 ishing one of their many oppressors. He was 
 detained several weeks by the siege of the castle 
 of Ai-uudel, the gan-ison of which finally capitu- 
 lated, and then, in part, escaped to join their 
 Earl de Belesme, who, in the mean time, had 
 strongly fortified Bridgenorth, near the Welsh 
 frontiers, and strengthened himself in the citadel 
 of Shrewsbury. During the siege of Bridgeuorth 
 the Noi'mans in the king's service showed that 
 they were .averse to proceeding to extremities 
 against one of the noblest of their countrymen, 
 and some of the earls and barons endeavoured to 
 put an end to the war by effecting a reconcile- 
 ment between Robert de Belesme and the sove- 
 reign. They demanded a conference, and an 
 assembly was held, in a plain near the royal camp. 
 A body of English infantry, posted on a hill close 
 by, who knew what was in agitation among the 
 Norman chiefs, cried out, " Do not trust in them, 
 King Hemy; they want to lay a snai-e for you. 
 We are here; we will assist you and make the 
 
 ' " Robert de Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury, sou of the great 
 Montgomery, deserves some notice. He was the most powerful 
 subject in England, haughty, rapacious, and deceitful. In these 
 vices he might have many equals ; ta cruelty he rose pre-eminent 
 among the savages of the age. He preferred the death to thi- 
 ransom of his captives ; it was his delight to feast his eyes ^vitll 
 the contortions of the victims, men and women, whom ho had 
 ordered to be impaled ; he is even said to h<av6 torn out the eye.^ 
 of his godson with his own hands, because the father of the boy 
 had committed some trivial olionce, and had escaped from his 
 vengeance. Against this monster, not from motives of huma- 
 nity, but from policy, Henry had conceived the most violent 
 
 assault. Grant no pe.ice to the ti-aitor until you 
 have him in your hands, ali^■e or dead !"' The 
 attem])t at reconciliation failed; the siege was 
 pressed, and Bridgenorth fell. The counti-y be- 
 tween Bridgenorth and Shi'ewabury, where the 
 earl made his last stand, was covered with thick 
 wood, and infested by his scouts and archera. 
 The English infantry cleared the wood of the 
 enemy, and cut a road for the king to the very 
 walls of Shrewsbury, where De Belesme, reduced 
 to despair, soon capitulated. He lost all his vast 
 estates in England, but was ])ermitted to retire 
 into Normandy, on taking an oath he would never 
 return to the kingdom without Henry's permis- 
 sion. His ruin involved that of his two brothers, 
 Arnulf, Earl of Montgomery, and Roger, Earl of 
 Lancaster; and the prosecution and condemnation 
 of all the barons who had been favourable to Ro- 
 bert followed. One by one, neai-ly all the great 
 nobles, the sons of the men who had achieved the 
 conquest of England, were di-iven out of the land 
 as traitoi-s and outlaws, and their estates and 
 honom-s were given to "new men."^ 
 
 So scrupulous was Duke Robert in observing 
 the treaty, that, on the first notice of De Belesme's 
 rebellion, he ravaged the Noi-mau estates of that 
 nobleman; considering himself, in spite of former 
 ties of friendship, as bound so to do by the clause 
 which stipulated that neither brother should en- 
 courage the enemies of the other. He was soon, 
 however, made sensible that the real crime of all 
 the outlaws, in Hemy's eyes, was the preference 
 they had given to him; and following one of 
 those generous impulses to which his romantic 
 natui'e was prone, he came suddenly over to Eng- 
 land and put himself completely in the power of 
 Heniy, to intercede in favour of the unfortunate 
 barons. The crafty king received him with 
 smiles and brotherly embraces, and then placed 
 spies over him to watch all his motions. Robert, 
 who had demanded no hostages, soon found he 
 was a prisoner, and was glad to purchase his 
 liberty by renouncing his annuity of 3000 marks. 
 He then retm-ned to Normandy, and, in self-de- 
 fence, renewed his friendship with the barons 
 exiled from England. Henry now pretended 
 that Robert was the aggressor, and declaimed the 
 peace between them to be for ever at an end. 
 The simple truth was, that he had resolved to 
 
 hatred. He was cited before the king's court ; the conduct of 
 his officers in Normandy, as well as in England — his words, no 
 less than his actions, were severely scrutinized ; and a long list 
 of five and forty ofleuces was objected to him by his accusers. 
 The earl, according to custom, obtained permission to .retire, 
 tliat he might consult liis friends ; but instantly mounted his 
 horse, fled to his earldom, summoned his retainers, and boldly 
 b.ade defiance to the power of his prosecutor. Henry cheerfully 
 accepted the challenge." — Linrfurd. Compelled in the end to 
 surrender, this monster of cruelty had his life spared, on condi- 
 tion of his quitting ti-e kingdom. 
 - OrdcHc. '■> Tliierr}', HMoirt de ia Cojiqucte.
 
 22i 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil .\.\d IMilitary. 
 
 unite the duchy to his kingdom. Normandy, in- 
 deed, was in a deplorable state, and Robert, it 
 must be said, had given, and continued to give, 
 manifold proofs of his inability to manage a fac- 
 tious and intriguing nobility, or to govern any 
 state, as states were then constituted. He was 
 indeed "too trusting and merciful for his age."' 
 He liad, however, relajjsed into his old irregu- 
 larities after losing the beautiful Sibylla, who 
 died in 1102, leaving an infant son, the only issue 
 of their brief man-iage. His court was again 
 thronged with vagabond jongleurs, loose women, 
 and rapacious favourites, who plundered him of 
 his very attire — at least this sovereign prince is 
 represented as lying in bed, at times, from want 
 of proper clothes to put on when he should rise. 
 A much more serious evil for the countrj' was, 
 that his pettiest barons were suffered to wage 
 war on each other, and inflict all kinds of wrong 
 on the people. Wlien Henry fh'st raised the 
 mask, he declared himself the protector of Nor- 
 mandy against the bad government of his brother. 
 He called on Robert to cede the duchy for a sum 
 of money, or an annual pension. " You have the 
 title of chief," said he, " but in reality you are no 
 longer a chief, seeing that the vassals who ought 
 to obey you set you at nought." = The duke in- 
 dignantly rejected the proposal, on which the 
 king crossed the seas with an army, and, "by 
 large distributions of money carried out of Eng- 
 land," won many new partizans, and got posses- 
 sion of many of the fortresses of Normandy. The 
 duke, on the other hand, had now nothing to give 
 to any one, yet still some brave men rallied 
 ai'ound him, out of affection to his person, or in 
 dread and hatred of his brother; and Henry found 
 it impossible to complete his ruin in this cam- 
 paign. 
 
 In the following year (1106) the king re-ap- 
 peared in Normandy with a more formidable 
 arm}', and with stiU more money, to raise which 
 he had cruelly distressed his English subjects. 
 About the end of July he laid siege to Tenche- 
 bray, an important place, the garrison of which, 
 incorruptible by his gold, made a faithful and 
 gallant resistance. Robert, when informed that 
 his friends were hard pressed, promised to march 
 to theii' relief, ensue what might; and on the 
 appointed day, most true to his word, as was 
 usual with hhn in such matters, he appeared be- 
 fore the walls of Teuchebray, where Hemy had 
 concentrated his whole ai-my. As a soldier, Ro- 
 bert was fai- superior to his brother, but his 
 forces were numerically inferior, and there was 
 treachery in his camp. As brave, however, as 
 when he fought the Paynim and mounted the 
 breach in the Holy City, he fell upon the king's 
 
 * WUiiam of 3Ialmesbui7 s.a^s, " He forgot and forgave to-) 
 
 2 Orderic. 
 
 army, threw the English infantry into disorder, 
 and had nearly won the victory, when He Be- 
 lesme most basely fled with a strong division of 
 his forces, and left him to inevitable defeat. Af- 
 ter a last and most brilliant display of his valour 
 as a soldier, the duke was taken prisoner, wilh 
 400 of his knights. " This battle," observes old 
 John Speed, "was fought, and Normandy won, 
 upon Saturday, being the vigil of St. Michael, 
 even the same day, forty years, that William the 
 Bastard set foot on England's shore for his con- 
 quest; God so disposing it (saith Malmesbury) 
 that Normandy should be subjected to England 
 that very day wherein England was subdued to 
 Normandy." 
 
 The fate of the captives made at Tenchebray, 
 or taken after that battle, or who voluntarily sur- 
 rendered, was various; some received a free par- 
 don, some were allowed to be ransomed, and a 
 few were condemned to pei-petual imprisonment. 
 The e.x-Earl of Shrewsbwy, De Belesme, was gi-a- 
 tified with a new gi-ant of most of his estates in 
 Normandy ; and the ex-bishop-minister, Ralph 
 Flambard, who had been moving in all these con- 
 tentions, obtained the restoration of his English 
 see, by delivering up the town and castle of Lisi- 
 eux to King Henry. A remarkable incident in 
 the victory of Tenchebray is, that the royal Saxon, 
 Edgar Atheling, was among the prisoners. Duke 
 Robert had on many occasions treated him with 
 great kindness and liberality. According to some 
 accounts Edgar had followed Robei-t to the Holy 
 Laud;^ but this is, at the least, doubtful; and the 
 Saxon Chronicle represents him as ha^ ing joined 
 the duke only a short time before the battle of 
 Tenchebray, where he charged with the Norman 
 chivahy. This was his last public appearance. 
 He was sent over to England, where, to show the 
 Norman king's contempt of him, he was allowed 
 to go at large. At the intei-cession of his niece, 
 the Queen Maud, Hemy granted him a trifling 
 pension; and this sm-vivor of so many changes 
 and sanguinary revolutions passed the rest of his 
 life in an obscm-e but tranquil solitude in the 
 country. So perfect was the oblivion into which 
 he fell, that not one of the chroniclers mentions 
 the place of his residence, or records when or 
 how he died. The fate of his friend Duke Ro- 
 bert, who had much less apathy, was infinitely 
 more galling from the beginning, and his ca]> 
 tivity was soon accompanied with other atroci- 
 ties. He was committed a prisoner for life to 
 one of his brother's castles. At first his keepers, 
 appointing a proper guai'd, allowed him to take 
 
 3 In lOSO, the last year of the Conqueror's reign, Edgar Athel- 
 ing obtained permission to conduct 200 knights to Apulia, and 
 thenca to Palestine ; but we are not informed wliat progress he 
 made in this journey, and Duke Robert did not set out for tho 
 Holy Land until loao, or ten years after.
 
 AD. lino— 11 sr).] 
 
 HENRY I. (KEAUCLERK). 
 
 225 
 
 air and exercise in the neighbouring \voo<ls and 
 fields. One day he seized a horse, and, breaking 
 from his guard, did liis best to escape; but he 
 was presently pursued, and taken in a morass, 
 wherein his horse had stuck fast. Upon hearing 
 of this attem])t the king not only prescribed "a 
 greater resti-aint and harder durance," but com- 
 manded that his sight should be destroyed, in 
 order to render him incapalile of such enter- 
 prises, and unapt to all royal or martial duties 
 for the future. This detestable order was exe- 
 cuted by a method which had become horribly 
 common in Italy' during these ages, and which 
 was not unknown iu other countries on the 
 Continent. A basin of copper or ii'on, made red- 
 hot, was held close over the victim's eyes till the 
 organs of sight were seai-ed and destroyed. The 
 wretched prince lived twenty-eight years after 
 this, and died in Cardiff Castle in 1135, a few 
 
 DuiiK Robert luu tr ( 1 fF t 
 
 months before his brother Henry. He was nearly 
 eighty years old, and had sm-vived all the chiefs of 
 name who rescued Jerusalem from the Saracens. 
 
 ' The pniiisliment was usually applied to captive princes, fallen 
 ministers, and personages of the liigliest rank and political in- 
 fluence. The Italians had even a verb to espress it — Abbacinare, 
 from bacino, a basin. "L'abbacinare fe il medeaimo che I'acce- 
 cai'e; e perchti si faceva con un bacijio rovente, che avvicinato 
 agli occhi tenuti apei-ti per foi*2a, concentrandosi il calore strug- 
 geva que' panicelli, e riseccava I'umiditi, che, come un' uva i 
 intorno alia pupilla, e la ricopriva di una cotal nuvola, che gli 
 toglieva la vista, si aveva preso questo nome d'abbacinare." 
 Such is the formal e.\planation of the horrid verb in the JOic- 
 tifnart/ Dilta C'rust'a. 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 Ill getting possession of Robert's peraon Henry 
 became master of Normandy. Rouen, the cajjital, 
 submitted, and Falaise surrendered after a short 
 resistance. At the latter place William, the only 
 son of Sibylla and Duke Robert, fell into liia 
 hands. When the child, who was then only five 
 years old, was brought into the presence of hi.4 
 uncle, he sobbed and cried for mercy. It coukl 
 not escape the king's far-reaching calculations 
 that this boy's legitimate claims might cause him 
 futtire trouble; but Henry, as if making a vio- 
 lent eiibrt to rid himself of evil thouglits, sud- 
 denly commanded that he should be renioveil 
 from him, and given in custody to Helie de St. 
 Saen, a Norman noble, on whom (though he had 
 married an illegitimate daughter of Duke Ro- 
 bert) he thought he could rely. He soon, how- 
 ever, repented of this arrangement, and sent a 
 force to surjjrise the castle of St. Saen, and se- 
 cure the person of young ^Villiam. Ilelie fied 
 with his pujiil, and they were both honourably 
 received at all the neighboiu'ing courts, where 
 the beauty, the innocence, the early misfortunes, 
 and claims of the boy, gained him many protec- 
 tors. The most powerful of these friends were 
 I>ouis VI. of France, commonly called Le Gros, 
 and Fulk, Eai-1 of Anjou. As William Fitz-Ro- 
 Ijert, as he was called, grew up, and gave good 
 [iromise of being a valiant prince, they espoused 
 is cause more decidedly, Louis engaging to grant 
 im the investiture of Normandy, and Fulk to 
 give him his daughter Sibylla in marriage, as 
 soon as he should be of proper age. Before that 
 period arrived, circumstances occurred (a.d. 1113) 
 that hurried them into hostilities, and the E;irl 
 of Flanders having been induced to sanction, if 
 not to join their league, Henry was attacked all 
 along the frontiers of Normandy. He lost towns 
 and castles, and was alarmed, at the same time, 
 by a report, true or false, that some friends of 
 Duke Robert had formed a plot against his life. 
 When the w'ar had lasted two years, Henry ]jut 
 an end to it by a skilful treaty, in which he re- 
 gained whatever he had lost in Normandy, and 
 in which the interests of WiUiam Fitz-Robert 
 were overlooked. These advantages were ob- 
 tained by giving the estates and honours of the 
 faithful Helie de St. Saen to his quondam ally, 
 Fulk, Earl of Anjou, and by stipulating a mar- 
 riage between his only sou, Prince William of 
 
 - This castle, situated on the river Taff, which washes its walls, 
 was built, A.D. 1110, by Robert Fitz-Uamon, one of the most re- 
 nowned of WiUiam the Conqueror's captains, who, in 1091, con- 
 quered Glamorgan.^hire. The tower represented in the engrav- 
 ing is th.at in which trailition sjiys Robert, IJuko of Normandy, 
 was confined for njjwards of twenty-si.x years. According to 
 Ordo Vitalis and William of Malmesbury, Henry made Ills im- 
 prisoimient as easy as possitjie, furnishijig him with an elegant 
 table, and bufloons to divert liim, " pleasures which, for some 
 yeal-s, he had preferred to all the duties of sovereign power." — 
 Lord Lyllhton. — Grose's Anli'juitks. 
 23
 
 22(i 
 
 TTTSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militaui'. 
 
 Eiiglaiiil, ami Matikla, another (laughter of that 
 earl. The previous contract between Fitz-Ro- 
 bert and Sibylla was broken off, and the Earl of 
 Aujou agreed to give uo more aid or countenance 
 to that young prince. 
 
 These aiTaugemeuts were not made without 
 great sacrifices of money on the part of the Eng- 
 lish people ; and some years before they were 
 concluded, the nation was made to bear another 
 burden.' By the feudal customs the king was 
 entitled to levy a tax for the marrying of his 
 eldest daughter; and (a.d. 1110) Henry affianced 
 the Princess Matilda, a child only eight years 
 old, to Henry V., Emperor of Germany. The 
 high nominal rank of the party, and the general 
 poverty of the German emperors in those days, 
 would alike call for a large dowi-y ; and Henry V. 
 drove a hard bargain with his brother (and to-be- 
 father-in-law), of England. The mai-riage por- 
 tion seems to have been principally raised by a 
 tax laid upon land. The stipulated sum was at 
 length placed in the hands of the emperoi-'s am- 
 bassadors, who conducted the young lady into 
 Germany. 
 
 About this time Henry checked some incur- 
 sions of the Welsh, the only wars waged in the 
 interior of England during his reign. He de- 
 spaired, however, of reducing them, and was fain 
 to content himself with building a few castles, a 
 little in advance of those erected by the Con- 
 queror and the Eed King. He also collected a 
 number of Flemings, who had been di-iven into 
 England by the misfortunes of their own country, 
 and gave them the town of Haverfordwest, with 
 the district of Koss, in Pembrokeshire. They 
 were a brave and industrious people, skilled in 
 manufacturing woollen cloths; and, increasing in 
 wealth and numbers, they maintained themselves 
 in their advanced post, in spite of the long efforts 
 of the Welsh to drive them from it. But a sub- 
 ject which occupied the mind of the English king 
 much more than the conquest of Wales, was the 
 securing the succession of all his dominions to 
 
 1 While public exactions were thus pressing on people of mU 
 rarJis, the chxirchmen fomid ingenious methods of raising money 
 for buUdiiig purposes. As an illustration of this, we may take 
 the following passage from the pages of Camden. Speaking of 
 the monastery of Crowland, or Croyland, he says : — 
 
 "It is not necessary to write the private history of this mo- 
 nastery, for it is extant in Inglllphus, which is now printed; yet 
 I am willing to make a short report of that which Tetrus Ble- 
 sensis, vice-chancellor to King Heniy il., has related at large 
 concerning the first building of this monastery, in the year 1112, 
 to the end that from one single precedent We may learn by what 
 means and by what assistances so many stately religious house.'^ 
 were built in all parts of this kingdom. Jotfrid, the abbot, 
 obtained of the archbishops of England, 'to eveiy one th.at 
 helped forward so religious a work, an indulgence of the third 
 part of the penance enjoined for the sins he had committed.' 
 With this he sent our monks everywhere to make collections, 
 and lu^ving enough, he appointed St. Perpetua's and Felicity's 
 d.ay to be that on which he wotUd lay the foundation, that the 
 work, from those fortunate names, might be aiispiciously begmi. 
 
 his only legitimate son William, to whom he 
 confidently and proudly looked, as to one who 
 was to perpetuate his lineage and power. Hav- 
 ing already made all the barons and prelates of 
 Normandy swear fealty and do homage to the 
 boy, lie exacted the same oaths in England, at a 
 gi-eat council of all the bishops, earls, and barons 
 of the kingdom; and being still puraued by the 
 dread of the growing popularity, on the Conti- 
 nent, of his nephew Fitz-Eobert, he artfully 
 laboured to get him into his power, making use, 
 among other means, of the most enticing pro- 
 mises — such as the immediate possession of three 
 great earldoms in England. But that young 
 prince woidd never trust the jailer of his father. 
 At a moment when the most 
 formidable confederacy that ever 
 threatened him was forming on the Continent, 
 Henry lost his excellent consort, Maud the Good; 
 and in about a month after he sutfei-ed a loss, 
 which he probably felt much more, in the death 
 of the Earl of Mellent, the ablest instrument of 
 his ambition, the most skilful of all his ministers, 
 who had so managed his foreign politics as to 
 obtain the reputation of being the greatest states- 
 man in Europe. 
 
 Henry's want of good faith liad hurried on the 
 storm which now burst upon him. He had 
 secretly assisted his nephew Theobald,-' Earl of 
 Blois, in a revolt against his feudal superior and 
 liege lord, the French king — he had broken of 
 the match agreed upon between his sou William 
 and the Earl of Anjou's daughter, Matilda — and 
 he had belied many of the promises made to 
 the Norman barons in his hour of need. The 
 league that was formed against him, therefore, in- 
 cluded many of his own disaffected Norman sub- 
 jects, Louis of France, Fulk of Anjou, and Bald- 
 win, Earl of Flanders — the last-mentioned having 
 fewer interested motives, and a purer affection 
 for the gallant son of Duke Robert, than any 
 of the others. The beginning of the war was 
 altogether uufavom-alile to the allies, and King 
 
 At tins time the nobles and prelates, with the common people, 
 met there in great numbers. Prayers being said and anthems 
 smig, the abbot liimself laid the fii-st comer-stone on the east 
 side ; after him, every nobleman, according to his degree, laid 
 liis stone, and upon it some laid money, and others writings, by 
 which they offered lands, advowsons of churches, tenths of theii- 
 sheep, and other tithes of their several churches, certain mea- 
 sures of wheat, or a certain number of workmen or masons. On 
 the other side, the common people, no less generous, offered, with 
 great devotion, some of them money, and some one diiy's work 
 every month, till it should be finished; some to build whole pil- 
 lars, and others pedestals, and others certain parts of the walls. 
 The abbot afterwards made a speech, commemUng their great 
 zeal and bounty in contributing to so pious a work ; and by way 
 of requital, he made every one of them a member of that monas- 
 tery, and gave them a right to partake in all the spiritual bless- 
 ings of that church. At last, having entert.ained them with a 
 plentiful fe-ist, he disnUs.sed them in great joy." 
 
 ■- Elder brother of Stephen, who seized the English crown on 
 Henry's death.
 
 A.D. 1100— 113J.1 
 
 HENRY I. (BEAUCLERK). 
 
 227 
 
 Louis, at one time, was forced to bog a suspension 
 of hostilities. Tlien fortune veered, and King 
 Henry lost ground; l)ut after a succession of re- 
 verses, his better star ]3revailed,and he was made 
 happy by the death of ]5aldwiu, Earl of Flan- 
 <lers, the soul of the confederacy, who died of a 
 wound received at the siege of Eu. Being thus 
 relieved from one of his formidable enemies, he 
 proceeded to detach another by means as preva- 
 lent as sword, or lance, or arrow-shot. He sent 
 a large sum of money to the venal Earl of Anjou, 
 .and agreed that the marriage between his son 
 and the earl's daughter should be solemnized 
 forthwith. Fulk took the bribe, and abandoning 
 his allies, went to prepare for the wedding. At 
 the same time, Henry gained over most of the 
 disaffected Norman barons; and, after two more 
 years of a war of jietty sieges, and of skirmishes 
 scarcely deserving the name of battles, tlie French 
 king saw himself deserted by all his allies. 
 
 An end was put to the war, now only main- 
 tained on one side by Louis, through the praise- 
 worthy mediation of the pope,' who, however, 
 laboured in vain to procure a mitigation of the 
 severity exercised on Duke Robert, and a proper 
 settlement for his son AVilliam. By this treaty 
 of peace, Henry was to preserve undisturbed pos- 
 session of Normandy; and his ])ride was saved by 
 Louis consenting to receive the homage due to 
 him for the duchy from the son instead of the 
 father. This son, who was in bis eighteenth year, 
 had received the oaths of the Norman nobles, as 
 also the hand of his bride, a child only twelve 
 years old, whose father, Fulk of Anjou, had given 
 her a considerable dower. King Hemy now re- 
 solved to return triumjjhantly to England. The 
 place of emljarkation was Barfleur, where Rufus 
 had lauded after his stormy pass.age and impious 
 daring of tlie elements." The douljle retinue of 
 the king and prince-royal was most numerous; 
 and some delay was caused liy the jiroviding of ac- 
 commodation and means of trauspoi-t for so many 
 noble personages, among whom were counted, we 
 scarcely knowhow many, illegitimate children and 
 mistresses of the king. On the 25th of Novem- 
 ber (a.d. 1120), however, all was ready, and the 
 sails were joyously bent, as for a short and plea- 
 sant voyage. Thomas Fitz-Stephen, a mariner of 
 some repute, presented himself to the king, and 
 tendering a golden mark, said — " Stephen, son of 
 E vrard, my father, served yours all his life by sea, 
 
 ' Calixtus II. lie was related by marriage to King Henry, 
 and personally visited th.at sovereign , who, among other signal 
 falsehoods, assm*ed him that his brotlier Kobert was not a pri- 
 soner, but entertained in a sumptuous manner in one of the 
 royal castles, where he enjoyed .as much liberty and amusement 
 03 he desired. 
 
 - See vol. i. p. 216. Most of the old liistorians are of opinion 
 that the drowning of the nephew was a judgment provoked by 
 the presiiroption of the uncle. 
 
 and he it w:is wlio steered tlie sliip in which, your 
 father sailed for the contpiest of ICngland. Sire 
 king, I beg you to grant me the same office in 
 iief : I have a vessel calleil the Blanchc-Xcf, well 
 eipiipped and manned with fifty skilful marinei-s." 
 The king rei)li('d that he had already chosen a 
 vessel for himself, but that, in order to accede 
 to the prayer of Fitz-Stophen, he would confide 
 to his care the prince, with his eoinjianions and 
 attendants. Hemy then embarked, and setting 
 sail in the afternoon with a favoiu-able and gentle 
 wind from the south, reached the English coast 
 in safety on the following morning. The prince 
 was accompanied in the Blanche-Nef, or "White 
 Ship," by his half-brother Richard; his h.alf-sister 
 the Lady Marie,' Countess of Perchc; Richard, 
 Earl of Chester, with his wife, who was the king's 
 niece; her brother, the prince's governor, with a 
 host of gay young nobles, both of Normandy and 
 of England, 140 in number, eighteen being ladies 
 of the first rank — all these and their retinues 
 amounting, with the crew, to about 300 persons. 
 On such occasions it was usual to regale the mari- 
 uei-s with a little wine, but the prince, and the 
 young men with him, imprudently ordered three 
 whole casks of wine to be distributed among the 
 men, who "drank out their wits and reason." 
 The captain had a sailor's pride in the speed of 
 his craft and the qualities of his crew, and, though 
 hours passed away, he promised to overtake every 
 ship that had sailed before him. The prince cer- 
 tainly did not press his departure, for he spent 
 some hours on deck in feasting and dancing with 
 liis company. A few prudent persons quitted the 
 disorderly vessel, and went on shore. Night had 
 set in before the Bhmcke-Kef started from her 
 moorings, but it was a bright moonlight, and the 
 wind, though it had freshened somewhat, was 
 still fair and gentle. Fitz-Stephen, proud of his 
 charge, held the helm; every sail was set, and, 
 still to increase the speed, the fifty sturdy mari- 
 ners, encouraged by then- boyish passengers, plied 
 the oar with all their vigour. As they proceeded 
 coastwise they got engaged among some rocks at 
 a spot called Ras de Catte (now Ras de Catte- 
 ville), and the White Ship struck on one of these 
 with such violence on her larboard side, that 
 several planks were started, and she instantly 
 began to fill. A cry of alarm and horror was 
 raised at once by 300 voices, and was heard on 
 board some of the king's ships that had gained 
 the high sea, but nobody there suspected the cause. 
 Fitz-Stephen lowered a boat, and jnitting the 
 prince with some of his companions iu it, advised 
 
 3 By some writers this lady is called Maud, and by others 
 Adele or Adula. Tlie name of her mother is not mentione<i. 
 Ricliard was the sou of an English mistress, who is called " the 
 widow of .\nskill, a nobleman that lived near tlie monastei7 of 
 Abingdon *'
 
 228 
 
 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 ICiviL AND Military. 
 
 tlieiu to row for the shore, ami save tliemaelvea. 
 Tliis -svouhi not have been dithcult, for tlie sea 
 was smooth, and tlie coast at no great distance; 
 but liis sister, Marie, had been left behind in the 
 ship, and her shrieks touched the heart of the 
 prince — the best or most generous deed of whose 
 life seems to have been his last. He ordered the 
 boat to be put back to take her in; but such num- 
 bera leaped into it at the same time as the lady, 
 that it was upset or swamped, aud all in it per- 
 ished. The ship also went down with all on 
 boai'd. Only two men escajied l>y rising and 
 clinging to the main-yard, which floated, and was 
 probably detached from the wreck: one of these 
 was a butcher of Rouen, named Bei-old, the other 
 a young man of higher condition, named Godfrey, 
 the son of Gilbert de I'Aigle. Fitz-Stephen, the 
 unfortunate captain, seeing the heads of two men 
 clinging to the yard, swam to them. "And the 
 king's sou," said he, "what has happened to 
 him } " "He is gone ! neither he, nor his brother, 
 nor his sister, nor any person of his company, has 
 appeared above water." " Woe to me ! " cried 
 Fitz-Stephen ; and then plunged to the bottom. 
 The night was cold, and the young nobleman, the 
 more delicate of the two survivors, became ex- 
 hausted; aud after holding on for some hours let 
 go the yard, and, recommending his poor com- 
 [lanion to God's mercy, sunk to the bottom of the 
 sea. The butcher of Rouen, the poorest of all 
 those who had embarked in the White Ship, 
 wrapped in his sheep-skin coat,' held on till morn- 
 ing, when he was seen from the shore, and saved 
 by some fishermen; and fi-om him, being the sole 
 survivor, the circumstances of the fearful event 
 were learned. The tidings reached England in 
 the com'se of the following day, but no one would 
 venture on communicating them to the king. For 
 tkree days the courtiers concealed the fact, and 
 at last they sent in a little boy, who, weeping 
 bitterly with " no counterfeit pa.ssion," feU at his 
 feet, and told him that the White Ship was lost, 
 and that all on board had perished. The hard 
 heart of Henry was not proof to this shock — he 
 sunk to the ground in a swoon; and though he 
 survived it many years, and indulged again in 
 his habitual amliition, he was never afterwards 
 seen to sniile.^ Ey the jieople at large, the death 
 of the young piince was regarded with satisfac- 
 tion ; for indejiendently of his hateful vices, by 
 which he had utterly forfeited their sym]iathy, 
 he had been often heard to threaten that he would 
 yoke the English natives to the plough, and treat 
 them like beasts of burden, when he became 
 king. 
 
 As Henry was now deprived of his only legiti- 
 
 ' Qui panponor err.t omnibus, renone amictua ex arietinis pel- 
 
 libus Oidi>.ric. 
 
 2 Ofderic • Mnlmesb.: Hm. Hi^nt.: R. Hoveden.- W, GcmU. 
 
 mate son, he was oast upon new jilans for the 
 securing of his various states in his family. At 
 the same time, the same event seemed to brighten 
 the prospects of his nephew, William of Nor- 
 mandy, whose friends certainly increased soon 
 after the demise of the heir apparent. A circum- 
 stance connected with the marriage of the di'owned 
 prince hastened and gave a colour of just resent- 
 ment to one declaration in favour of Fitz-Robert. 
 His former friend Fulk, Earl of Anjou, demanded 
 back from Henry his daughter Matilda, together 
 with the dower he had given to Prince William. 
 King Henry willingly gave up the yoiuig lady,' 
 Ijut refused to part with the money; and upon 
 this, Fulk, who was an adept in these matters, 
 renewed his matrimonial negotiations with the 
 son of Duke Robert, and finally affianced to him 
 his younger daughter Sibylla, putting him, mean- 
 while, in possession of the earldom of Mons. Louis 
 of Fi-ance continued to favour the young prince, 
 and some of the most powerful of the Norman 
 barons entered into a conspiracy in his favoui 
 against his unkind uncle, Henry. But no art — 
 no precaution — could conceal these manoauvi-es 
 from the English king, who had sjiies everywhere, 
 and who fell like a thunderbolt amoug the Nor- 
 man lords before they were prepared. It cost 
 him, however, more than a year to subdue this 
 revolt; but then he made the Norman leaders of 
 it prisoners, and induced the Earl of Anjou once 
 more to abandon the cause of his intended son- 
 in-law. 
 
 Some time before effecting this peace, Henry, 
 in the vain hope of otl'spring, which he thought 
 must destroy the expectations of his nephew, 
 espoused Adelais, or Alice, daughter of Geoffrey, 
 Duke of Louvain, and niece to the reigning pope, 
 Calixtus II. This new queen was young, and 
 very beautiful, but the marriage was not produc- 
 tive of any issue; and after three or four years 
 had jiassed, the king formed the bold design of 
 settling the crown of England and the ducal coro- 
 net of Noi-mandy on his da\ighter Matilda, who 
 had become a widow in 1124, by the death of her 
 husband, the Emperor Henry V. 
 
 On the solemn day of Christmas (a.d. 1126) 
 there was a general assembly in Windsor Castle, 
 of the bishops, abbots, barons, and all the great 
 tenants of the crown, who, for the most part 
 acting against their inward conviction, unani- 
 mozisl)/ declared the ex-empress Matilda to be the 
 next heii- to the throne, in the case (now not pro- 
 blematical) of her father's dying without legiti- 
 mate male issue. They then swore to maintain 
 her succession — the clergy swearing first, in the 
 order of their rank, and after them tlie laity, 
 among whom there seems to have been more than 
 
 ^ Ten years after, Matilda became a uun iii the celebrated con- 
 vent of Fontevraud.
 
 A.n. 1100—1135.1 
 
 HENRY I. (BEAUCLERK). 
 
 22!) 
 
 one dispute touching precedence.' The most re- 
 markable of these disputes, as being an index to 
 liidden asiiirations, was that for priority between 
 Stephen, Earl of Boulogne, and Robert, Eai-1 of 
 Gloucester. Stei)hen was the king's nephew, by 
 the daughter of the Conqueror, Henry's sister, 
 Adela: Robert, on the other side, was the king's 
 own son, but was of illcgitim.ate birth; and the 
 delicate point to be decided was, wliether prece- 
 dence was due to legitimacy of birth or to near- 
 ness of blood; or, in other words, which of the 
 two — the lawfidly begotten nephew of a king, or 
 the unlawfully begotten son of a king — was the 
 greater personage. The shade of the great Con- 
 queror might have been vexed at such a dis- 
 cussion; but though the reigning family deri- 
 ved its claim from a bastard, the question was 
 decided by the assemlily in favour of the nephew, 
 Stephen, who accordingly swore first. The 
 question had not arisen out of the small spirit 
 of courtly form and etiquette; the disputants 
 had higher oljjects. They contemplated psrjury 
 in the very preliminary of their oaths. Feel- 
 ing, in common with every bai-on present at 
 that wholesale swearing, that the succession 
 of Jilatilda was insecure, they both looked for- 
 ward to the crown; and ou that account each 
 was anxious to be declared the first prince of the 
 blood. 
 
 The same year that brought Matilda to Eng- 
 land, saw Fulk, the Earl of Anjou, depart for the 
 Holy Land, it being his destiny to become a very 
 inditl'erent king of Jerusalem. He renounced the 
 government of the province of Aiijou to his son, 
 Geoffrey, surnamed Flantagcnet, on account of a 
 custom he had of wearing a sprig of flowering 
 broom" in his cap like a feather. Henry had 
 many times felt the hostile power of the earls of 
 Anjou, and various political considerations in- 
 duced him to conclude a marriage between his 
 daughter Matilda and this Geoffrey, the son of 
 Fulk. The ex-emjiress, though partly against her 
 liking, consented to the match, which was nego- 
 tiated and concluded with great secrecy. The 
 barons of England and Normandy pretended that 
 the king had no right thus to dispose of their 
 future sovereign without previously consulting 
 
 ^ David, King of Scotland, in hig quality of English earl, or 
 holder of lands iii England, swore first of all to support Matilda, 
 who was his own niece. 
 
 - In old French geilr:st (now rrcnL-t], from the Latin genista. 
 
 ^ The beautiful enamelled tablet fi'om which this representa- 
 tion 19 derived was formerly in the chm-ch of St. Julien, and 
 is now presented in the museum at Mans. The earl appears at 
 full length imdor an arch decorated with semicircular orna- 
 ments, .and supported on either side by a pillar with a cai)ital 
 of foliage. He wears a steel cajj in form like the Phrygi.an, 
 enamelled with a leopard of gold. In his right hand is a sword, 
 his left supports a shield, which is adorned with golden leopards 
 onablue field, similar to the cap. This shield is of the long kite 
 shape, and reaches from the shoulders to the feet; it bears a 
 btrdtiug resemblance to those represeuted on the Bayeux Tapes- 
 
 Geokfrkv Pi.antaornet -^ 
 From liis mouument.al tablet. 
 
 them ; they were generally dissatisfied witli the 
 [iroceeding, and some of them openlj' declared 
 that it released them from the obligations of the 
 oath they had taken to 
 Matilda; but Henry dis- 
 regai'ded their mur- 
 murs, and congi'atulat- 
 ed himself ou liis policy, 
 which united the inter- 
 ests of the house of An- 
 jou with tho.se of his 
 own. The marriage was 
 celebrated at Rouen, in 
 the octaves of the feast 
 of Whitsuntide, 1127, 
 and the festival was pro- 
 longed during three 
 weeks. Henry some- 
 what despotically order- 
 ed, by proclamation, 
 everybody to be meri-y, 
 and all who refused, to 
 be deemed as offenders, 
 and guilty of disloyalty. 
 
 But, rejoice as he might, Hemy felt that the 
 succession of his daughter could never be secure, 
 if his nephew, William Fitz-Robert, survived 
 him; and he applied himself with all his craft to 
 effect the ruin of that young man, who, at the 
 moment, occupied a position that matle him truly 
 formidable. At the late peace, the French king 
 had not abandoned his interests, like Fulk, the 
 Earl of Anjou; on the contrary, Louis invited 
 him again to his court, and soon after, in lieu of 
 Sibylla of Anjou, gave him the hand of his queen's 
 sister, and with her, as a portion, the countries 
 of Pontoise, Chaumont, and the Vexin, on the 
 borders of Normandy. Soon after this advan- 
 tageous settlement, Charles the Good, Earl of 
 Flanders, successor to Baldwin, the steady friend 
 of the son of Duke Robert, was mm-dered in a 
 church at the very foot of the altar. The king 
 of France entered Flanders, as liege lord, and 
 with the consent of the peoijle, to punish the 
 sacrilegious murderers; and having done this, he, 
 in virtue of his feudal suzerainty, conferred the 
 earldom upon young William of Normandy, who 
 
 try, save that the upper part is not ciu-ved, though the angles 
 are rounded. He weai-s an under tunic of light blue, ornamen- 
 ted with borders of gold, an upper one of green; his in.autle is of 
 light blue, and is lined with vair; above the mantle and over 
 the right shoulder is his belt. The whole groundwork of the 
 tablet is cui'iously tilled up with small trefoil, scroll, and other 
 ornaments. Over the head of the figure is this inscription: — 
 
 ENSE TVO, PRINCEPS, PREDONVM TVIIBA FVaATVB, 
 ECCLe" II.S Q' QVIE.S PACE VIOENTE DATTU. 
 
 Tlic heraldic bearings on this tablet— by rome thought to be 
 gritlins ^though they are in all probability leopards or lions) — 
 have excited much attention from being perhaps the earliest 
 specimen extant of armorial b&arings. The style in wliich the 
 tablet is executed leaves little doubt but that tliis memorial of 
 Geoffrey Plantagenet was uiaile about the time when he died.
 
 230 
 
 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND 
 
 had accompiuiied liim in the expedition, and wlio 
 had such chums been aUowed, liad a good lieredi 
 tary ri^ht to it ;us the rejiresentative of 
 his gi-andmother, Matilda, wlio was 
 daughter of Earl Bahlwin of the oUl legi- 
 timate line. Tlie Flemish people offered 
 uo opiiosition to their new earl; and 
 King Louis, with his army, departed, in 
 the gi-atifying conviction that he had 
 secured a stable dominion to his gallant 
 young brother-in-law, and placed him in 
 a situation the most favourable for the 
 conquest of Normandy, or at least for the 
 curbing of that ambition in the English 
 king, which continued to give uneasiness 
 to Louis. This uneasiness could not fail 
 of being increased by the union between 
 the Norman line and the house of Anjou, 
 which took place at this very time. But 
 the French army had scarcely left the 
 country, when the Flemish people broke 
 out into revolt against their new earl, and 
 asked and received assistance from King Henry. 
 A respectable party, however, adhered to William, 
 who had many qualities to insiu-e respect and love. 
 In the field he had a manifest advantage over 
 the ill-directed insurgents, who then invited 
 Thiediik or Thierry, Landgrave of Alsace, to put 
 himself at their- head. Thien-y gladly accepted 
 their invitation. He advanced a claim to the suc- 
 cession on the gi-ound of his descent from some old 
 chief of the country; and Henry, who found in 
 him the instrument he wanted, sent him money, 
 and engaged to support him with all his might. 
 The treacherous surrender of Lisle, Ghent, and 
 other important ])laees in Flanders, immediately 
 followed; but William, who had the courage and 
 military skill of his unfortunate father, without 
 any of his indolence, completely defeated his an- 
 tagonist, Thien-y, under the walls of Alost. Most 
 unfortunately, however, in the moment of victoiy, 
 he received a pike wound in the hand, and this 
 being neglected, or improperly treated by igno- 
 rant surgeons, brought on a mortification. He 
 was conveyed to the monastery of St. Omer, 
 where he died on the 27th of July, 1128, in his 
 twenty-sixth year. In his last moments, he wi-ote 
 to his unnatural uncle, to implore mercy for the 
 Norman barons who had followed his fortunes. 
 Henry, in the joy of his heart, gi-anted the re- 
 quest of his deceased nephew, who left no chil- 
 dren to prolong the king's inquietude, or serve 
 as a rallying point to the disaffected nobles. We 
 are not infoi-med whether the tidings of WUliam's 
 brief gi-eatness were conveyed into the dungeon 
 of Cardiff Castle, to solace the heart of his suffer- 
 ing father, or whether the news of his early death, 
 which so soon followed it, was in mercy concealed 
 from the blind old man. 
 
 [Civil and MiLrrAur. 
 
 To work out his purposes, Henry had hesitated 
 It no treachery, no bloodshed, no crime, and yet 
 
 Chapi'ER IIouse and paiu' of the Catheukal, St. Omer.' 
 Architectural Papers. 
 
 Weale'& 
 
 he fondly hoped to end his days in tranquillity. 
 The winding up of his story is little more than a 
 succession of petty family jars and discords — the 
 very bathos of ambition and worldly grandeur. 
 His daughter, Matilda, presuming on the imperial 
 rank she had held, and being naturally of a jjroud, 
 imperious temper, soon quan-elled with her hus- 
 band : a separation took place ; Matilda returned 
 to England, and her father was oecujiied during 
 many months with these family disputes, and in 
 negotiating a peace between man and wife. At 
 length a reconciliation was patched up, and Ma- 
 tilda returned to her husband. The oath-breaker, 
 her father, thought he could never exact oaths 
 enough from others; and before his daughter left 
 England, he made the prelates and barons again 
 swear fealty to her. Henry, who, in sjjite of 
 these precautions, well knew the chances to which 
 Matilda would be exposed, ardently longed for a 
 grandson, whom he hoped to see gi-ow up; but 
 for six years he was kept uneasy and unhappy 
 by the unfruitf ulness of the marriage. In March, 
 1133, however, Matilda was delivered, at Mans, 
 of her firet child, Henry, staled Fitz-Empress, 
 who was afterwards Henry II. of England. At 
 the birth of this grandson the king again con- 
 voked the barons of England and Normandy, and 
 made them recognize as his successors the chil- 
 dren of his daughter, after him and after her. 
 The nobles, being accustomed to the taking of 
 oaths which they meant to break, swore fealty 
 afresh, not only to Matilda, but to her infant son, 
 and the rest of her progeny as yet unborn. The 
 ex-empress gave birth to two more princes, 
 Geoffrey and William, in the course of the two 
 
 • Tliis fine cathedral is of the style of transition from the round 
 to the pointed style of the twelfth century.
 
 A.u. 1 loo— 1135.] 
 
 HENRY 1. (liEAUCLERK) 
 
 231 
 
 following yeai-s; but oven a gi'owiiig family failed 
 to eudeai- her husband to her; slie i|u;u-relled 
 
 Mans.' — Froiu n modem French print. 
 
 with lam ou all possible occasions: and as her 
 father took her part, she kept his mind almost con- 
 stantly occupied with their dissensions. Under 
 these circumstances, it was not natural that 
 Geotfrey Plantagenet should prove a loving and 
 dutiful son-in-law. He demanded immediate pos- 
 session of Normandy, which he said Hemy had 
 promised him; and when the king refused, he 
 broke out into threats and insults. Matilda, it 
 is said, exerted her malignant and ingenious 
 sph-it in widening the breach between her own 
 husband and fatlier. The four last years of 
 Henry's reign, which were spent wholly abroad, 
 were troubled with these domestic broils. At 
 length an incm-sion of the Welsh demanded his 
 presence in England; and he was preparing for 
 that journey, when death despatched him on a 
 longer one. His health and spu'its had been for 
 some time visibly on the decline. On the 25th 
 of November, " to drive his grief away, he went 
 abroad to hunt." Having pursued his sport dur- 
 
 I ing the day, in tlie woods of Lions-lu-Foret, ia 
 
 i Normandy,-' he returned home in the eveuiu", 
 
 " somewhat amended," and being 
 
 hungry, "would needs eat of a 
 
 °=^Jt,;2«;;f lamprey, though his physician 
 
 '" ever counselled him to the con- 
 
 trary." The lamprey or lampreys 
 he ate brought on an indigestion; 
 and the indigestion a fever. On 
 the third day, despairing of his 
 i-ecovery, he sent for the Arch- 
 bishop of Rouen, who adminis- 
 tered the sacrament and extreme 
 unction; and, on the seventh day 
 of his illness, which was Sunday, 
 December 1, a.d. 1135, he expired 
 at the midnight hour. He was 
 in his sixty-seventh year, and 
 had reigned thirty-five ye;irs and 
 fom' months, wanting four day.s. 
 By his will he left to his dauglitcr, 
 Matilda, and her heirs for ever, 
 all his territories ou cither side 
 the sea; and he desired that when his lawful debts 
 were dischai-ged, and the liveries and wages of 
 his retainers paid, the residue of his eS'ccts should 
 be distributed among the poor. They kejit the 
 royal bowels in Normandy, and deposited them 
 in the church of St. Mai-y, at Eouen, which his 
 mother had founded; but the body was conveyed 
 to England, and interred in Reading Abbey, 
 which Henry had built himself. 
 
 The best circumstances attending his long 
 reign were, the peace he maintained in England, 
 and a partial respect to the laws which his 
 vigorous government imposed on his haughty anil 
 ferocious barons.'' Considering the times, extra- 
 ordinary care liad been taken of his education. 
 His natural abilities were excellent; and so gi-eat 
 was his progi-ess in the philosophy and Uterature 
 of the age, that his contemporaries honom-ed him 
 with the name of Beauclerk, or the fine scholar. 
 He was proud of his learning, and in the habit of 
 saying that he considered an unlearned king as 
 
 ' The view includes the c.ithedral and part of the fortifications 
 of the town. The cathedral is built npon the loimdations of an 
 ancient temple. The most ancient pai-t of the edifice is the nave, 
 which Is by different authorities ascribed to the ninth and the 
 eleventh centuries. The choir and transepts are of the fifteenth 
 century. The chou- ia remarkably bold iu style, and has a lofty 
 roof; it contains a quantity of fine stained glass. A tower at 
 the end of one of the transepts rises upw.ard3 of 200 ft. from 
 the ground. The cathedral is surrounded by thirteen small 
 ch.apels. The town contains several other chui'ches, and an abbey 
 of St. Vincent, now occupied as a seminary lor priests. Mans 
 contains several vestiges of Koman edifices, among which are 
 those of an araphithejitre. 
 
 - Lions-la-Foret, now a town, is at a short distance from 
 Rouen, and is approached through the remains of a fore-st, to 
 which it owes its surname. To this forest, once of great extent, 
 the Norman pi-inces eagerly resorted for the diversion of the 
 chase. So early as 029, William I., Duke of Norm.andy, built a 
 hunting-bo.\ there, which after^vards became a castle imiwrtant 
 
 from its strength. This forest w.as the scene in wliich, as con- 
 genial gi'oniul, were laid many of the adventures recorded in 
 the old chronicles and romances. — Tour in A'ormandif, by II. 
 Gaily Knight. 
 
 ^ *' During the t>Tannical reign of Rufils, the arbitrary mil of 
 the monarch constituted the only code by which the subject was 
 nUed; but the charter of Hemy I. 'restored the law of Edward;' 
 or, in other words, re-established or intended to re-estjxblish the 
 .\nglo-Sa.\on jurisprudence as it existed before the invasion. To 
 wh.at extent the .altei'ations, consequent upon the change of pro- 
 perty amongst the higher orders, had modificil tho older insti- 
 tutions, we cannot entirely ascertain ; and some of the doctrines 
 introduced by the Conqueror were silently preparing tho w.ay 
 for futiu-e revolutions. But, in theory, the customs of tho 
 ancient national monarchs still prov.ailed, and the administra- 
 tion of the law, though severe, was neither discreditable to the 
 government nor ungi-ateful to a people, then advancing in good 
 order and civilization." — Palgrave's liisc and l'rog>i:ss of On 
 EnglUU Covimonwtattlit [lart i. p. 240.
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 notliiiig better tli.in a crowned ass. He was very I b.attle in the service of their iinraeiliato superior. 
 
 foud of men of letters, and of wild beasts; and, 
 to enjoy both, he often fixed liis residence be- 
 tween tlieni; fir, in the words of one of the 
 chroniclers, " He took chief pleasure to reside in 
 his new palace, which liiinself built at Oxford, 
 both for the delight he had in learned men — 
 himself being very learned — and for the vicinity 
 of liis new jiark at Woodstock, which he had 
 fraught with all kinds of strange beasts, wherein 
 lie much delighted, as lions, leopards, lynxes, 
 camels, porcupines, and the like." ' His love of 
 
 Remains of Readtno Abbey.- — Grose's Antiqxiities. 
 
 letters, however, did not interfere with his re- 
 venge. In the last war in which he w-as person- 
 ally engaged on the Continent, Luke de Ban e, 
 a knightly poet, who had fought against him, was 
 made prisoner, and bai-barously sentenced to lose 
 his ej'es. Charles the Good, Eai-1 of Flanders, 
 who was present, remonstrated against the 
 punishment, urging, among other things, that it 
 was not the custom to inflict bodily punishment 
 on men of the rank of knights, who had done 
 
 ' Jio9Su9., quoted in Speed's Chronicle. 
 
 - Re.-icliiig Abbey was biiilt by Henry I,, who was buried 
 witliiji its w.ills. It was subsequently converted into h royal 
 palace, but it has long since fallen into total ruin. 
 
 Henry replied, "This is not the first time that 
 Luke de Barr6 has borne arms against me: but 
 he has been guilty of still worse things; for he 
 has satirized me in his poems, and made me 
 a laughiug-stoek to mine enemies. From his 
 example, let other verse-makers learn what they 
 have to expect when they offend the King of 
 England." The cruel sentence was wholly or 
 pai'tly executed, and the poet, in a paroxysm of 
 agony, bui'st from the savage hands of the exe- 
 cutionei-s, and dashed out his brains against the 
 wall.' Early in life, he chose 
 his chaphiin by the rapidity 
 with which he got through a 
 mass, saying, that no man 
 could be so tit a mass-priest 
 for soldiers as one who did 
 his work with such despatch. 
 While making war in Nor- 
 mandy, Henry chanced to enter 
 this priest's church, as it lay 
 on his road, near Caen. And 
 when the royal youth," says 
 William of Newbury, " said, 
 ' Follow me ! ' he adhered as 
 closely to him as Teter did to 
 Ins heavenly Lord, uttering a 
 similar command ; for Peter, 
 leaving his vessel, followed the 
 King of kings — he, leaving his 
 church, followed the prince, and, being appointed 
 chaplain to him and his troops, became a blind 
 leader of the blind." In some worldly respects, 
 at least, the censure was too severe. The speedy 
 chaplain, who will re-appear under the reign 
 of Stephen, was Eoger, afterwards the famous 
 Bishop of Sarum, and treasurer and favourite 
 minister to Henry, who invariably made such 
 elections from among the most able and quick- 
 sighted of men.' 
 
 3 Oi-dericus Vitaln. 
 
 * During Henrj''s frequent and long absences fi-oru England, 
 Eoger seems almost without exception to have been lord-lieu- 
 tenant, or regent of the kingdom.
 
 A.D. 1135—1154.] 
 
 STEPHEN. 
 
 ^33 
 
 CHAPTER IV.— CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. 
 
 STEPHEN. — A.l). 1135— 1I.>1. 
 
 Opposition m.ade to the succession of MatiMa — Stephen is crownetl in her stead — His unwise concesiions to tlie 
 barons — Tiie Earl of Ulouce.^tor intrigues against Itiin in favour of ilatilila — TlieScots invade Englaml — Battle 
 of tlie Standard, aiui defeat of tlie Scots — The Ijishojj of Saruni's rebellion against Stephen — Its suppression — 
 Matilda lands in England ami claims the crown — Wars between her and Stei)heii — Stephen taken prisoner — 
 Matihla driven from London by the adherents of Stephen — She is defeated, and Ste]>hen restored — Troubles 
 of the land from the contest — Matilda's singular escajje from Oxford— She retires to Normandy — (Quarrels of 
 Stephen with his prelates anil barons — Prince Henry, son of Matilda, asserts his right to the crown — He in- 
 vades England — Treaty by which Stephen retains the crown for life, with Uenry for ijis successor — Death of 
 Stephen. 
 
 CARCELY was lleury Beaiiclerk 
 dead wheu events ])roved how fruit- 
 less wei-e all his pains and precau- 
 tions to secure the succession to his 
 daughter, and how utterly valueless 
 were unanimous oaths which were 
 rather tlie offspring of fear than of inward con- 
 viction iuid good-will. Passing over the always 
 questionable obligation of oaths of this nature, 
 there were several capital obstacles to bar the 
 avenues of the throne to Matilda. The first 
 among these was her sex. Since the time of the 
 ancient Britons, England had never obeyed a 
 female sovereign ; and the Saxons for a long time 
 had even a marked aversion to the name and 
 dignity of queen when applied only to the reign- 
 ing king's wife.' In the same manner, the Nor- 
 mans had never known a female reign, the notion 
 of which was most repugnant to the wliole course 
 of their habits and feelings. To Iiold their fiefs 
 "imder the distatt'" (as it was called) was con- 
 sidered humiliating to a nobility whose business 
 was war, and whose king, according to the feudal 
 system, was little else than the first of many 
 warriors — a chief expected to be in the saddle, 
 and at the head of his chivalry whenever occasion 
 demanded. We accordingly find that a loud 
 and general cry was i-aised by the Anglo-Noi-man 
 and Noi'man barons, that it would be most dis- 
 graceful for so many noble knights to obey the 
 orders of a woman. In certain stages of society, 
 and in all the earliest, the Salic law, or that por- 
 tion of it excluding females from the throne, to 
 which we have limited its name and meaning, is 
 a natural law. These all but iusurmoiuitable 
 objections would not hold good against her son 
 Henry; but that prince was an infant not yet four 
 years old, and regencies under a long minority 
 were as incompatible with the spii-it and condi- 
 tion of the times, as a female reign. Queens 
 
 ' See vol. i. Saxou Period. 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 governing in their own right and by themselves, 
 antl faithfully guarded minorities, are both the 
 product of an age much more civilized and settled 
 than the twelfth century, and the approach to 
 them was slow and gradual. It was something, 
 however, to have confined the riglit of succession 
 to the legitimately born; for if the case had 
 occurred a little earlier in England, the grown-up 
 and experienced natural sou of the king, standing 
 in the position of Roberta, Earl of (Gloucester, 
 might possibly have been elected without scrujilo, 
 as had hapjiened to Edmund Ironside, Athelstane, 
 and others of the Saxon line. 
 
 No one was better acquainted with the spirit 
 of the times, and the obstacles raised against Ma- 
 tilda and Earl Robert, tha,n the ambitious Ste- 
 phen, nephew of the late king, wlio had taken 
 many measures beforehand, who Wiis encouraged 
 by the irregularity of the succession ever since 
 the Conquest, and who would no doubt give the 
 widest inter] >retation to whatever of elective cha- 
 racter was held to belong to the English crown. 
 Henry had been unusually bountiful to this 
 nephew. He married him to Maud, daughter 
 and heir of Eustace, Count of lioulogne, who 
 brought him, in addition to the feudal sove- 
 reignty of Boulogne, immense estates in England, 
 which had been conferred by the Conqueror on 
 the family of the count. By this marriage Ste- 
 phen also acquired another close connection with 
 lite royal family of England, and a new hold upon 
 the sympathies of the English, as his wife Maud 
 was of the old Saxon stock, being the only child 
 of Mary of Scotland, sister to David, the reigning 
 king, as also to the good Queen ]\Iaud, the first 
 wife of Henry, and mother of the Empress Ma- 
 tilda. Still further to aggrandize this favourite 
 nephew, Henry conferred upon him tlie great 
 estate forfeited by Robert Mallet in England, 
 and that forfeited by tlie Earl of Mortaigne in 
 Normandy. He also brought over Stephen's 
 younger brother, Henry, who, being a church- 
 30
 
 23t 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Mimtarv. 
 
 man, was created abbot of Glastonbury and 
 Bishop of Winchester. Stephen had resided 
 much iu England, and had rendered himself ex- 
 ceedingly popidar both to the Normans and the 
 people of Saxon race. The barons and knights 
 admired him for his undoubted bravery and acti- 
 vity — the people for his generositj', the beauty of 
 his person, and his affable, familiar manners. 
 The king might not know it, but he was the 
 poi)vdar favouj'ite in the already important and 
 fast-rising city of London before Henry's death. 
 When that event happened, he was nearer Eng- 
 land than Matilda, whose rights he had long de- 
 termined to dispute. Taking advantage of his 
 situation, he crossed the Channel immediately, 
 and though the gates of Dover and Canterbuiy 
 were shut against him, he was received in Lon- 
 don with enthusiastic joy, the populace saluting 
 hira as king without waiting for the formalities 
 of the election and consecration. The first step 
 to the English thi-one in those days, as we have 
 seen iu the cases of Rufus and Henry, was to get 
 possession of the royal ti-easm-y at Winchester. 
 Stephen's own brother was Bishop of Winchester, 
 and by his assistance he got the keys into his 
 hands. The treasure consisted of £100,000 in 
 money, besides plate and jewels of gi-eat value. 
 His episcopal bi-other was otherwise of the great- 
 est use, being mainly instrumental in winning 
 over Roger, Bishop of Sarum, then chief justi- 
 ciary and regent of the kingdom, and William 
 Corboil, Archbishop of Canterbury. Bishop 
 Roger, he who had been the speedy mass-priest 
 of King Henry, was easily gained through his 
 constant craving after money; but the primate 
 was not assailable on that side, being a very con- 
 scientious though weak man; it was therefore 
 thought necessary to practise a deception upon 
 him, and Hugh Bigod, steward of the late house- 
 hold, made oath before hira and other lords of 
 the laud, that the king on his death-bed had 
 adopted and chosen liis nejJiew, Stephen, to be 
 his heu- and successor, because his daughter the 
 empress had gi-ievously offended him by her 
 recent conduct. This was a most disgraceful 
 measm-e; and those men were more honest, and 
 in every sense occupied better ground, who main- 
 tained that the gi-eat kingdom of England was 
 not a heritable property, or a thing to be willed 
 away by a dying king, without the consent and 
 against the customs of the people. After hear- 
 ing Bigod's oath, the archbishop seems to have 
 floated quietly with the current, -without offering 
 either resistance or remonstrance. But there 
 were other oaths to be considered, for the whole 
 body of the clergy and nobility had repeatedly 
 swora fealty to Matilda. We have already shown 
 how the oaths were considered by the mass; and 
 now the all-prevalent Roger, Bishop of Sarum, 
 
 openly declared that those vows of allegiance 
 were null and void, because, without the consent 
 of the lords of the land, the empress was married 
 out of the realm; whereas they took their oath 
 to receive her as their queen upon the express 
 condition that she should never be so mai-ried 
 without their conciUTence.' Some scruples may 
 have remained, but no opposition was offered to 
 his election, and on the 2Cth of December, being 
 St. Stephen's Day, Stephen was hallowed and 
 crowned at Westminster by the primate, Wil- 
 liam Corboil. Immediately after his coronation, 
 he went to Reading, to attend the bm-ial of 
 the body of his uncle. King Henry, and from 
 Reading Abbey he proceeded to Oxford, where 
 he summoned a gi-eat council of the prelates, 
 abbots, and lay-barons of the kingdom, that he 
 might receive their oaths of allegiance, and con- 
 sult with them on the affairs of the state. When 
 the assembly met, he allowed the clergy to annex 
 a condition, which, as they were sure to assume 
 the right of interpretation, rendered their oaths 
 less binding even than usual. They swore to 
 obey him as their king so long as he should pre- 
 serve their chm-ch liberties, and the vigour of 
 discipline, and no longer. This large concession, 
 however, had the effect of conciliating the bishops 
 and abbots, and the confirmation of the pope 
 soon followed. The letter of Innocent II., which 
 ratified Stephen's title, was brief and clear.' 
 
 Stephen weakened his right instead of strength- 
 ening it, by introducing a variety of titles into 
 his ehai-ter, which, in imitation of his predecessor 
 Henry, he issued at this time ; but particular 
 stress seems to have been laid on his election as 
 king, " with the consent of the clergy and people," 
 and on the confirmation gi-anted him by the pope. 
 In this same charter he promised to redi'ess all 
 gi-ievances, and grant to the people all the good 
 laws and good customs of Edward the Confessor. 
 Whatever were his natural inclinations (and we 
 are inclined to believe they were not bad or un- 
 generous), the circumstances in which he was 
 placed, and the 'villainous instiniments with which 
 he had to work, from the beginning to the end of 
 his troubled reign, put it wholly out of his power 
 to keep the promises he had made, and the condi- 
 tion of the English jDeople became infinitely worse 
 under him than it had been under Henry, or even 
 vmder Rufus. A concession which he made to 
 the lay bai-ons contributed largely to the fiightf id 
 anarchy which ensued. To secure then- affections 
 and to strengthen himself, as he thought, against 
 the empress, he granted them aU permission to 
 
 ' Matt. Parii.; Gtsta Steph. 
 
 - Scrip. RfT. Franc. The letter ot the pope ha3 been preserve<l 
 by Richard of Hexham. It may be possible, though it appear.* 
 scarcely probable, that the pope knew nothing of the oaths 
 previously taken to Matilda and her children.
 
 A.I). 1135 11.54. 
 
 STEPHEN. 
 
 235 
 
 fortify their castles ami Iniild new ones; ami 
 tlie.'se, almost without an exc-t'ption, became dens 
 of thieves and cut-tlii'oats. At the same time he 
 made large promises to the venal and rajiacions 
 nobles, to engage them the more in support of Iiis 
 title to the orowii, and gave them strong assur- 
 ances that they should enjoy more privileges and 
 offices under him than they had possessed in the 
 reigns of his Norman predecessors. The keeping 
 of these engagements with the barons would of 
 itself render nugatory his promises to the English 
 people ; ajid the non-performance of them was 
 sure to bring down on Stephen's head the ven- 
 geance of a warlike body of men, who were almost 
 evei-ythiug in the nation, and far too much, when 
 united, for any royal authority, however legiti- 
 mately founded. At first, and probably on ac- 
 count of the lai'ge sum of money he had in hand 
 to meet demands, all went on in gi-cat peace and 
 harmony; and the court which the new king held 
 in London during the festival of Easter, in the 
 first yeai- of his reign, was more S])lendid, and 
 better attended in every respect, than any that 
 had yet been seen in England.' 
 
 Nor were the prelates and bai'ons in Normandy 
 more averse to the succession of Stej)hen than 
 their brethren in England. The old reasons for 
 desiring a continuance of their union with our 
 island were still in force with many of them; and 
 there was an hereditary animosity between the 
 nobles and people of Normandy and those of 
 Anjou, so that when Geoffrey Plantagenet, Earl 
 of Anjou, marched into the duchy to assert the 
 rights of his wife Matilda, he and his Angevins 
 met with a determined opposition, and he was, 
 soon after, glad to conclude a peace or truce for 
 two years with Stejilien,on condition of i-eceiviuT 
 during that time an annual pension of 5000 marks. 
 AVhen Stejihen a]ii)e:ired on the Continent he met 
 with noHiing to iiulicate that he was considered 
 as an unlawful usurper: the Normans swore alle- 
 giance, and the French king (Louis VII. ), with 
 whom he had an interview, formed an alliance 
 by contracting his young sister Constance with 
 Eustace, Stephen's son, and, as suzerain, granted 
 the investiture of Normandy to Eustace, who was 
 then a mere child. 
 
 During the first year of Stephen's reign Eng- 
 land was disturbed only by the revolt of the Earl 
 of Exeter, who was discontented with his .share 
 in the new king's lil)eralities; and by a Scottish 
 incursion made into the ncQ-thern counties in 
 support of Matilda by her uncle King David,-' 
 who, however, was bought off for the present, 
 by the grant of the lordship of Huntingdon 
 
 ^ Ilmry Hunting. 
 
 2 The Scottish king wa9 equally iiiicle to Stei>hen'8 wife, but 
 lie probably remembered the oatlis lie had taken to the mother 
 of Henry. 
 
 ami the castle of Carlisle, with a few other con- 
 cessions. 
 
 Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the late king's na- 
 tural son, who had so vehemently disputed the 
 (luestion of precedence with Stephen, merged his 
 own pretensioiLs to the crown in those of his half- 
 sister Matilda, whose cause he resolved to pro- 
 mote in England conjointly with his own imme- 
 diate advantages. Pretending to be reconciled to 
 his i-ule, he came over from the Continent (a.d. 
 1137) and took the oaths of fealty and homage to 
 Stephen, by the performance of which ceremony 
 he obtained instant possession of his vast estates 
 in England; and the first use he made of the 
 advantages the oaths procured him, was to in- 
 trigue with the nobles in favour of his lialf-sister. 
 The happy calm in which England lay did not 
 last long after the Ivirl of Gloucester's arrival. 
 Several of the barons, alleging their services had 
 not met with due reward, began to seize, by force 
 of arms, different parts of the royal demesne, 
 which they said Stephen had promised them in 
 fief. Hugh Bigod, who had sworn that King 
 Henry had appointed Ste]3hen his successor, and 
 who probably put a high price on his perjury, was 
 foremost among the disaffected, and seized Nor- 
 wich Castle. Other royal castles were besieged 
 and taken, or were treacherously surrendered. 
 They were nearly all soon retaken by the kinc, 
 but the spirit of revolt was rife among the nobles, 
 and the sedition, suppressed on one spot, burst 
 forth on others. Stephen, however, was lenient 
 and merciful beyond all precedent to the van- 
 quished. 
 
 The Earl of Gloucester, having settled with his 
 friends the plan of a most extensive insurrection, 
 and induced the Scottish king to [iromise another 
 invasion of England, withdrew be_vun 1 sea, and 
 sent a letter of defiance to Stephen, in which 
 he formally renounced his homage. Oiher gi-eat 
 barons — all ])leadiiig that Stephen had not given 
 them enough, nor extended their privileges as he 
 had promised — fell from his side, and witlulrew 
 to their castles, which by his permission they had 
 already strongly foi-tified. He was abandoned, 
 like Shakspeare's Macbeth, but his soul was as 
 high as that usurper's. "The traitors !" he cried, 
 " they themselves made me a king, and now they 
 fall from me; but by God's birth, they shall never 
 call me a deposed king !"'' At this crisis of -his 
 fortunes, he dispLayed extraordinary activity and 
 valour; but having no other politic means of any 
 efficacy with such men, who were all grasping for 
 estates, honours, and employments, he trenched 
 on the domains of the crown, and had ag-ain re- 
 course to his old .system of promising more than 
 he could possibly perform. The history of those 
 
 William of Malmesburi/.
 
 236 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militart. 
 
 pettj- sieges of baronial castles, wherein Stephen 
 was almost iuvariaMy successful, is sinj;ularly 
 uninteresting; Imt the campaign against the Scots 
 has some remarkable features. While he was 
 engaged with the revolted barons in the south, 
 King David, true to his promise, but badly su]i- 
 ported by the Earl of Gloucester and IMatilda, 
 who did not an-ive in England to put themselves 
 at the head of their party till a year later, ga- 
 thered his forces togetlier from every part of his 
 dominions — from the Lowlands, the Ilighlauds, 
 and the Isles — from the great promontory of 
 Galloway, the Cheviot Hills, and from that niirs- 
 ing-jilace of hardy, lawless men, the Border-land 
 between the two kingdoms — and crossing the 
 Tweed (March, 1138), advanced boldly into Nor- 
 thumberland, i-iding with Prince Henry, his sou 
 and heir, at the head of ivs numerous, as mixed, 
 and, in the main, as wild a host as ever trode this 
 gi-ound. These " Scottish ants," as an old writer 
 calls them,' overran the whole of the country that 
 lies between the Tweed and the Tees. "As for 
 the King of Scots Idmself," says the anonymous 
 author of Gesta HtcpAani, "he was a prince of a 
 mild and merciful disposition; but the Scots were 
 a barbarous and impure nation, and their king, 
 leading hordes of them from the remotest parts 
 of that land, was unable to restrain their wicked- 
 ness." The Normans of the time purposely ex- 
 aggerated the barbarous excesses — committed 
 chiefly by the Gallowegians, the Highlanders, and 
 the men of the Isles — in order to make the Eng- 
 lish fight moi-e desperately on their side; for had 
 they relied solely on their chivalry, and the men- 
 at-arms and mercenaries in the service of their 
 northern barons, their case would have been hope- 
 less. At the same time they conciliated the Eng- 
 lish people of the north by a strong appeal to 
 the local superstitions — they invoked the names 
 of the saints of Saxon race whom they had been 
 wont to treat with little respect; and the popular 
 banners of St. Cuthbert of Durham (or, according 
 to some, of St. Peter of York), St. .John of Bever- 
 ley, and St. Wilfrid of Eipon, which had long 
 lain dust-covered in the churches, were repro- 
 duced in the army, as the pledges and means of 
 victory. So rapid was the advance of King 
 David, that Stephen had not time to reach the 
 scene of hostilities; and the defence of the north 
 was, in a great measure, left to Toustain or Thur- 
 stan, ArchbLshop of York, an infii-m, decrepid 
 old man, but whose warlike energies, address, and 
 
 ' Matthew Paris. 
 
 2 The carroccio, or great standard car, is said to have been in- 
 vented or first used by Eribert. Archbishop of Milan, in the year 
 1035. It was a car upon four wheels, painted red, and so heavy 
 that it W.1S drawn by four pair of oxen. In the centre of the 
 car was fixed a mast, which supported a golden ball, an image 
 of our Saviour, and the banner of the republic. In front of the 
 mast were placed a few of the most valiant warriors ; in the 
 
 cunning were not affected by age and disease. It 
 was imiiuly he who organized the array of defence 
 which was got together in a hurry. He elo- 
 quently exhorted the men to fight to the last, for 
 God and their coimtry, telling tliem victory wiis 
 certiun, and paradise the meed of all who should 
 f^dl in battle against tlie Scots; he made them 
 swear never to desert each other; he gave them 
 his blessing and the remission of their sins; he 
 sent forth all his clergy, liishops, and chaplains, 
 and the cui-ates, who led their parishioners, " the 
 bravest men of Yorkshire;" and though sickness 
 prevented him from putting on his own coat of 
 mail, he sent Raoul or Ranulf, the Bishop of 
 Durham, to represent him on the field of battle. 
 Each lay baron of the north headed his own vas- 
 sals; but a more extensive command of divisions 
 was intrusted by the archbishop to William Pi- 
 perel or Peverel, and Walter Espec, of Notting- 
 hamshire, and Gilbert de Lacy and his brother 
 Walter, of Y'orkshire. As the Scots were already 
 upon the Tees, the Anglo-Norman ai-my drew up 
 between that river and the Humber, choosing 
 their own battle-field at Elfer-tun, now Northal- 
 lerton, about equidistant from York and Durham. 
 Here they erected a remarkable standard, from 
 which the battle has taken its name. A car upon 
 four wheels, which will remind the reader of 
 Italian history of the carroccio of the peo])le of 
 Lombardy,'- was di-awn to the centre of the posi- 
 tion; the mast of a vessel was strongly fastened 
 in the car; at the top of the mast a large crucifix 
 was displayed, having in its centre a silver box 
 containing the consecrated wafer, or sacrament; 
 and, lower down, the mast was decorated with 
 the banners of the three English saints. Ai-ound 
 this sacred standard many of the English yeo- 
 manry and peasants from the plains, wolds, and 
 woodlands of Yorkshire, Nottingham, and Lin- 
 cohishire, gathered of their own accord. These 
 men were all armed with large bows and arrows 
 two cubits long; they had the fame of being ex- 
 cellent archers, and the Normans gladly assigned 
 them posts in the foremost and most exposed 
 ranks of the army. 
 
 The Scots, whose standard was a simple lance, 
 with a sprig of the "blooming heather" wreathed 
 round it, crossed the Tees in several divisions. 
 Prince Henry commanded the first corpjs, which 
 consisted of men from the Lowlands of Scotland, 
 armed with cuirasses and long pikes ; of arch- 
 ers from Teviotdale, and Liddesdale, and all the 
 
 rear of it a band of warlike music. Feelings of religion, of mili- 
 tary glory, of local attachment, of patriotism, were all associated 
 with the calToccio, the idea of which is supposed to have been 
 derived from the Jewish ark of the covenant. It was from the 
 pLatform of the car that t'le priest administered the offices of re- 
 ligion to the army. No disgrace was so intolerable .among the 
 free citizens of Lombardy as th.at entailed by the suffering an 
 enemy to take the carroccio.
 
 AD. 1135—1154. 
 
 STEPHEN. 
 
 237 
 
 valleys of the rivers tliat empty their waters into 
 the Tweed or the Solway Frith ; of troopers from 
 the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, 
 mounted on small but strong and active horees ; 
 and of the fierce men of Galloway, who wore no 
 defensive armour, and c;uTied long thin pikes as 
 
 Armour of the time of Stephen. — Cotton MS. Nero C 4 
 
 their cliief, if not sole weapon of war. A body- 
 gii;U'd of knights and men-at-arms under the 
 command of Eustace Fitz-.Tohn, a nobleman of 
 Norman descent, rode round the prince. The 
 Highland clans and men of the Isles came next, 
 carrying a small round shield made of light woolI 
 covered with leather, as their only defensive 
 armour, and the claymore or broad-.?vvord as their 
 only weapon : some of the island tribes, however, 
 wielded the old Danish battle-axe instead of the 
 claymore. After these marched the king with a 
 strong body of knights, who were all either 
 
 Cnioht, in tegiilaterl armour.— Se.!! uf Richard, constable i.f 
 Chester in the time oi Stephen. 
 
 of Engli.sh or Norman extraction ; and a mixed 
 corps of men from the Moray Fi-ith, and vai-ious 
 other parts of the land, brought up the rear. 
 With the exception of the knights and men-at- 
 arms, who were clad in complete mail, and armed 
 
 miiformly, the host of the Scottish king presented 
 a disordered variety of weapons and dresses. 
 The half-naked clans were, however, as forward 
 to fight as the warriors clad in steel. The rapid 
 advance of the Scottish forces was covered and 
 concealed by a dense fog; and they would have 
 taken the Anglo-Norman army by sari)rise, had 
 it not been for Kobort dc Bruce and Bernard de 
 Baliol, two barons of Norman descent, who held 
 lands both iu ScoUaud and England, and who 
 were anxious for the conclusion of an immediate 
 peace. Having in vaiu argued with David, and 
 hearing themselves called traitors by William, 
 the king's nejihew, they renounced the Scottish 
 part of their allegiance, bade defiance to the king, 
 and putting spurs to their horses, galloped off to 
 the camp at Northallerton, which they reached 
 in good time to tell that the Scots were coming. 
 At the sight and sound of their headlong and 
 tumultuous approach, the Bishop of Durham read 
 the prayer of absolution from tlie standard-car, the 
 Normans and the English kneeling on the ground 
 the while, and rising to their feet and shouting 
 " Amen," when it was finished. The representa- 
 tive of the energetic old Thurstain then delivered 
 a speech for the further encouragement of the 
 army : it was long, and seems to have been inter- 
 rupted by the onslaught of the Soots. 
 
 The Scots came on with the simple war-ciy of 
 "Alban ! Alban !"' which was shouted at once by 
 all the Celtic tribes. The desperate charge of the 
 men of Galloway drove in the English infantry, 
 and broke for a moment the Norman centre. 
 " They burst the enemy's ranks," says old Bromp- 
 ton, "as if they had been but spiders' webs." 
 Almost immediately after, both flanks of the 
 Anglo-Normans wei-e assailed by the mountain- 
 eers and the men of Teviotdale and Liddesdale; 
 but these charges were not supported in time, 
 and the Norman horse formed an impenetrable 
 mass round the standard-car, and repulsed the 
 Scots in a fierce charge they made to penetrate 
 there. During this fruitless effort of the enemy, 
 the English bowmen rallied, and took up good 
 positions on the two wings of the Anglo-Norman 
 army ; and when the Scots renewed their attack 
 on the centre, they harassed them with a double 
 flank flight of arrows, while the Norman knights 
 and men-at-arms received them in front on the 
 points of their couched lances. The long thin 
 pikes of the men of Galloway were shivered 
 against the armour of the Normans, or broken by 
 their heavy swords and battle-axes. The High- 
 land clans still shouting "Alban! Alban!" 
 wielded theii- claymores, and fighting hand to 
 hand, tried to cut their way through the mass of 
 iron-cased chivalry. For full two hom-s did the 
 
 > Matt. Paris.
 
 238 
 
 niSTORV OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 Seots maintain the fight in front of the Nnrinan 
 host ; and at one moment the g;ill:int Prince 
 Henry haj nearly jienetrated to tlie elevated 
 standard ; but, at la.st, with broken spears and 
 swords, they ceased to attack — paus?d, retreated, 
 and then fled in confusion. The king, however, 
 retained near his peraon, and in good order, his 
 guards and some other troops, which covered the 
 retreat, and gave several bloody checks to the 
 Anglo-Normans who pursued. Three days after 
 he rallied within the walls of Carlisle, and em- 
 ployed himself in collecting his scattered troops, 
 and organizing a new ai-my. He is said to have 
 lost 12,000 men at Northallerton. The Normans 
 were not in a situation to pursue their advantages 
 to any extent ; and the Scots soon re-assumed the 
 offensive, by laying siege to Wark Castle, which 
 they reduced by famine. The famous battle of 
 the Standard, which was fought on the 22d of 
 August, A.D. 11.38, was, however, the great event 
 of the Scottish war, which was concluded in the 
 following year by a treaty of peace, brought 
 about by the intercessions and prayers of Alberic, 
 Bishop of Ostia, the pope's legate in England, 
 and Stephen's wife, Maud, who had an interview 
 with her uncle. King David, at Durham. Though 
 the Scots were left in jiossession of Cumberland 
 and Westmoreland, and Prince Henry invested 
 with the earldom of Northumberland, the issue 
 of the war dispirited the malcontents all over 
 England, and might have given some stability to 
 Stephen's throne, had he not, in an evil moment, 
 I'oused the powerful hostility of the church. 
 
 Roger, Bishop of Sarum, though no longer 
 treasm-er and justiciary, as in the former and at 
 the beginning of the pre.'jent reign, still possessed 
 great influence in the nation, among laity as well 
 as clergy — an influence not wholly arising out of 
 his gi-eat wealth and political abilities, but in 
 part owing to the noble use he made of his money, 
 to his taste and munificence, and the superior 
 learning of his family and adherents. Among 
 other works of the same kind he rebuilt the 
 cathedi-al at Sarum, which had been injured by 
 fii-e, and the storms to which its elevated position 
 exposed it, and he beautified it so gi"eatly that it 
 yielded to none in England at that time ; and 
 some respect is stiU due to the memory of a man 
 who gi-eatly raised the architectural taste of this 
 country, and whose genius aff'ected the age in 
 which he lived. " He erected splendid mansions 
 on all Ms estates," says William of Malmesbuiy, 
 " with imrivaUed magnificence, in merely main- 
 taining which his successors will toil in vain. 
 His cathedral he dignified to the utmost with 
 matchless adornments, and buildings in which no 
 expense was spared. It was wonderful to behold 
 in this man what abundant authority attended, 
 and flowed, as it were, to his hand. He was 
 
 sensible of his power, and somewhat more harshly 
 than beseemed such a character, abused the favour 
 of Heaven. Was there anything adjacent to his 
 possessions which he desired, he would obtain it 
 either by treaty or purchase ; and if that failed, 
 by force." But other powerful bai-ons, botli 
 ecclesiastical and lay, equalled his rapacity with- 
 out having any of his taste and elevation of spirit; 
 for he was in all things a most magnificent person, 
 and one who extended his patronage to men of 
 learning as well as to architects and other artists. 
 He obtainedr the sees of Lincoln and Ely for his 
 two nephews, Alexander and Nigel, who were 
 men of noted learning and industry, and were 
 said at the time to merit their promotion by 
 virtue of the education which he had given them. 
 Alexander, the Bishop of Lincoln, who, though 
 called liis nephew, is significantly said to have 
 been something nearer and dearer, had the same 
 taste for I'aising splendid buildings ; he nearly 
 rebuilt the cathedral of Lincoln, and built the 
 castle of Newark : but Nigel, on the contrary, is 
 said to have wasted his wealth on hawks and 
 hoimds. Bishop Roger, next to his own brother, 
 the Bishop of Winchester, had contributed more 
 than any churchman to his elevation, and Ste- 
 i:hen's consequent liberality for a long time knew 
 no stint. It should appear, however, that his 
 gifts were not the free offerings of gi-atitude, and 
 that he treated the bishop as one does a sponge 
 which is pei-mitted to fill before it is squeezed. 
 He is reported to have said more than once to his 
 familiar comjianions — " By God's bh-th, I woidd 
 give him half England if he asked for it : till the 
 time be ripe he shall tire of asking before I tn-e 
 of giving." Roger was one of the castle-buildera 
 of that turbulent period, being, as he thought, 
 licensed therein, by the permission granted by 
 Stephen at his coronation: all his stately mansions 
 were, in fact, strongly fortified places, well gar- 
 risoned, and provided with warlike stores. Be- 
 sides Newai-k Castle, Alexander had built other 
 houses, which were also fortified ; and, when 
 abroad, uncle and nephews were accustomed to 
 make a great display of military force. The 
 pomp and power of this family had long excited 
 the envy of Stephen's favoiu-ites, who liasl no 
 great diificidty in persuading then- master that 
 Bishop Roger was on the point of betraying him, 
 and espousing the interests of Matilda. Stephen 
 was threatened by an invasion from without, and 
 no longer knew how to distinguish his friends 
 from his foes within: his want of money to pay 
 the foreign mercenary troops he had engaged, and 
 to satisfy his selfish nobles, now drove him into 
 in-egular courses, and he probably considered that 
 the bishop's time was ripe. The king was hold- 
 ing his com't at Oxford : the town was crowded 
 with prelates and barons, with their numerous
 
 n:!5-U54.] 
 
 STEPHEN. 
 
 239 
 
 and disorderly attendants; a quarrel, either acci- 
 dental or preconcerted, arose between the bishop's 
 retainers ;uid those of the Earl of Brittany con- 
 cerning quarters, and swords bein^ drawn on 
 both sides, many men were wounded and one 
 knight was killed.' Ste])lien took advantage of 
 the cireunistanoe and ordered the arrest of the 
 bishop and his nephews. Roger was seized in 
 the king's own hall, and Alexander, the Bishop 
 of Lincoln, at his lodging in the town; but Nigel, 
 the Bishop of Ely, who had taken up his quartei's 
 in a house outside the town, escaped, and threw 
 himself into Devizes, the strongest of all his 
 uncle's castles. The two captives were confined 
 in separate dungeons. The first charge laid 
 against them was a flagrant violation of the king's 
 peace within the precincts of his court; and for 
 this they were assured that Stephen would accept 
 of no atonement less than the unconditional sur- 
 render to him of all theii- castles. They at first 
 refused to part with their liouses, and oflered "a 
 reasonable compensation" in money; but, moved 
 by the dreadful threats of their enemies and the 
 entreaties of their friends, they at length surren- 
 dered the castles which Roger had built at 
 Malmesbury and Sherborne, and that which he 
 had enlarged and strengthened at Sarum. Newark 
 Castle, the work of the Bishop of Lincoln, seems 
 also to have been given up. But the castle of 
 Devizes, the most important of them all, re- 
 mained; and relying on its strength, the warlike 
 Bishop of Ely was prepared to bid defiance to the 
 king. To overcome this opposition, Stephen or- 
 dered Roger and the Bishop of Lincoln to be kept 
 without food till the castle should be given up. 
 In case of a less direct apjieal, the defenders of 
 Devizes might have been obstinate or iucredulous 
 of the fact that Stephen was stai'ving two bishops; 
 liut Roger himself, already pale and emaciated, 
 was made to state his own hard fate, in front of 
 his own castle, to his own nephevf, whom he im- 
 plored to surrender, as the king had sworn to 
 kee]i his pm-pose of famishing him and the Bishop 
 of Lincoln to death unless he submitted. Stephen, 
 though far less cruel by nature than most of his 
 contemporaries, was yet thought to be a man to 
 keep his word in such a case as the present ; this 
 was felt by the Bishop of Ely, who, overcoming 
 his own haughty spirit out of aiiectiou to his 
 uncle, surrendered to save the lives of the cap- 
 tives after they had been three whole days in a 
 fearful fast.- 
 At these violent jsroceedings the whole body of 
 
 1 It ajjpears that Bisliop Roger set out on his journey to Ox- 
 ford with reluctance. " For," saya WlUiara of .Malmesbury, '* I 
 heard him speaking to the following purijose ; ' By my Lady St 
 lilary, 1 know not where.''ore, but my heart revolts at tliis jour- 
 ney: this I am sure of, that I shall be of much the same service 
 at ci^virt as a fool iji l^attle ! ' " 
 
 - Maliiusb.; Orileric: G':Ma Stepk, 
 
 the dignified clergy, including even his own bro- 
 ther Henry, the Bishop of Winchester, who was 
 now armed with the high powers of I'apal legate 
 for all England, turned against Stephen, accusing 
 him of .sacrilege in laying violent liands on ])re- 
 lates. The legate Henry summoned his brotlier, 
 tlie king, to appear before a synod of bishojjs as- 
 sembled at Winchester. Stephen would not attend 
 in person, but sent Alberic dc Vere as his coun- 
 sel to plead for him. Alberic exaggerated the 
 cii-cumstances of the I'iot at Oxford, and laid 
 aU the blame of that blood-shedding upon Roger 
 and his neiihews, whom, moreover, he charged 
 with a treasonable cori'esi)ondence with the em- 
 press. The legate answered that the three bishops, 
 uncle and nephews, were ready to aliide their 
 trial before a proper tribunal, but demanded, as of 
 right, that their houses and property should be 
 previously restored to them. Alberic said that they 
 had voluntarily surrendered their castles and trea- 
 sures as an atonement for tlieir oflfences; and it 
 was insisted, moreover, on the same side, that 
 the king had a right to take possession of ah for- 
 tified places in his dominions whenever he consi- 
 dered, as circumstances now obliged him to_ do, 
 that his throne was in danger. On the second 
 day of the debate the Archbishop of Rouen, the 
 only prelate that still adhered to the king, took a 
 more apostolic and simple view of the case, and 
 boldly affirmed that the three bishops were bound 
 by their vows to live humbly and quietly accord- 
 ing to the canons of the church, which prohibited 
 them- from all kinds of military pursuits whatso- 
 ever — that they could not claim the I'estitution of 
 castles and places of wai', which it was most un- 
 lawful for them, as churchmen, to build or to 
 hold — and that, consequently, they had merited 
 the greatest part of the punishment they had suf- 
 fered. The points of canonical law thus laid 
 down were undeniable; but the bishops there 
 assembled were not accustomed to their practice, 
 and every one of them tniyht have said that, with- 
 out making his house a castle, there was no living 
 in it in these lawless times. As their temper was 
 stei-n and imcompromising, Alberic de Vere ap- 
 pealed to the pope in the name of the king and 
 dissolved the council, the knights with him draw- 
 ing their swords to enforce his orders if neces- 
 sary.^ The effects of this confirmed rupture were 
 soon made visible. But Bisho]) Roger did not 
 live to see the humiliation of Stephen; he was 
 heart-broken; and when, in the following month 
 of December, as the horrors of a civil war were 
 commencing, he died at an advanced age, his fate 
 was ascribed, not to the fever and ague, from 
 wliich, in Malmesbury's words, he escaped by the 
 kindness of death, but to gi-ief and indignation 
 
 3 Malmcsb. William of Malmesbiu-y waj present at this council.
 
 2i0 
 
 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 for tlie injuries he had sufferpd. Tlie plate and 
 money which liad l>een saved fi-om tlie king's ra- 
 pacity he devoted to the completion of his church 
 at Saruin, and he laid them upon the high altar, 
 in the hope that Stephen might be restrained, by 
 fear of sacrilege, from seizing them. But these 
 were not times for delicate scruples, and they 
 were can'ied ofif even before the old man's death. 
 Their value was estimated at 40,000 marks. 
 Bishop Roger w;is the Cardinal Wolsey of the 
 twelfth ceutuiy, and his fate, not less tragic than 
 the CiU-dinal's, made a deep impression on the 
 minds of his contemporaries. Ilis nephew, or 
 son, Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and his ne- 
 phew Nigel, Bishop of Ely, having the advan- 
 tage of a younger age, did not resign themselves 
 to despair, but, intent on taking vengeance, they 
 openly joined Matilda, and were soon up in arms 
 against Stephen. 
 
 The synod of bishops held at Winchester was 
 dissolved on the first day of September (a.d. 1 130), 
 and towards the end of the same month, Matilda 
 landed in England with her 
 half-brother, Robert, Earl of 
 Gloucester, and 140 knights. 
 Some Normans who went out 
 to meet her, on finding that 
 she came with so insignificant a 
 force, and brought no money, 
 returned to the other side; and 
 Stephen, by a rapid movement, 
 presently siu'prised her in Arun- 
 del Castle, where Alice or 
 Adelais, the queen -widow of 
 Henry I., gave her shelter. Ste- 
 phen had both these dames in 
 his power, but refining on the 
 chivalrous notions which were 
 becoming more and more in 
 vogue, and to which he was in- 
 clined by nature more perhaps 
 than suited good policy, he left 
 Queen Alice undisturbed in her 
 castle, and gave Matilda permis- 
 sion to go free and join her 
 half-brother, Robert, who, immediately after 
 theii- landing, had repaired by by-roads, and 
 with only twelve followers, to the west coimtry, 
 where, at the very moment of these generous 
 concessions, he was collecting his friends to 
 make war upon Stephen. The king's brother, 
 the Bishop of Winchester, escorted Matilda to 
 Bristol, and delivered her safely to Earl Robert. 
 It was quickly seen that those who had declined 
 joining ]\Iatilda on her fii-st lamling had taken a 
 narrow view of the resources of her party, for 
 most of the chiefs in the north and the west re- 
 nounced then- allegiance to Stephen, and took 
 fresh oaths to the empress. There was a moment 
 
 of wavering, during which many of the barons in 
 other parts of the kingiloin weighed the chances 
 of success, or tried both parties, to ascertain which 
 would grant the more ain])le recompense to their 
 venal swords. While this state of indecision 
 lasted, men knew not who were to be their 
 friends, or who their foes, in the coming struggle; 
 " the neighbour could put no faith in his nearest 
 neighbour, nor the friend in his friend, nor the 
 brother in his own brother;"' but at last the 
 more active chiefs chose their sides, the game 
 was made up, and the horrors of civil war, which 
 were to decide it, were let loose upon the land. 
 Still, however, many of the barons kept aloof, 
 and, strongly gai-risoning their own castles, took 
 the favourable ojijjortunity of desjjoiling, tortiu?- 
 ing, and murdering their weak neighbours. The 
 whole war was conducted in a frightful manner; 
 but the greatest of the atrocities seem to have 
 been committed by these separationists, who 
 cared neither for Stephen nor Matilda, and who 
 rarely, or never, took the field for either party. 
 
 OuEEV SlAUD-s Chambek, ATun.lel Castle.=-l?rom a sketcli ou the spot bj 
 J. W. Archer. 
 
 They waged war against one another, and be- 
 sieged castles, and racked farms, and seized the 
 
 1 Bcrvase of Canterbury. 
 
 ■ Arundel Castle is referred to as e.Trly as the time of King 
 Alft-d who bequeathed it to liis nephew Aldlielm. William 
 the Conqueror gave it to his kinsm.an, Roger do Montgomery, 
 created Earl of .Arundel and Shrewsbury. It af tenvards passed 
 into the hands of the Albini, and from them to the Fitz-AlanB. 
 The ancient lieep and several towers and gates stiU remain. 
 Ai-undel Castle confers by tenure the peerage and eaildom of 
 Ai-undel, without any creation, patent, or investiture, this being 
 the only instance of the kind now existing in tliis country. A 
 tower next the keep is called Queen Maud's Tower; and an 
 upper chamber is said by tradition to have been her chamber, 
 when Alice or Adelais, the widow queen of Henry I., gave her 
 shelter at Arandel in the course of her contest with Stephen.
 
 A.p. 1135—1154.] 
 
 STEPHEN. 
 
 241 
 
 unprotected travoUer. on tlieir own account, anil 
 for their own i)riv;ite .si)ite or advantage. 
 
 At firet the fortune of the greater war inclined 
 in favour of Stephen; for though he failed to take 
 Bristol, the head-quarti^rs of Matilda aud Earl 
 Eobeit, he gained many advautages over their 
 adherents in the west, and lie defeated a formid- 
 able insui-i-ection in the east, headed by Nigel, 
 the Bishop of Ely, who built a stoue rampart 
 among the bogs aud fens of his diocese, on the 
 very spot, it is said, where the brave Hereward, 
 the last champion of Saxon independence, had 
 raised his fortress against the Conqueror. To 
 reach the warlike aud inveterate ne])hew of old 
 Bishop Roger, Stephen had recourse to the same 
 skilful measures wliieh had been employed by 
 the Conqueror at the same difficult place. De- 
 feated at Ely, Nigel tied to Gloucester, whither 
 Matilda had transferred her standard; and while 
 Steplien was still on the eastern coast, the flames 
 of war were rekindled in all the west. The Nor- 
 man prelates had no scru])lcs in taking an active 
 part in these military operations; and the garri- 
 sons of their castles ai-e said to have been as cruel 
 to the defenceless rural population, as eager after 
 ]:ilunder, and altogether as lawless, as the retainers 
 of the lay barons. The bishops themselves were 
 seen, as at the time of the Conquest, mounted on 
 war-hoi-ses, clad in armour, directing the siege or 
 the attack, and di-awing lots with the rest ior tlie 
 booty.' 
 
 The cause of Sle2)heu was never injured by any 
 want of personal courage and rapidity of move- 
 ment. From the east he returned to the west, 
 and from the west marched ag;un to the country 
 of fens, on learning that Alexander, the Bishop 
 of Liucohi, had got together the scattered forces 
 of the Bishop of Ely in those parts, and, in alli- 
 ance with the Earls of Lincoln and Chester, was 
 making himself very formidable. The castle of 
 Lincoln was in the hands of his enemies; but the 
 town's- people were for Stephen, and assisted him 
 in layuig siege to the fortress. On the 2d of 
 February, a.d. 1141, as Stephen was prosecuting 
 this siege, the Earl of Gloucester, who had got 
 together an array 10,000 strong, swam across the 
 Trent, aud apjieared in front of Lincoln. Stephen, 
 however, w:us pi'epared to receive liim: he had 
 drawn out his forces in the best position, and, 
 dismounting from his vrar-horse, he put himself 
 at the liead of his infantry. But his army was 
 unequal in number, and contained many traitors; 
 the whole of his cavahy deserted to the enemy, 
 or fled at the first onset; and after he had fought 
 most gallantly, and broken both his sword aud 
 battle-axe, Stephen was taken prisoner by the 
 Earl of Gloucester. Matilda was incapable of 
 
 ' Gesta Stcpliani. Tliis military spirit of tlie ecclesiastics liad 
 b.^en greatly increasoJ by the Crosades. 
 Vol. I. 
 
 imitating his generosity; but her partizans landed 
 licr mercy, because she only loaded him with 
 chains, and threw him into a dungeon in Bristol 
 Ca.stle. The empress does not ajipear to have 
 encountered much difficulty in per-suading the 
 Bishop of Wincliestcr wholly to abandon his un- 
 fortunate brotlier, and acknowledge lier title. 
 The jjrice paid to the bishop was the promise, 
 sealed by an oath, that lie should have the chief 
 direction of her aftaii-s, and the disposal of all 
 vacant bishoprics and abbacies. The scene of 
 the bargain was on the downs, near Winchester, 
 and the day on which it was concluded (the 2d 
 of March) was dark aud tempestuous. The next 
 day, accompanied l>y a great body of the clergy, 
 the brother of Ste]ilicu conducted the enijiress in 
 a sort of triumph to the cathedi-al of Winchester, 
 within which he blessed all who should be obe- 
 dient to her, and denounced a curse against all 
 who refused to submit to her authority. As 
 legate of the pope, this man's decision had the 
 force of law with most of the clergy; and several 
 bishops, and even Theobald, the new Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, followed his example.- At Win- 
 chester, Matilda took possession of the royal 
 castle, the crown, with other regalia, and such 
 treasure as Stejjheu had not exhausted. On the 
 Ttli of April, she, or the legate acting for her, 
 convened an assembly of chm-chmen to ratify 
 lier accession. The members of this s^Tiod were 
 divided into three classes — the bishops, the abbots, 
 and the archdeacons. The legate conferred with 
 each class separately and in private, and his argu- 
 ments prevailed with them all. On the following 
 day they sat together, and the deliberations were 
 public. AVilliam of Malmesbury, who tells us 
 he was present, and heard the opening speech 
 with great attention, jirofesses to give the very 
 words of the legate. The brother of Stephen be- 
 gan by contrasting the turbulent times they had 
 just witnessed, with the tranquillity and hap])i- 
 ness enjoyed under the wise reign of Henry I.; he 
 glanced lightly over the repeated vows made to 
 Matilda, and said the absence of that lady, and 
 the confusion into which the country was thrown, 
 had comjielled the jirelates aud lords to crown 
 Stephen; — that he blushed to bear testimony 
 against his own brother, but that Stephen had 
 violated all his engagements, particularly those 
 made to the church; — that hence God had pro- 
 nounced judgment against him, and placed them 
 again under the necessity of providing for the 
 tranquillity of the kingdom by ajjpointing some 
 one to fill the throne. " And now," said the 
 legate, in conclusion, "in order that the kingdom 
 may not be without a ruler, we, the clergy of 
 England, to whom it chiejly belongs to elect kinjs 
 
 31 
 
 Qei'vate.
 
 2-1.2 
 
 HISTORY OK ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militauy. 
 
 and ordain them, having yesterday deliberateil on 
 tliis great cause in private, and invokeil, as is fit- 
 ting, the direction of tlie Huly Spirit, did, and do, 
 elect Matilda, the daughter of the pacific, rich, 
 glorious, good, and incomparable King Henry, to 
 be sovereign lady of England and Normandy." 
 Many persons present listened iu silence — but 
 silence, as usual, was interpreted into consent; 
 and the rest of the assembly hailed the conclu- 
 sion of the speech with loud and repeated accla- 
 mations. The deliberations of the synod, and the 
 proclamation of Matilda, were hurried over be- 
 fore the deputation from the city of Loudon 
 could reach Winchester; but such was the respect 
 they imposed, that it was deemed expedient to 
 hold an adjourned session on the following morn- 
 ing. Y^hen the decision of the council was an- 
 nounced to them, the deputies said they did not 
 come to deliate, but to petition for the liberty of 
 their king; that they had no powers to agree to 
 the election of this new sovereign; and that the 
 whole community of Loudon, with all the barons 
 lately admitted into it, earnestly desired of the 
 legate, the archbishop, and all the clergy, the im- 
 mediate liberation of Stephen. When they ended, 
 Clu-istian, the chaplain of Stephen's queen, rose 
 to address the meeting. The legate endeavoured 
 to impose silence on this new advocate; but, hi 
 defiance of his voice and authority, the chaplain 
 read a letter from his royal mistress, in which 
 she called upon the clergy, by the oaths of allegi- 
 ance they had taken to him, to rescue her hus- 
 band from the imprisonment in which he was 
 kept by base and treacherous vassals. But Ste- 
 phen's brother was not much moved by these 
 measures; he repeated to the Londoners the argu- 
 ments he had used the day before; the deputies 
 departed with a promise, in which there was 
 probably little sincerity, to recommend his view 
 of the case to their fellow-citizens; and the legate 
 broke up the council with a sentence of excom- 
 munication on several persons who still adhered 
 to his brother, not forgetting a certain William 
 Martel, who had recently made free on the roads 
 with a part of his (the legate's) baggage. 
 
 If popular opinion can be counted for anything 
 in those days — and if the city of London, together 
 with Lincoln and other large towns, may be taken 
 as indexes of the popular will — we might be led 
 to conclude that Stephen was still the sovereign 
 of the people's choice, or, at least, that they pre- 
 feiTed him to his competitoi-. The feelings of 
 the citizens of London were indeed so decided, 
 that it was not until some time had passed, and 
 the Eai'l of Gloucester had soothed them with 
 pi'omises and flattering prospects, that Matilda 
 ventm'ed among them. She entered the city a 
 few days before Midsummer, and made prepara- 
 tions for her immediate coronation at Westmin- 
 
 ster. But Matilda herself, who pi-etended to an 
 indefeasible, sacred, hereditary right, would jier- 
 forin none of the promises made by her half- 
 brother; on the contrary, she imposed a heavy 
 tallage or tax on the Londoners, as apunishinent 
 for their attachment to the usm-per; and arro- 
 gantly rejected a petition they presented to her, 
 praying that the laws of Edward the Confessor 
 might be restored, and the changes and usages 
 introduced by the Normans aliolished. Indeed, 
 whatever slight restraint she had formerly put 
 on her haughty, vindictive temper, was now 
 entirely removed; and in a surprisingly shoi't 
 space of time she contrived not only to irritate 
 her old opponents to the veiy utmost, but also 
 to convert many of her best friends into bitter 
 enemies. When the legate desired that Prince 
 Eustace, his nephew, and Stephen's eldest son, 
 should be put iu possession of the earldom of 
 Boulogne and the other patrimonial rights of his 
 father, she gave him a dii'ect and insulting re- 
 fusal. [In dethroning his brother, this prelate, 
 who was, perhaps, the most extraordinary actor 
 in the drama, had not bargained for the impo- 
 verishment of all his family, and an insult was 
 what he never could brook.] When Stephen's 
 wife, who was her own cousin, and a kind- 
 hearted, amiable woman, appeared before her, 
 seconded by many of the nobility, to petition for 
 the enlargement of her husband, she showed the 
 malignancy and littleness of her soid by personal 
 and most unwomanly upbraidings. 
 
 The acts of this tragedy, in which there was no 
 small mixture of farce, passed almost as rapidly 
 as those of a drama on the stage; and before the 
 coronation clothes could be got readj', and the 
 bishops assembled, Matilda was driven from 
 London without having time to take with her so 
 much as a change of raiment. One fine summer's 
 day, " nigh on to the feast of St. John the Bap- 
 tist," and about noon-tide, the dinner hour of the 
 court in those times, a body of horee bearing the 
 banner of Queen Maud (the wife of Stephen) 
 appeared on the southern side of the river oppo- 
 site the city; on a sudden all the church-bells of 
 London sounded the alarm, and the people ran 
 to arms. From every house there went forth 
 one man at least with whatever weapon he could 
 lay his hand upon. They gathered in the streets, 
 says a contemporary, like bees rushing from their 
 hives.' Matilda saved herself from being made 
 prisoner by rushing from table, mounting a horse, 
 and galloiung oft". She had scai-cely cleared the 
 western suburb when some of the populace buret 
 into her apai'tment, and pUlaged or destroyed 
 whatever they found in it. Such was her leave- 
 taking of London, which she never saw again. 
 
 ' Gc&ia StepJuini.
 
 A.D. 1135—1151.] 
 
 STEPHEN'. 
 
 243 
 
 Some few of her frieiuls jiccomnaiiioil her to Ox- 
 ford, but others left her on the route, ;iuil tied 
 singly by cross country roads and unfrequented 
 paths towards their respective castles." 
 
 Matilda had not been long at Oxford when she 
 conceived suspicions touching the tidelity of the 
 Bishop of Winchester, whom she had oU'endcd 
 beyond redress, and wlio had taken liis mea- 
 sures accordingly, absenting liimself from court, 
 and manning the castles which he had built 
 within his diocese — asat Waltham, Fai-uham, and 
 other places. He had also an interview with his 
 sister-in-law, Maud, at the town of Guildford, 
 where he probably arranged the plans in favour 
 of his brother Stephen, which were soon carried 
 into execution. Slatilda sent him a rude order 
 to appear before her forthwith. The cunning 
 churchman told her messenger that he was "get- 
 ting himself ready for her;" which was true 
 enough. She then attempted to seize him at 
 Winchester; but, having well fortified his episco- 
 pal residence, and set up his brother's standard 
 on its roof, lie rode out by one gate of the town 
 as she entered at the other, and then proceeded 
 to place himself at the head of his armed vassals 
 and the friends who had engaged to join him. 
 Matilda was admitted into the royal castle of 
 Winchester, whither she immediately summoned 
 tlie Earls of Gloucester, Hereford, and Chester, 
 and her uucle David, King of Scots, who had 
 been for some time in England vainly endeavour- 
 ing to make her follow mild and wise counsel. 
 While these personages were with her, slie laid 
 siege to the episcopal palace, which was in every 
 essential a castle, and a strong one. The legate's 
 garrison made a sortie, and set fire to all the 
 neighbouring houses of the town tliat miglit have 
 weakened their position, and then, being confi- 
 dent of succour, waited the event. The bishop 
 did not make them wait long. Being reinforced 
 by Queen Maud and tlie Londoners, who, to the 
 nimiber of a thousand citizens, took the field for 
 Stephen, clad in coats of mail, and wearing steel 
 casques, like noble men of v/ai',- he turned rapidly 
 back upon Winchester, and actually besieged the 
 besiegers there. By the Isfc of August he had 
 invested the royal castle of Winchester, whei-e, 
 besides the empress-queen, there wei-e shut up 
 the King of Scotland, the Earls of Gloucester, 
 Hereford, and Chester, and many other of the 
 noblest of her jjartizans. When the siege had 
 lasted six weeks, all the provisions in the castle 
 were exhausted, and a desperate attempt at tiight 
 was resolved upon. By tacit consent tlie belli- 
 gerents of those times were accustomed to sus- 
 pend their operations on the gi-eat festivals of 
 the chui-ch. The 14th of September was a Sun- 
 
 1 Malriuai.; Gala Stejp!i.; £,omi>i.; Fhr. Wig. - Gala Stcp/i. 
 
 day, and tlie festival of tlie Holy Rood or Cross. 
 At a very early hour of the morning of tliat day, 
 Matilda mounted a swift horse, and, accompanied 
 by a strong and well-mounted escort, crejit iis 
 secretly and quietly as w:is possible out of the 
 castle: her half-brother, the Earl of Gloucester, 
 followed at a short distance with a number of 
 knights, who had engaged to keep between her 
 and her pursuers, and risk their own liberty for 
 the sake of securing the queen's. These move- 
 ments were so well timed and executed, that they 
 broke through the beleaguerers, and got upon 
 the Devizes i-oad, before the legate's adherents, 
 who were thinking of their mass and prayei-s, 
 could mount and follow them. Once in the 
 saddle, however, they made hot pm-suit, and at 
 Stourbridge, the Earl of Gloucester and liis gal- 
 lant knights were overtaken. To give Matilda, 
 who was only a short distance in advance, time 
 to escape, they formed in order of battle and 
 offered an obstinate resistance. In the end they 
 were nearly all made prisoners; but their self- 
 devotion had the desired efl'ect, for the cjneen, 
 still pressing on her steed, reached the castle of 
 Devizes in safety. That fortress, the work of 
 Bisliop Roger, was, we know, very strong; but it 
 is said that, not finding herself in security even 
 there, Matilda almost immediately resumed her 
 journey, and, the better to avoid danger, feigned 
 herself to be dead, and being placed on a bier 
 like a corpse, caused herself to be drawn in a 
 hearse from Devizes to Gloucester. Of all who 
 formed her strong rear-guard on her Uight from 
 Winchester, the Earl of Hereford alone reached 
 Gloucester castle, and he arrived in a wretched 
 state, being almost naked.^ The other barons and 
 knights wdio escajjed from the field of Stourbridge 
 threw away their arms, disguised themselves like 
 peasants, and made for their own homes. Some 
 of theiu, betrayed by their foreign accent, were 
 seized by the English peasantry, who bomid them 
 with cords, and drove tlie proud Normans before 
 them with whips, to deliver them up to their 
 enemies.* The King of the Scots, Matilda's 
 \incle, got safe back to his own kingdom; but her 
 half-brother, the Eai'l of Gloucester, who was by 
 far the most important prisoner that could be 
 taken, was conveyed to Stephen's queen, who 
 secured him in Rochester Ca.stle.^ 
 
 Both jiarties were now, as it were, without a 
 head, for Matilda was nothing in the field in the 
 absence of her half-brother. A negotiation was 
 therefore set ou foot, and, on the 1st of Novem- 
 ber, it was finally agi-eed that the Earl of Glou- 
 
 3 Conthi. Wifj. ^ 
 
 * At diflerent times tlio .Vrclibishop of Cant^iibury aiut seve- 
 ral of the Nonnan bisliops and ablwts were stripped by the Eng- 
 lish peasants — " f^ui,* ti. vtstitjus ab istis caplis, ab ittis horrfiuU 
 utidractif.^'—GeHa i>trp/t. * Malmcfb.; Gcsta Steph.; Brompt.
 
 2U 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 cester .slioulil be exclmnjieil for King Steiihcii. 
 Tlie interval h;ul been ttJleel up by unspeakable 
 misery to the people; but, as far as the principals 
 were concerned, the two parties now stood as 
 they did previously to the battle of Lincoln. The 
 clergy, and paaticidarly the legate who had alter- 
 nately sided with each, found themselves in an 
 embarra-ssiug position; but the brotherof Stejihen 
 had an almost unprecedented strength of face. 
 He summoned a great ecclesiastical council, 
 which mot at Westminster on the 7th of Decem- 
 ber, and he there produced a letter from the 
 pope, ordering him to do all in his power to effect 
 the liberation of his brother. This letter was 
 held as a sufficient justification of all the measures 
 he had recently adopted. Stephen then addi-essed 
 the assembly, brielly and moderately complain- 
 ing of the MTOngs and hardships he had sustained 
 from his vassals, unto whom he had never denied 
 justice when they asked for it; and adding, that 
 if it would please the nobles of the realm to aid 
 him with men and money, he trusted so to work 
 as to relie.ve them from the fear of a shameful 
 submission to the yoke of a woman ; a thing 
 which at first they seemed much to mislike, and 
 which now, to then- great grief, they had by ex- 
 perience found to be intolerable. At last the 
 legate himself rose to speak, and, as he had with 
 a very few exceptions the .same audience as in 
 the synod assembled at Winchester only nine 
 months before, when he pronounced the dethrone- 
 ment of his own brother, and hurled the thunders 
 of excommunication against his friends and ad- 
 herents, his speech must have produced a singular 
 effect. He pleaded that it was through force, 
 and not out of conviction or good-will, that he 
 had supported the cause of Matilda, who subse- 
 quently had broken all her engagements with 
 him, and even made attempts against his liberty 
 and life. He was thus, he maintained, freed 
 from his o.aths to the Countess of Anjou, for he 
 no longer deigned to style her by a higher title. 
 The judgment of Heaven, he said, w;is visible in 
 the punishment of her perfidy, and God himself 
 now restored the rightful King Stephen to his 
 throne. Though there were some jealousies 
 already existing between him and the Archbishop 
 of Canterbmy, the council went with the legate, 
 and no objection was started save by a solitary 
 voice, which boldly asserted, in the name of 
 Matilda, that the legate himself had caused all 
 the calamities which had hajjpened — that he had 
 invited her into England — that he had planned 
 the expedition in which Stejihen was taken — 
 and that it was by his advice that the empress 
 had loaded his brother with chains. The imper- 
 turbable legate heard these ojien accusations 
 without any apjiarent emotion either of .shame 
 or anger; and with the gi-eatest composure pro- 
 
 ceeded to excommunicate all those who remained 
 attached to the party he had just quitted. The 
 curse and interdict were extended to all wlio 
 should build new castles, or invade the rights and 
 pi-ivileges of the church, and (a most idle pro- 
 vision!) to all who should wrong the poor and 
 defenceless.' 
 
 No compromise between the contending parties 
 was as yet thought of ; the smouldering ashes of 
 civil war were raked together, and England was 
 tortured as if with a slow fire; for the llaines 
 were not brought to a head in any one place, and 
 no decisive action was fought, but a succession of 
 skirmishes and forays, petty sieges, and the burn- 
 ing of defenceless towns and villages kept people 
 on the rack in nearly every part of the land at 
 once. "All England," says a contemporary, 
 "wore a face of woe and desolation. Multitudes 
 abandoned their beloved country to wander in a 
 foreign land: others, forsaking their own houses, 
 built wretched huts in the church-yards, hoping 
 that the saeredness of the place woidd afibrd them 
 some protection."' This last miserable hojie was 
 generally vain, for the belligerents no more re- 
 spected the houses of God than they did the 
 abodes of humble men. They seized and fortified 
 the best of the churches; and the belfry towers, 
 from which the sweet sounds of the chm-ch-bells 
 were wont to proceed, were converted into for- 
 tresses, and furnished with engines of war;' they 
 dug fosses in the very cemeteries, so that the 
 bodies of the dead were brought again to light, 
 and the miserable remains of mortality trampled 
 upon and scattered all about. At ;xu early period 
 of the contest both parties had engaged foreign 
 mercenaries; and, in the absence of regular pay 
 and provision, and of all discipline, bands of Bra- 
 banters and Flemings prowled through the land, 
 satisfying all their appetites in the most brutal 
 manner. So general was the discouragement of 
 the suffering people, that whenever only two or 
 three horsemen were seen approaching a village 
 or open burgh, all the inhabitants fled to conceal 
 themselves. So extreme were their sufferings that 
 their complaints amounted to imjiiety, for, seeing 
 all these crimes and atrocities going on without 
 check or visible judgment, men said openly that 
 Christ and his saints had fallen asleep.' 
 
 Dm-ing Stejihen's captivity, Ma- 
 tilda's husband, Geofl:'rey of Anjou, 
 reduced nearly the whole of Normand}', and 
 
 ' Gervane ; Mabnoib. The honest and judicious monk of 
 Malniesbui-y sjiys, "I cannot relate the transactions of this coun- 
 cil with that exact veracity with wluch I did the former, as I 
 teas not present at it." He tells us that the legate " comm-inded, 
 therefore, on the part of God an<l the pope, that they should 
 strenuously assist the king, anointed by tlit Kill of the nation and 
 with the approbation of the Ilolfj S^e: and that such as disturbed 
 the peace in favour' of the Countess of Anjou should be excoin- 
 miulicated, with the ejcception of herself, uho ictis sovereign of 
 the Angevins." • Gesta Steph. ^ Ibid. * Chron. Sax. 
 
 A.D. 1142.
 
 AD. 1135 1154. 
 
 STEPHEN. 
 
 245 
 
 prevailed upon the majority of tlie resident iio- 
 lile.s to acknowledge Prince Henry (his son by 
 Matilda) ;ls tlieir legitimate duke. The king's 
 party thua lost all hojie of aid and assistance from 
 beyond sea ; but, ius they were masters of the 
 coasts of the island, they were able to ])revent 
 the arrival of any considerable reinforcement to 
 theu' adversaries. Matilda pressed her husband 
 to corae to her a.ssistance with all the forces he 
 could raise; but GeoftVey declined the invitation 
 on tlie ground that he had not yet made himself 
 sure of Normandy; but he oft'ered to send over 
 Prince Henry. Even on this point he showed no 
 great readiness, and several months were lost ere 
 he would intrust his son to the care of the Earl 
 of Gloucester, whom Matilda had sent into Nor- 
 mandy. 
 
 Meanwhile Stephen, who had recovered from 
 a long and dangerous illness, marched in person 
 to O.xford, where the empress had fixed her court, 
 and invested that city, with a firm resolution of 
 never moving thence until he had got his trouble- 
 some rival into his hands. At his first approach, 
 the garrison came out to meet him: these enemies 
 he put to tbght, and pursuetl tliera so hotly, that 
 he entered the city pell-mell with them. Matilda 
 
 ToWEK OF 0.\FORD CASTLE. '—J. S. Fiout, from liis sketch oil 
 the apot. 
 
 tlien retireil into the castle, and the victor's troops 
 set tire to the town. Stephen invested the cita- 
 
 ' Oxford Ca-stle wiw situated at the weit end of the city; its 
 site is now occupied by the county jail. A ciatle was founded 
 hero in lOTl by Robert D'OiUi, at the command of William the 
 
 del, and persevered in the operations of the siege 
 or blockade in a winter of extraordinary severity; 
 and so intent was he on his jiurpose that he would 
 not ]iermit his attention to be distracted even 
 when informed that the Karl of Gloucester and 
 Prince Henry had landeil in England. Thfl 
 castle w;us strong, but when the siege had lasted 
 some three months, MatiMa again found hei-self 
 in danger of starvation, to escape which she had 
 recourse to another of her furtive Hights. On 
 tlie iOth of December, a little after midnight, 
 she dressed herself in white, and, accompanied 
 by three knights in the same attire, stole out of 
 the castle by a postern gate. The ground being 
 covei-ed with deep snow, the party passed unob- 
 served, and the Thames being frozen over, af- 
 forded them a safe and direct passage. Matilda 
 pursued her com-se on foot as far as the town 
 of Abingtlon, where, finding horses, the party 
 mounted, and she rode on to Wallingford, at or 
 near to which place she was soon after joined by 
 the Eai'l of Gloucester and her young son, who 
 were now at the head of a considerable force. 
 The day after Matilda's flight Oxford Castle siu'- 
 rendered to the king ; but the king himself was 
 defeated by the Earl of Gloucester at Wilton, 
 in the following month of July, and, with his 
 brother the legate, narrowly escaped being made 
 prisoner. 
 
 After the aftair of Wilton no military opera- 
 tion deserving of notice occurred for three years, 
 during which Stephen's party prevailed in all the 
 east; Matilda's maintained their gi-ound in the 
 west; and the young prince was shut up for safety 
 in the strong castle of Bristol, where, at his lei- 
 sure moments, his uncle, the Earl of Gloucester, 
 who enjoyed, like his father, Henry Beauclerk, the 
 reputation of being a learned person, attended to 
 his education. The presence of the boy in Eng- 
 land was of no use whatever to his mother's or 
 his own cause, and about the fe:xst of Whitsun- 
 tide, 1147, he returned to his father Geotirey in 
 Normandy. Gloucester died of a fever in the 
 mouth of October; and thus, deprived of son and 
 brother, and depressed also by the loss of the Earl 
 of Hereford, and other stanch partizans, who 
 fell the victims of disease, the masculine resolu- 
 tion of Matilda gave way, and, after a struggle 
 
 Conqueror, and finished in 1073. By digging deep trenches he 
 caused the river to surround it like a moat; and, .iccording to 
 Agaa's ra.ap, it appears to have been a fortress of extraordinary 
 stiength ;md extent. .\t its entrance from the city, which w;u 
 on the south-e.ast side, wjis a large bridge, which led by a long 
 and broad entry to the chief gate of the cistle. On one aide of 
 the castle was a barbican or w.atch-tower; and within the w.alls 
 were a church and convent dedicated to St. Geoi-ge, founded by 
 Robert D"Oilli. The towers at the west end were pulled down 
 when the castle was made a garrison liy the Parliament, durirg 
 the gre.1t Civil W.ar; and the whole lortilication, wiMi the ex 
 ception of the tower represented in the cut, was demolished m 
 1052.
 
 24G 
 
 niSTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militauv. 
 
 of eight years, slie quitted Euglaml and retired 1 a state of tliiiiga whicli men could not bear, and 
 to Normandy. After lier departure, Stephen ! Stephen was coini)elled to seelc a reconciliation 
 
 with the archbisiiop. Aliout 
 two years after this reconcili- 
 ation, a general couiK-il of the 
 high clergy was held at Lon- 
 don: and Stephen, who, in the 
 interval, had endeavoured to 
 win the hearts of the bishops 
 and abbots with donations to 
 the church, and promises of 
 much greater things when the 
 kingdom should be settled, re- 
 quired them to recognize and 
 anoint his eldest son, Eustace, 
 as his successor. This the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury re- 
 solutely and most unceremo- 
 niously refused to do. He 
 had consulted, he said, his 
 spii-itual master, and tlie pope 
 had told him that Stephen 
 was an nsurper, and therefore 
 could not, like a legitimate sovereign, transmit 
 his crown to his posterity. It was quite natu- 
 ral, and perhaps excusable, that Stephen, on 
 thus hearing his rights called in question l:)y 
 a man who had sworn allegiance to him, should 
 be overcome by a momentary rage (and it was 
 not more in effect), and order liis guards to 
 arrest the bishops and seize their temporalities. 
 But putting aside the question of right, and how- 
 ever much they may have failed in the respect 
 due to one who was their king at the time, the 
 prelates, in acting as they did, indubitably took 
 a most prudent and wise view of the case, and 
 adopted a system which was calculated to narrow 
 the limits of civil war. 
 
 As long as the contest lay between Stephen on 
 the one side and a woman and a boy on the other, 
 it was likely to be, on the whole, favourable to 
 the former. But tune had worked its changes; 
 Prince Henry was no longer a boy, but a hanil- 
 some, gallant young man, capable of performing 
 all the duties of a knight and soldier, and gifted 
 with precocious abilities and political acumen. 
 He had also become, b}' inlieritauce and mar- 
 riage, one of the most powerful princes on the 
 Continent. When Henry Plaiitagenet left Bris- 
 tol Castle he was about fourteen years of age. 
 In A.D. 1149, having attained the military age of 
 sixteen, he recrossed the seas and landed in Scot- 
 land, in order to receive the honour of kuiglit- 
 hood at the hands of his mother's uncle. King 
 David. The ceremony was performed with great 
 pomp in " merry Carlisle," where the ScottL-jli 
 king then kept his court: crowds of nobles from 
 most parts of England, as well as from Scotland 
 and Normandy, were present, and had the oppor- 
 
 Crypt of Bristol Castle.'— J. S. Prout, from his sketch on the spot, 
 
 endeavoure<l to get possession of all the baro- 
 nial castles, and to reduce the nobles to a proper 
 degree of subordination; but the measures he 
 adopted were, in some instances, characterized 
 by craft, if not treachery ; and his too openly 
 avowed purpose of curbing the power and license 
 of the nobility was as unpalatable to his own 
 adherents as to the friends of Matilda. At the 
 same time he involved himself in a fresh quarrel 
 with the church, and that, too, at a moment 
 wlien his brother, the legate, and Bishop of 
 Winchester, had lost his great authority through 
 the death of the pope, who patronized him, and 
 the election of another pope, who took away his 
 legatine office, and espoused the quarrel of his 
 now declared enemy, Theobald, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. 
 
 For attending the council of Eheims, against 
 the express orders of tlie king, the archbishop 
 was exiled. Caring little for this sentence, Theo- 
 bald went (a.d. 1148) and put himself under the 
 pi'otection of Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who was of 
 the Angevin faction, and then publislied a sen- 
 tence of interdict against Stephen's party and all 
 that part of the kingdom that acknowledged the 
 rule of the usurper. Instantly, in one half of the 
 kingdom, all the churches were closed, and the 
 priests and monks either withdrew, or refused to 
 perform any of the offices of religion. This was 
 
 ' The only surviving vestige of Bristol Castle is the crypt, 
 llie castle is not specified in Dooimday Booh, and the period of 
 its origin is unknown ; but it is surmised to have been budt, 
 together with the second wall round the town, by Gotl&ey, 
 Bishop of Exeter, one of the followers of the Conqueror. The 
 first historical notice of it occui-s on the death of William I., 
 when it was fortified and held by Godfrey on behalf of Robert, 
 the Conqueror's eldest son.
 
 A.T). 1 13 J— 1154.] 
 
 STEPHEN. 
 
 247 
 
 tuuity of remarking Henry's many eminent ipia- 
 lities; and a.s tliat prince had only lieen returned 
 to the Continent .some twelve months when Sle- 
 )ihen as.'iemliled the council for the anointing of 
 his son, the impressions made by the fortunate 
 Plantagenet were still fresh, and his character 
 was naturally contrasted with that of Prince 
 Eustace, who was about his own age, but who 
 does not appear to have had one of his high en- 
 dowments. Shortly after his retiu-n from Cai-- 
 lisle, Henry was put in full possession of the 
 government of Normand y ; by the decease of his 
 father Geoflrey, who died in the course of 
 the same year (1150), he succeeded to the 
 earldom of Anjou; and in 1152, together with 
 the hand of Eleanor, the divorced queen of 
 Louis VII. of France, he acquired her rights 
 over the earlilom of Poictou and the vast duchy 
 of Guienne or Aquitaine, which had descended 
 to her from her father. The Plautagenet party 
 in England recovered their spirits at the pro- 
 spect of this sudden aggi-audizemeut, and think- 
 ing no more of the mother, they determined 
 to call in the son to reign in his own right. 
 The Eai'l of Chester passed over to Normandy, 
 to express what he called the unanimous will 
 of the nation ; but the King of France formed 
 an alliance with King Stejihen, Theobald, Earl 
 of Blois, and Geoffrey of Anjoii, Henry's 
 younger brother, and marched a French army 
 to the confines of Normandy. This attempt oc- 
 casioned some delay ; but as soon as Henry ob- ; ; 
 tained a truce on the Continent, he sailed for 
 England with a small fleet. The army he brought 
 over with him did not exceed 14U knights and ■',: 
 3000 foot, but it was well appointed and discip- 
 lined ; and as soon as he landed in England most 
 of the old friends of his family flocked to join 
 his standard. It was unexpectedly found, how- G 
 ever, that Stepjheu was still strong in the affec- 
 tions and devotion of a large party. The armies 
 of the competitors came in sight of each other at 
 Wallingford — that of Stephen, who had marched 
 from London, occujiying the left bank of the 
 Thames, and that of Henry, who had advanced 
 from Marlborough, the right. They lay facing 
 each other diu-ing two whole days, and were 
 hourl}' expecting a sanguinary engagement; but 
 the pause had given time for salutary reflection, 
 and the Earl of Arundel had the boldness to say 
 that it was an unreasonable thing to prolong the 
 calamities of a whole nation on account of the 
 ambition of two princes. Many lords of both 
 ])ai'ties, who were of the same opinion, or wearied 
 at length with a struggle wdiich had already 
 lasted fifteen years, laboured to persuade both 
 princes to come to an amicable arrangement. 
 The two chiefs consented; and in a short conver- 
 eation which thev can'ied on with one another 
 
 across a narrow part of tlu' Thames, Stejiliea and 
 Ileni-y agreed to a truce, during which eacli ex- 
 jircssed his readiness to negotiate a lasting jieace. 
 On this. Prince Eustace, wlio was |>robabl\' well 
 aware that the fii-st article of tlie treatv woidd 
 seal his exclusion from the throne, biu'st away 
 from his father in a paroxysm of rage, and went 
 into the east to get u]) a w;ir on his own account. 
 The rash young man took forcible possession of 
 the abbey of St. Edmuudsbury, and laid waste or 
 plundei-ed the country round about, not except- 
 ing even the lauds of the abbot. His licentious 
 
 
 ATE or THE Abbey Church. St. Edmimdsbur)'.'— From a view- 
 by Mackenzie. 
 
 careei" was very brief, f<.>r, as he was sitting down 
 to a riotous banquet, lie was suddenly seized with 
 a frenzy, of which he soon died." 
 
 The principal obstacle to concession from Ste- 
 phen was thus removed, for though he had another 
 legitimate son, Prince William, he was but a boy, 
 and was docile and unambitious. The princijjal 
 negotiatoi's, who with great ability and addi'ess 
 reconciled the conflicting interests of the two fac- 
 tions, were Theobald, the Ai'chbishop of Canter- 
 
 ' This fine structure was the portal opposite to the west oii- 
 ti-ance to the monastery chiirch. It is a quad ran g^iilar biiilduis. 
 SO ft. liigh. Near the base on thu weateni faco are two basa-reliefs, 
 one representing mankind after the fall by the figxu'ea of Adam 
 and Eve entwined with a serjwnt, and tlie other, typical of the 
 (loliverance nf mankind, represents God the Father wurrouuded 
 by clionibim. Within the arch are varioiLs grotesque figures. 
 
 - Writers ot a later period introduced some confusion m this 
 matter by accounting for his death in difloront ways. Some of 
 them said Eustace was drowned.
 
 2iS 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil Axn Militauy. 
 
 lmrv,;uKlHein-y, Bisliop of Winchestor, Stephen's I visited together tlie cities of Wincliester, Lon- 
 
 brother, who played so many parts in this long 
 and checkered drama. On tlie 7th of November, 
 1153, a great council of tlie liingdom w.as held at 
 AVinchester, where a peace was finally adjusted 
 on thefollowing conditions : — Stephen, who wasto 
 retain undi.sturbed possession of the crown durinn- 
 his life, adopted Henry as his sou, apjiointed him 
 his successor, and r/aoe the kingdom, after his own 
 death, to Heni-y and his heirs for ever. In return 
 Henry did present homage, 
 and swore fealty to Stephen. 
 Hem-y received tl.e homage of 
 the king's sun'i\-ing sou Wil- 
 liam, and, in return, gave that 
 young prince all the estates 
 and honoui-s, whether in Eug 
 land or on the Continent 
 ■which his father Stejjhen ha 1 
 enjoyed before he ascende 1 
 the throne; and Ilenr}' pro 
 mised, as a testimonial of his 
 own ali'ection, the honour of 
 Pevensey, together with some 
 manors in Kent. There then 
 followed a mighty interchange 
 and duplication of oatlis 
 among the earls, barons, bi 
 shops, and abbots of both fac 
 tions, all sweai'ing present allegiance to Stephen, 
 and future fealty to Henry.' 
 
 After signing the treaty, Stephen and Henry 
 
 don, and Oxford, in which places solemn proces- 
 sions were made, and both princes were received 
 with acclamations liy the jjeople. At the end 
 of Lent they parted with exjiressions of mutual 
 friendship. 
 
 Henry returned to the Continent, and on the 
 following 25th of October (1154), Steplieu died 
 at Dover, in the fiftieth year of his age. He was 
 buried by the side of his wife, Maud, who died 
 
 Faversham Abbl^ "— Tiom in old vww m the Br tish Ma eum 
 
 tlu-ee years before him, at the monastei-y of Fa- 
 versham, in the pleasant county of Kent, which 
 she had loved so much while living. 
 
 - CHAPTER v.— CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY.— a.d. 11.54— 1] 72. 
 
 HENRY II.. SUEN.WIED FL.'VKTAGEJ.'ET. ACCESSION, A.D. 1151- DEATH, A.D. 11S9. 
 
 Succession of Henry IT., purnanied Plaritageuet — History of his queen, Eleanor — Henry's reforms at the begin- 
 ning of bis reign — His resumption of crown lands, and suppression of the barons — He invades Maine and Anjou 
 — His successful war in Wales— His acquisitions on the Continent — His war with the French king — Exploits 
 of Tliomas a Becket in the war — Previous career of Becket — He becomes Archbisliop of Canterbury — His 
 altered behaviour on becoming primate— Commencement of his quarrels with Henry — Struggles of Becket for 
 the privileges of the clergy — He is worsted by the king — Becket's strange visit to the court at Northampton — 
 He retreats to France — Henry's vindictive proceedings against him — Henry's unsuccessful campaign in Wales 
 . — His successes on the Continent — He is e.xcommunicated by Becket — Attempts of the French king to recon- 
 cile Henry and Becket — Becket returns to England — His triumphant reception by the people — Henry's rage 
 at the tidings — -\ssassination of Tiiomas a Becket — Henry's attempts to free himself from suspicion. 
 
 HEN Henry Plantagenet re- 
 ceived the news of Stephen's 
 death, he was engaged in the 
 siege of a castle on the frontiei-s 
 of Normandy. Eelyuig on the 
 situation of ailairs in England, 
 and the disposition of men's minds in his favour, 
 he prosecuted the siege to a successful close, and 
 
 reduced some turbulent continental vassals to 
 obedience, before he went to the coast to embai'k 
 
 ' Rymer's Fcedera, 
 
 - This abbey was built and endowed by Stephen ; and himself, 
 his queen Jlaud, and liis eldest son Eustace of Boulogne, were 
 buried witUiji its walls. At the dissolution this abbey was held 
 by monks of the Benedictme order. After the suppression the 
 remahis of Stephen were thro\vn into the river, for the value of 
 the leaden ootfin in which they were contained.
 
 A.D. 1154-1172.] 
 
 IIF.XRV 11 
 
 2VJ 
 
 fur his new kiiiy:'lniii. Ilo was detained some about a yeai' after their roturu from the Holy 
 
 time at Barfleur by storms and contrary winds; 
 and it was not till six weeks after the deatli of 
 Stephen, that he lauded in England, where lie 
 was i-eceived with enthusiastic joy. He brought 
 with him a splendid retinue, and Eleanor, his 
 wife, whose inheritance had made him so power- 
 ful on the Continent. This mar- 
 riage pi'oved, that if the young 
 Henry had the gallantry of his 
 age and all the knightly accom- 
 plishments then in vogue, he was 
 not less distinguished by a cool 
 calculating head, ;iiid the faculty 
 of sacrificing romantic or delicate 
 feelings for political advantages. 
 The lady he espoused was many 
 years older than himself, and the 
 repudiated wife of another. 
 
 Eleanor, familiarly called in her 
 own country Aauor, was daughter 
 and heiress of William IX.,' Eajl 
 of Poictou and Duke of Aquitaine ; 
 that is to say, of the sovereign 
 chief of all the western coast of 
 France, from the mouth of the 
 Loii-e to the foot of the Pyrenees. 
 She was married in 1137 to Louis 
 VII., King of France, who was not 
 less enchanted with her beauty 
 than with the fine j>rovinces .she 
 brought him. When the union 
 had lasted some years, and the 
 queen had given birth to two 
 daughters, the princesses Marie 
 and Alix, Louis resolved to make 
 a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 
 and to take along with him his 
 wife, whose uncle, Eaymond, was 
 Duke of Antioch. The general 
 morality of the royal and noble 
 crusaders and pilgrims is repre- 
 sented in no very favourable b'glit 
 by contemporary w-riters; and it 
 is easily understood howcampsand 
 marches, and a close and constant 
 association with soldiers, shouKl not be favour- 
 able to female virtue: Suspicion soon fell u]:on 
 Eleanor, who, aecording to her least unfavourable 
 judges, was guilty of gi'cat coquetry and freedom 
 of manners; and her conduct in the gay and dis- 
 solute court of Antioch at last awakened the in- 
 dignation of her devout husband. She was very 
 generally accused of an intrigue with a young 
 and handsome Turk, named Saladin.^ In 1152, 
 
 Henry ir, from his tomb at Fonte 
 
 vrjiiid. — Btotharvrs Moimnien- 
 
 tul Kltigies. 
 
 ' Tills Duke William was a troubadour of high renown, and the 
 most ancient of that class of poets whose works have been pre- 
 served. 
 
 2 Some old writers confound this Saladin with the Great Sala- 
 Vol.. I. 
 
 Ijand, Louis summoned a council of jirelates for 
 the intrjiose of di\-oreiiig him from a woman who 
 hail piiblicly dishonoured him. The Bisho]) of 
 Langres, pleading for tlie king, gra\-ely announced 
 that his royal master " no longer jilaced faith in 
 his wife, and could never be sure of the legitimacy 
 of her progeny." But the Ai-eh- 
 bishop of Bordeaux, desirous that 
 the separation should be effected 
 in a less scandalous manner, pro- 
 [losed to treat the W'liole question on 
 very diS'erent grounds -namely, 
 on theeon.sanguinityof the parties, 
 which might have been objected 
 by the canonical law as an insu- 
 perable barrier to the mai-riage 
 when it was contracted fifteen 
 yeai's before, but which now 
 seemed to be remembered by the 
 clergy somewhat tardily. This 
 com-se, however, relieved them 
 from a delicate dilemma; and as 
 Eleanor, who considered Louis to 
 be " rather a monk than a king,"' 
 voluntarily and readily agreed to 
 the dissolution of the marriage, 
 the councildi-ssolvedit accordingly 
 — on the pretext that the con- 
 sciences of the parties reproached 
 them for living as man and wife 
 when they were cousins within 
 the prohibited degree. This de- 
 cent colouring, however, deceived 
 nobody; but the good, simple 
 Louis wonderfully deceived him- 
 self, when he thought that no 
 prince of the time — no, not a pri- 
 vate gentleman — woidd be so 
 wanting in delicacy, and regard- 
 less of his own honour,asto mai'ry 
 a divorced wife of so defamed a 
 reputation. According to a con- 
 tem])orary authority, Eleanor'.s 
 only dithculty was in making a 
 choice, and escaping the too for- 
 cible addresses of some of her suitors. Henry 
 soon jiresented himself, and, " with more policy 
 than delicacy," wooed, and won, and married 
 her too, within six weeks of her divorce.' King 
 Louis's conduct was directly the opposite of 
 Henry's, for he had been more deliciito than 
 politic; and, however honourable to him indi- 
 vidually, his delicacy w-as a great misfortune to 
 Fi'auce, for it dissevered states which had been 
 
 din, the heroic opiwnent of Eleanor's son, Richard ; but this is 
 a great mistake, involving an anachronism. 
 
 ^ Slczer.ii, Hist. cie. France. 
 
 * Script. Rin-. Franc. 
 
 32
 
 250 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil axd 7\Iii.rTAr.r. 
 
 unitefl by the niarriage — retarded tluit fusion 
 and integration which alone could render the 
 French l<ingdom respectable, and throw the 
 finest territories of France into the hands of his 
 most dangerous enemies. If ho could have freeil 
 himself of his wife, without resigning her states, 
 the good would have been unmixed ; but this 
 was impossible. His discarded wife, who seems 
 to have been dear to her people, in spite of her 
 irregularities, encountered little or no difficulty 
 in inducing them to admit the garrisons of her 
 now husband, the young and popular Ilenrv. 
 When it was too late, Louis saw the great error 
 in policy lie had committed, and made what 
 efforts he could to pi-eveut the by him most un- 
 expected marriage. He prohibited Henry, as 
 his vassal for Normandy and Aiijou, to contract 
 any such union without the consent and autho- 
 rity of his suzerain lord, the King of France; but 
 Henry, who was soon by far the more powerful 
 of the two, cared little for the prohibition, and 
 Louis, in the end, was obliged to content himself 
 with receiving the empty oaths of allegiance 
 which the fortunate Plantagenet tendered for 
 Guienne and Poictou, in addition to those he had 
 ab-eady pledged for Anjou and Normandy. The 
 old French historians cannot relate these transac- 
 tions without losing their temper.' 
 
 The sacrifice was indeed immense. The French 
 kingdom almost ceased to figure as a maritime 
 state on the Atlantic; and when Eleanort posses- 
 sions were added to those Henry already pos- 
 sessed on the Continent, that prince occupied the 
 whole coast line from Dieppe to Bayonne, with 
 the exception only of the great promontory of 
 Brittany, where a race of semi- independent 
 princes were established that had sometimes sup- 
 ported the interests of the French kings, and at 
 others allied themselves with the Anglo-Norman 
 sovereigns. Henry, in fact, was master of one- 
 fifth of the territories now included in the king- 
 dom of France; and, deducting other separate and 
 independent sovereignties, Louis, driven back 
 from the Atlantic, and cooped up between the 
 Loii-e, the Saone, and the Mouse, did not possess 
 half so much land as his rival, even leaving out 
 of the account the kingdom of England, to 
 which he succeeded about two years after his 
 marriage. 
 
 ' Ce qui nf>m couta bon. — Brantome. M^zerai and Larrey 
 [Hffretiert di Guknne) agree in attributing Louis's error to tlie 
 want of the wise counsels of Suger. Larrey and Bouchet (An- 
 nales d'AquUaiiu), with some other writers, natives of Aquitaijie 
 or Poictou, maintained that Eleanor was unjustly calumniated; 
 but the weight of contemporary evidence is on the other side. 
 
 - William and Henry. WilUam died in his childliood. 
 
 ^ " Under the turbulent and miserable usurpation of Stephen, 
 neither government nor law existed iu England. The realm 
 was entirely given up to violence ; every powei-fal m,an built his 
 castle, wliich became a den of robbers ; the towns and the open 
 country, the clergy and the peaa.antry— all suffered equally from 
 
 Eleanor was soon as jealous of Henry as Louis 
 had been of her. The Plantagenet had not mar- 
 ried with a view to domestic liapijiness, but he 
 was probably far from expecting the wi-etchcd- 
 ness to which the union would condemn his latter 
 days. At their first arrival in England, however, 
 everything wore a bright aspect. The queen 
 rode by the king's side into the ro3'al city of Win- 
 chester, where they both received the homage 
 of the nobility; and when, on the 19th of Decem- 
 ber, Henry took his coronation oaths, and was 
 crowned at Westminster by Theobald, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, Eleanor was crowned with 
 him, amidst the acclamations of the people. Not 
 a shadow of opposition was oflered ; the English, 
 still enamom-ed of their old dynasty or traditions, 
 dwelt with complacency on the Saxon blood, 
 which, from his mother's aide, flowed in the veins 
 of the youthful, the handsome, and brave Henry; 
 and all classes seemed to overlook the past his- 
 tory of the queen in her graudem- and magnifi- 
 cence, and present attachment to their king. The 
 court pageantries were splendid, and accompanied 
 by the spontaneous rejoicings of the citizens. 
 Henry did not permit his attention to be long 
 occupied by these pleasures, but proceeded to 
 business almost as soon as the crown was on his 
 head. He assembled a great council, appointed 
 the crown oflioers, issued a decree, promising his 
 subjects all the rights and liberties they had en- 
 joyed under his grandfather, Henry I. ; and he 
 made his barons and bishops swear fealty to his 
 infant children, his wife Eleanor having already 
 made him the happy father of two sons." 
 
 Henry then turned his attention to the correct- 
 ing of those abuses which had rendered the reign 
 of Stephen a long agony to himself and a curse 
 to the nation. His reforms were not completed 
 for several j'ear.s, and many events of a foreign 
 nature intervened during their progress; but it 
 will render the narrative clearer to condense our 
 account of these transactions in one general state- 
 ment.' 
 
 Henry appointed the Earl of Leicester gi-and 
 justiciary of the kingdom, and, feeling that the 
 office had hitherto been insufficiently supjiorted 
 by the crown, he attached to it more ample 
 powers, and provided the means of enforcing its 
 decisions. As happened in all seasons of trouble 
 
 spoil and rapine ; pestilence and famine swept away the people, 
 and the laboius of agriculture were abandoned in despair ; to 
 till the gi'ound was to plough the sea ; the earth bore no com, 
 for the land was all wa.sted by these deeds. ' Such things,' con- 
 tinue the monks of Peterborough, ' did we suH'er for nineteen 
 years for our sins,' until the accession of ' Heni-y Fitz-Empress,' 
 considered by the English as representing the ancient national 
 dynasty. They traced liis descent to Alfi-ed .and to Cerdic ; but 
 the Bon of Geoffrey Plantagenet w.ia a stranger by birth and 
 education; and the Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence was finally sub- 
 verted by the restorer of the Anglo-.S.axon line." — Palgrave, Rist 
 and Progress of the English Commonwealth, part i. p. 240.
 
 A.D. 1154-1172.] 
 
 HENRY II. 
 
 ,\ 
 
 iiiiil Jistross in those a.^es, the coin h;ul liecii 
 alloyed and tampered with under Stephen ; and 
 
 Silver Pen.vy, Heiiry 11.— Weighs 22 grs. 
 
 now Henry issued an entirely new coinage of 
 skmdai'd weight and pm-ity. The foreign merce- 
 
 SlLVElt Coin, Hoiiry II. 
 
 naries and companies of adventure that came 
 over to England during the long civil war be- 
 tween Stephen and MatiUla had done incalculable 
 mischief. Many of these adventurers liad got 
 possession of the castles and estates of the Anglo- 
 Norman nobles wlio adhered to Matilda, and liad 
 been created earls and barons by Stephen ; but, 
 treating all these as acts of usurpation, Henry de- 
 termined to di-ive every one of them from the 
 land, and their expulsion seems to have afforded 
 almost as much joy to the Saxon population as to 
 the Normans, who raised a shout of triumph on the 
 occasion. " We saw them," says a contemporary, 
 "we saw these Brabancons and Flemings cross 
 the sea, to return from tlie camp to the plough- 
 tail, and become again serfs, after liaviug been 
 lords."' Up to this point 'the operations were 
 easy, and the king, unopposed by the conflicting 
 interest of any important party in the state, or 
 by claims on his own gi-atitude, was carried for- 
 ward on the high tide of popidar opinion; but in 
 what still remained to do were great and obvious 
 difficulties, and feelings of a private uatiu-e, which 
 might have overcome a less determined and poli- 
 tic prince, for, in tlae impartial execution of his 
 measm-es lie had to despoil those who fought his 
 mother's battles and supported his own cause 
 
 wlicn he was a helpless infant. TIio generous 
 romantic virtues natni'al to youth might have 
 been fatal to him; but Henry's heart in some re- 
 spects seems never to luive been young, and his 
 head was cool and calculating. In a treaty made 
 at "Winchester, shortly after his pacification with 
 Stejjhen, it was stipulated that the king (Stephen) 
 should resume all such royal castles and lauds as 
 had been alienated to the lay nobles or usurped 
 by them. Among the resnmable gifts were many 
 made by Matilda. Stephen, poor as he was, had 
 neglected this resumption, or made no progress 
 in it during the few months that he survived the 
 treaty. But Hem-y was determined not to be a 
 pauper king, or to tolerate that widely-stretched 
 aristocratic power which at once ground the peo- 
 ple and bade fair to reduce royalty to an empty 
 shadow. Ill the absence of other fixed revenues, 
 the sovereigns of that time depended almost en- 
 tirely on the produce of the crown lands; and 
 Stephen had allowed so much of these to slip 
 from him, that there romaiBed not sufficient for 
 a decent maintenance of royal dignity. Besides 
 the numerous castles which had been built by the 
 turbulent nobles, royal fortresses and even royal 
 cities Iiad been gi'anted aw.ay; and these could 
 hardly be permitted to remain in the hands of 
 the feudal lords without endangering tlie peace 
 of the kingdom." Law was brought in to the aid 
 of policy, and it was now established as a legal 
 axiom, that the ancient demesne of the crown was 
 of so sacred and inalienable a nature, that no 
 length of time, tenure, and enjoyment could give 
 a right of prescription to any other possessors, 
 against the claim of succeeding princes, who might 
 (it was laid down) at any time resume possession 
 of what had formerly been alienated.^ 
 
 Foreseeing, however, that this step would create 
 much discontent, Henry was cautious not to act 
 without a high sanction ; and he therefore sum- 
 moned a gi-eat coimeil of the nobles, who, after 
 hearing the urgency of his necessities, concurred 
 pretty generally in the justice of his immediately 
 resuming all that had been held by his grand- 
 father Henry I., with the exception of the aliena- 
 tions or gi-ants to Stephen's son and the church. 
 As soon as he was armed with this sanction the 
 
 ' R. de Dic«to. 
 
 2 "The judicial entries on the fly-leaves of the Exeter nnnw- 
 script, written before and after the Cou(iuest, show us th.at the 
 municipal forms and conditions of that city underwent no change 
 upon the transfer of the English crown to a Norman line of sove- 
 reigns ; and such w.a3 probably the cise in aU other cities and 
 towns then in existence. But although their privileges and con- 
 stitution were in principle untouched, in practice they were fre- 
 quently trespassed upon. A new race of feudal lords had entered 
 upon the land, who were ignorant of the customs of the people 
 over whom they had intruded themselves, and who liad little 
 respect for .any customs wliich stood as obstacles in the gratifica- 
 tion of their views of aggrandizement. This must have led to 
 continual riots and disturbances in the old Saxon towns, and to 
 
 infringements of their privileges whore they had little power to 
 obtain permanent redress. After undei-going all these vex.ations 
 during a few years, they saw the advantages, or, wo may perhaps 
 better say, the necessity, of purchasing fi-om the king %vritten 
 charters confirming their old rights, which became an effective 
 protection in courts of law. Thus originated municipal charter, 
 wliich are rather to be considered as a proof of tlie antiquity, 
 tlian of the novelty of the privileges they grant. Thoy were 
 given most abundantly under Henry II. and his sons, when it 
 became the jjolicy of the English raonarchs to seek tho support 
 of the independent burghers .ag-ainst a turbulent feudal aristo- 
 cracy."— Wright, The Cdl, the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 449. 
 
 2 Lord Lyttleton's Ilmrt/ I/. Contemporary details are foimd 
 in Gervate of CatUerUur;/, Win. qf Ncwburii, and Roger of Ifvutdai.
 
 252 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Mii.ix.AnT. 
 
 young king ]nit liimself at tlie he:ul of a formiil- 
 aVile army, kuowing right well tliat there were 
 many who would not consider themselvea bound 
 liy the voices of the assemldy of nobles, and who 
 would only cede their castles and lands by force. 
 In some instances the castles, on being closely 
 beleaguered, surrendered without bloodshed; in 
 others, they wei-e taken by storm, or reduced by 
 famine. In nearly all cases they were levelled 
 to the ground, and about 1100 of these "dens of 
 thieves" were blotted out from the fair land they 
 defaced. At the siege of tlie castle of Bridge- 
 north, in Shropshire, which Hugh de Mortimer 
 
 BridOenorcu Ca'^tle ' — Fiom ui old view 
 
 held out against the king, Henry's life was pre- 
 served by the aft'eetion and self-devotion of one 
 of his followers, his faithful vassal Hubert de St. 
 Clair, who stepped forward and received in his 
 own bosom an arrow aimed at the king. After 
 many toils, and not a few checks, Henry com- 
 pleted his purpose; he di'ove the Earl of Notting- 
 ham and some other dangerous nobles out of the 
 kingdom; he levelled with the gi-ound the six 
 strong castles of Stejiheii's brother, the famous 
 Bishop of Winchester, who, placing no confidence 
 in the new king whom he had helped to make, 
 fled with his treasures to Clugny; he reduced the 
 Earl of Albemarle, who had long reigned like an 
 independent sovereign in Yorkslm-e, to the pro- 
 per state of vassalage and allegiance ; and he 
 finally obliged Malcolm, King of Scots, to resign 
 the three northern comities of Northumberland, 
 Cumberland, and Westmoreland, for the bond 
 fide possession of the eaiddom of Huntingdon, 
 wliich tlie Scottish princes claimed as descendants 
 of Earl Waltheof. Heniy was not less eager to 
 recover everything than wisely anxious to avoid 
 the a])]ieai'auce of acting from motives of Jiarty 
 
 * Tlie remaining fi-agraeut of Bridgenorth Castle has, from ex- 
 cavations at its base, inclined so far from the perpendicular, .ts 
 to have obtained the title of the Leaning Tower. It is situateil 
 at the south aide of the town. 
 
 revenge; and by his equal and impartial jiroceed- 
 ing, he left the adherents of Stephen no more 
 reason to complain than his mother's or his own 
 ])artizans. Among the latter were several who 
 lost their all by these resumptions; but, steady to 
 his pm'))ose, the king would make no exceptions, 
 not even in favour of those who had succoured 
 his mother in the hour of need, and made the 
 greatest sacrifices for his family. He evaded the 
 most earnest applications by a courtesy of de- 
 meanour, and a prodigality of promises for the 
 future, which seldom lay heaA'y on his conscience. 
 Before these measures were completed Henry's 
 active mind was occujiied by the af- 
 fairs of the Continent, for his younger 
 brother Geoffrey, advancing a title 
 to Anjou and Maine, had invaded 
 those provinces. A short time after 
 his maiTiage, which made him Duke 
 of Aquitaine and Earl of Poictou, 
 Hemy became Eaid of Anjou by the 
 death of his fatlier, but under the 
 express condition, it is said, of resign- 
 ing that earldom to his younger 
 brother if he ever should become 
 King of England. That young prince 
 was now encouraged by the French 
 ^i-,F^ com-t, which was still smarting under 
 
 -T^--' the injui'ies received from Heme's 
 
 marriage ; and he seems to have had 
 a strong party in his favour in the 
 provinces of Maine and Anjou. 
 
 The King of England crossed the seas in llSfi, 
 and again did homage to Louis VII., for Nor- 
 mandy, Aquitaine, Poictou, Auvergne, the Li- 
 mousin, Anjou, Touraine, and a long train of 
 dependent territories ; and by this and other 
 means, the nature of whicli is not explained, he 
 induced the French king to abandon the cause of 
 his younger brother. He then threw himself into 
 the disputed territory, at the head of an array 
 consisting almost entirely of native English, who 
 soon reduced Chinon, Mirabeau, and the other 
 castles which held for his brother. The people 
 returned to their allegiance to Henry, and Geof- 
 frey was soon obliged to resign all his claims fur 
 a pension of 1000 English and 2000 Angevin 
 pounds. Having triumphed over evei-y opposi- 
 tion, as much by policy as by force of arms, Henry 
 made a magnificent progi-ess through Aquitaine 
 and the other dominions he had obtained by his 
 mai-riage, and received the fealty of his chief vas- 
 sals in a gi-eat council held in the city of Bordeaux. 
 Wherever he appeai-ed he commanded respect, and 
 no sovereign of the time in Europe could equal 
 the power and siileudour of this young king. 
 
 On his return to England in 1157, he engaged 
 in hostilities with the Welsh. Feeling ovei'-con- 
 fident in the number and quality of his ai'my, he
 
 A.D. 1154—1172.] 
 
 HENRY II. 
 
 253 
 
 crossed FliuUhire, and threw himself among the 
 mountains. The Welsh let hira penetrate as fiu- 
 as the difficult counti-y about Colesliill Forest, 
 when, issuing from their concealment, and pour- 
 ing down in torrents from the uplands, they at- 
 tacked Henry in a narrow defile where his troops 
 could not form. The slaughter was prodigious. 
 Eustace Fitz-John and llobert de Courcy, men of 
 gi'eat honour and reputation, together with seve- 
 ral other nobles, were dismounted and cut to 
 /)ieces; the king himself was in the gi-eatest dan- 
 ger, and a nimour was raised that he had fallen. 
 Henry, Earl of Esses, the hereditary standard- 
 beai-er, threw down the royal standard and fled. 
 The panic was now uuivei-sal ; but the king rushed 
 among the fugitives, showed them he was unhurt, 
 rallied them, and finally fought his way through 
 the mountain-pass. The serious loss he sufl'ered 
 made him cautious, and instead of following Owen 
 Gw^tTined, who artfully tried to draw him into 
 the defiles of Snowdon, he changed his route, and 
 gaining the open sea-coast, marched along the 
 shore, closely attended by a fleet. He cut down 
 some forests, or opened roads through them, and 
 built several castles in advantageous situations. 
 There was no second battle of any note, and, after 
 a few months, the AVelsh were glad to purchase 
 peace by resigning such portions of their native 
 territory as they had retaken from Steplieu, and 
 giving hostages and doing feudal homage for what 
 they retained. Six years after the battle of Coles- 
 hill, the Earl of Essex was publicly accused of 
 cowardice and treason by llobert de Montfort. 
 The standard-bearer appealed to the trial of arms, 
 and was vanquished in the lists by his accuser. 
 By the law of the times, death should hare fol- 
 lowed, but the king, qualifying the rigour of the 
 judgment, gi-anted him liis life, appointing him 
 to be a shorn monk in Reading Abbey, and taking 
 the earl's possessions into his hands as forfeited 
 to the crown.' 
 
 Geoffi-ey did not live long to exact payment of 
 his annuities from his brother. Soon after con- 
 cluding the treaty with Hemy, which left him 
 without any territory, the citizens of Nantes, in 
 Lower Brittany, spontaneously oflered him the 
 government of their city, just as the people of 
 Domfront had done by Hemy Beauclerk, when 
 under similar depressed circumstances. But 
 Geoffrey died in 1158, and the citizens of Nantes, 
 returning to their old connection with the rest of 
 the country, were governed by C'onan, who was 
 Earl of Richmond in England, .as well as the 
 hereditary C'oimt or Duke of Brittany. To the 
 siu'prise of eveiybody. King Henry claimed the 
 free city of Nantes as hereditaiy property, de- 
 volved to him by his brother's death. It was in 
 
 ' DiCito. 
 
 vain the citizens represented that they hail not, 
 by choosing Geoffrey to be their governor, re- 
 signed their independence, or converted them- 
 selves into a property to be hereditiiry in his 
 fiimily. Hemy wanted to fill up the only great 
 gap in his continental territories, and, cai-eless of 
 right or appearances, he resolved to seize Nantes, 
 hoping, that if once he gained a firm footing 
 there he should soon extend his dominion over 
 the rest of Brittany. Ho aifected to treat the 
 men of Nantes as rebels, and C'onan as an usurper 
 of Ids rights; he confiscated his eai-ldom of Rich- 
 mond, in Yorkshh-e, and crossing the Chdnnel 
 with a formidable ai-my, spread such terror that 
 the people submitted, and, renouncing C'onan, 
 received his garrison within the walls of Nantes.'- 
 He then quietly took possession of the whole of 
 the country between the Loii'e and the Vilaine, 
 relying on his art and address for quieting the 
 alarms these encroachments could not fail to create 
 in the French coiu-t. He dispatched Thom:is h 
 Becket, then the most skilfid and accommodating 
 of all his ministers, to Paris, the volatile inhabi- 
 tants of which capitfd were dazzled and delighted 
 by the ambassador's magn'ficence. Hemy soon 
 followed in person, and, between them, these two 
 adroit negotiators completely won over the obtuse 
 French king. The price paid for his neutrality 
 was, Hemy's aftiancing his eldest son to Margaret, 
 an infant daughter Louis had had by his wife, 
 Constance of Castile, who had succeeded Eleanor. 
 Henry then prosecuted his views on the rest of 
 Brittany, and concluded with Conan, whom he 
 had cb-iven from Nantes, a compact which threat- 
 ened the independence of the whole coimtiy. 
 He affianced his then youngest son Geofii-ey to 
 Constantia, an infant daughter of Conan, the 
 latter engaging to bequeath to his daughter all 
 his rights in Brittany at his death, and Hemy 
 engaging to support him in his present power 
 duriug his life.^ 
 
 If this treaty was kept secx-et for a time from 
 King Louis, Hemy's ambition hm-ried him mto 
 other schemes, which interrupted then- good un- 
 dei-standing before it had lasted a year. N ot satis- 
 fied with the tranquil enjoyment of the states he 
 had proem-ed by his marriage, he advanced fresh 
 claims, iu right of his wife, to territories which 
 neither she nor her father had ever enjoyed, and, 
 by obtaining the gi-eat earldom of Toulouse, ho 
 hoped to spread his power across the whole of 
 the broad isthmus that joins France to Spain, and 
 to range along the French coast on the jMediter- 
 I'anean, as he already did along the whole Atlantic 
 sea-boai'd. William, Duke of Aquitaine, grand- 
 father of Queen Eleanor, Henry's wife, and a con- 
 temporary of the Conqueror, manied Philippa, 
 
 2 Neiobrig,; Script. Rtr. Franc. 
 
 ■* Vkron. Jfonti.; iYcic6riy,; Darn, Iligf. tic la Brttai/nc.
 
 So-t 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Mu.itarv. 
 
 the ouly child of William, the fourth Earl of 
 Toulouse. As a female succession was contrary 
 to the laws or usages of the country, the Earl 
 William, Philippa's father, conveyed the princi- 
 pality, by a contract of sale, to his brother, Ray- 
 mond de St. Gilles, who succeeded at his death, 
 and transmitted it to his posterity in the male 
 line, who had held it many years, not without 
 cavil on the part of the house of Aquitaine, but 
 without any successful challenge of their title. 
 Eleanor conveyed her right.?, such as they were, 
 and which she was determined not to leave dor- 
 mant, to Louis VII., by her first marriage; and 
 diu-ing their union the French king sent forth an 
 army for the conquest and occupation of Toulouse. 
 But the expedition ended in a treaty, and Ray- 
 mond de St. Gilles, the grandson of the first earl 
 of that name, was confirmed in possession of the 
 country, and released from all claims to it, 
 whether on the pai-t of the French king or his 
 wife Eleanor, by marrying Constance, the sister 
 of Louis. Hem-y now urged, that by her subse- 
 quent divorce from Louis, Eleanor was restored 
 to her original rights; and after some cm-ious 
 correspondence, he demanded the instant sur- 
 render of the earldom of Toulouse upon the same 
 grounds as Louis had done before him. The 
 Earl Raymond raised his banner of war, and ap- 
 plied for aid to his brother-in-law of France. 
 "The common council of the city and suburbs," 
 for such was the title borne by the municipal 
 government of Toulouse,' seconded Raymond's 
 negotiations with the French court, and raised 
 their banner as a free and incorporated commu- 
 nity. On this occasion Louis broke through the 
 fine meshes of Henry and Becket's diplomacy, 
 and roused himself to a formidable exertion. 
 Perceiving that the struggle would be serious, 
 and that success could only be obtained by the 
 keeping on foot a large army very diflerent in its 
 constitution and terms of service fi-om his feudal 
 forces, Hem-y resolved, by the advice of Becket, 
 to commute the personal services of his vassals 
 for an aid in money," with which he trusted to 
 procure troops that would serve like modern sol- 
 diers for their daily pay, obey his orders directlj' 
 without the often troublesome intermission of 
 feudal lords, and have no objection either to the 
 distance of the scene of hostilities, or the length 
 of time they were detained from their homes. 
 The teiTu of forty days, to whicli the seiwices of 
 the vassals were limited, would have been in good 
 part consumed in the march alone from England 
 and the noi-th of France to Toulouse. He began 
 by levying a sum of money, in lieu of their pre- 
 
 1 Commune conclliiun ui'bis Tholosai et subxu'bii. — Scrijit. Rtr. 
 Franc. 
 
 ^ This seems to have been the first introduction of a practice 
 wli:ch tended gradually to the overthrow of the feudal system. 
 
 senee and services, upon his vassals iu Nonnandv, 
 and other provinces remote from the seat of 
 action ; the commutation was agreeable to most 
 of them; and when it was proposed in England, 
 it was still more acceptable, on account of the 
 greater distance, and the laudable anxiety of 
 many of the nobles to take care of their estates, 
 which had suffered so much during the intestine 
 wars of the preceding reign. The scuiage, as it 
 is called, was levied at the rate of three pounds 
 in England, and of forty Angevin shillings in the 
 contmental dominions, for every knight's fee. 
 There were 60,000 knights' fees in England alone, 
 which would produce £180,000. But, whatever 
 was the sum, it sufficed Hemy for the raising of 
 a strong mercenary force, consisting chieily of 
 bodies of the famous infantry of the Low Coun- 
 tries. With these marched Malcolm, King of 
 Scotland, who com-ted the close alliance of Henry; 
 Raymond, King of Ai-ragon (to whose infant 
 daughter Henry had affianced his infant son 
 Richard); one of the Welsh princes, and many 
 English and foreign barons who voluntarily en- 
 gaged to follow the king to Toulouse. Thomas 4 
 Becket, now chancellor of England, and the in- 
 separable comi^aniou of his royal master, attended 
 in this war, and none went in more warlike guise. 
 He marched at the head of 700 knights and men- 
 at-arms, whom he had raised at his own expense; 
 and, when they reached the scene of action, he 
 distinguishedhimself by his activity and gallantry, 
 not permitting the circumstance of his being in 
 holy orders to prevent him from charging with 
 the chivalry, or mounting the deadly breach. 
 After taking the town of Cahors, Hem-y marched 
 upon the city of Toulouse. But the French king, 
 crossing Berry, which belonged to him in good 
 part, and the Limousin, which gi-anted him a free 
 passage, threw himself with reinforcements into 
 the threatened city, where he was received with 
 extreme joy by Earl Raymond and the citizens.^ 
 The force which Louis brought with him was 
 small, and the energetic Becket advised Henry to 
 make an immediate assault, in which the chm-ch- 
 man judged he could hardlj- fail of reducing the 
 town and taking prisoner the French king, whose 
 captivity might be turned to incalculable advan- 
 tage. But Hem-y v.-as cool and cautious even in 
 the midst of his greatest successes: he did not 
 wish to drive the French nation to extremities — 
 he was so woven up in the complicated feudal 
 system, and so dependent himself on the faithful 
 observance of its nice gradations, that he wished 
 to avoid outraging the great principles on which 
 it rested ; and being himself vassal to Louis, and, 
 in his quality of Earl of Anjou, hereditary senes- 
 chal of France, he declared he could not show 
 
 3 Script. Rer. Franc.
 
 A.D. llJl-1172.] 
 
 HENRY II. 
 
 such disrespect to his superior lord as to besiege 
 him. While he hesitated, a French army marched 
 to the relief of their king. Heiiry then trans- 
 ferred the war to another part of the earldom, 
 and soon after, leaving the supreme cominaud to 
 Becket, returned with p;u-t of his army to Nor- 
 mandy. The clerical chancellor continued to ap- 
 peiu- as if in his proper element: he fortified C'a- 
 hors, took three castles, which had been deemed 
 impregnable, and tilted with a French knight, 
 whose horse he carried away as the proof of his 
 victory. But Henry could not do without his 
 favom-ite; and a French force having made a 
 diversion on the side of Normandy, Becket also 
 I'eturned thither, lea\"ing only a few insignificant 
 garrisons on the banks of the Garonne and jilea- 
 sant hills of Lauguedoc. The political condition, 
 however, of that favoured i-egion — the sunny land 
 of the troubadours — declined from that hour. 
 The haV>it of imploring the protection of one king 
 against another became a cause of dependence; 
 and with the epoch when the King of England, 
 as Duke of Aquitaine and Eai-1 of Poictou, ob- 
 tained an influence over the affiiu-s of the south 
 of Fi-ance, commenced the decline and misery of 
 a most iuterestiug population. Thenceforward, 
 placed between two great powers, the rivals of 
 each other, and both equally ambitious and en- 
 croaching, they sought the protection, now of the 
 one, and now of the other, according to circum- 
 stances; and were alternately supported and aban- 
 doned, betrayed and sold by both. 
 
 In the brief war which ensued on the frontiers 
 of Normandy, after the expedition to Toulouse, 
 Becket maintained 1200 knights, with no fewer 
 than 4000 attendants and foot soldiers; and when 
 the King of Finance was induced to treat, the 
 eloquent and versatile churchman wius charged 
 \vith the negotiations on the part of his friend 
 and master. A truce was concluded at the end 
 of the 3'ear, and a few months after, when the 
 rival kings had an interview, the truce was con- 
 verted into a forma! peace (a.d. 1160), Henry's 
 eldest son doing homage to Louis for the duchy 
 of Normandy, and Henry being permitted to re- 
 tain the few places he had conquered in the earl- 
 dom of Toulouse. This precious peace did not 
 last quite one month. Constance, the French 
 queen, died without leaving any male issue; and 
 Louis, anxious for an heir, as his daughters could 
 not succeed, in about a fortnight after her decease, 
 married Adelais, niece of the late English king, 
 Stephen, and sister of the three Earls of Blois, 
 Champagne, and Sanserre. This union with the 
 old enemies of his family gi-eatly troubled Henry, 
 who, foreseeing a disposition in the French court 
 to break off the alliance with him, which might 
 give his progeny a hold upon France, secretly 
 secured a dispen.sation from the pope, and solem- 
 
 nized the contract of marriage between his son 
 Henry, who was seven years old, and the daugh- 
 ter of Louis, the Princess Margaret, who had been 
 placed in his power at the conclusion of the oi-i- 
 ginal treaty, and who had attained the matronly 
 age of thfca years. Becket, the prime mover in 
 all things, brought the royal infant to London, 
 whei'e this strange ceremony was performed. 
 
 Another war ensued, but of too insignificant a 
 chai-acter to demand our notice, and it was soon 
 concluded through the mediation of the pope. 
 
 At this time, as at several other periods in the 
 middle ages, there were two pojies, each calling 
 the other auti-po])e and anti-Christ. Victor IV. 
 was established at Rome under the patronage of 
 the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa; and Alexan- 
 der III. was a fugitive and an exile north of the 
 Alps, where both Louis and Henry bowed to his 
 spiritual authority, and rivalled each other in 
 tlieu- offers of an asylmu and succom", and in their 
 reverential demeanour. When the two kings met 
 him in person at Courcy-sui'-Loire, they both dis- 
 mounted, and holding each of them one of the 
 bridle-reins of his mule, walked on foot by his 
 side, and conducted him to the castle.' 
 
 A short period of tranquillity, both in England 
 and Henry's continental dominions, followed this 
 reconciliation ; and when it was disturljed, the 
 storm proceeded from a most unexpected quarter 
 — from Thomas a Becket, the king's bosom friend. 
 
 Becket was born at London, in or about the 
 year 1117. His father was a citizen ;md trader, 
 of the Saxon race — circumstances which seemed 
 to exclude the son from the career of ambition. 
 The boy, however, was gifted with an extraordi- 
 nary intelligence, a handsome person, and most 
 engaging manners; and his father gave him all 
 the advantages of education that were within his 
 reach. He studied successively at Morton Abbey, 
 London, Oxford, and Paris, m which last city he 
 applied to civil law, and acquired as perfect a 
 mastery, and as pure a pronunciation of the French 
 language, as any the best educated of the Norman 
 nobles and officers. Wliile yet a young man, he 
 was employed as an under-clerk in the office of 
 the sheriff of London, where he attracted the 
 attention of Theobald, Ai'chbishoi) of Canterbury, 
 who sent him to complete his stndy of the civil 
 law at the then famous school of Bologna. After 
 profiting by the lessons of the learned Gratian, 
 Becket recrossed the Alps, and staid some time 
 at Auxerre, in Bm'gundy, to attend the lectures 
 of another celebrated law professor. On his re- 
 turn to London, he took deacon's orders,- and his 
 powerful patron the ai'chbishop gave him some 
 valuable church preferment, which neither neces- 
 sitated a residence, nor the performance of any 
 
 ' Ncwbriff.; Chron. Norm. 
 
 - He iie%'er took the m^or orders till ho became .archbishop.
 
 5.5C 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Mii.itahv. 
 
 chui-ch duties; ami lie soon aftLn-wards sent him, 
 as the best qualified persou he knew, to conduct 
 some important negotiations at the court of Rome. 
 The young dijjlomatist (for he was then only 
 thirty-two yeai-s old) acquitted himself with great 
 abilitj' and complete success, obtaining from the 
 pope a prohibition that defeated the design of 
 crowning Prince Eustace, the son of Stephen — 
 an important service, which secured the favour 
 of the Empress Matilda and the house of Plau- 
 tagenet. On Henry's accession, Ai-chbishop Theo- 
 bald had all the authority of prime minister, and, 
 being old and infirm, he delegated the most of it 
 to the active Backet, who was made chancellor 
 of the kingdom two years after, being the first 
 Englishman since the Conquest that had reached 
 sjiy eminent oflice. As if to empty the lap of 
 royal bounty, Hemy at the same time appointed 
 him ]:ireceptor of the heir to the crown, and gave 
 him the wardenship of the Tower of London, the 
 castle of Berkhampstead, and the honour of Hye, 
 with 340 knights' fees. His revenue, flowing in 
 from many sources, was immense ; and no man 
 ever spent more freely or magnificently. His 
 house was a palace, both in dimensions and ap- 
 pointments. It was stocked with vessels of gold 
 and silver, and constantly frequented by number- 
 less guests of all goodly ranks, from barons and 
 earls to Icnights and pages, and simple retainers 
 — of which he had several hundreds, who acknow- 
 ledged themseh'es his immediate vassals. His 
 tables were spread with the choicest viands; the 
 best of wines were poured out with an un.sparLng 
 hand; the richest dresses allotted to his pages and 
 serving men.' The chancellor's out-door appear- 
 ance was still more splendid, and on great public 
 occasions was carried to an extremity of pomp 
 and magnificence. When he went on his embassy 
 to Paris he was attended by 200 knights, besides 
 many barons and nobles, and a complete host of 
 domestics, all richly armed and attired, the chan- 
 cellor himself having fom--and-twenty changes of 
 apparel. As he travelled through France, his 
 train of waggons and sumpter-horses, his hounds 
 and hawlvs, his huntsmen and falconers, seemed to 
 announce the presence of a more than king. 
 Whenever he entered a town, the ambassadorial 
 procession was led by 250 boys singing national 
 songs; then followed his hounds, led in couples; 
 and these were succeeded by eight waggons, each 
 with five large horses, and five drivers in new 
 frocks. Eveiy waggon was covered with skins, 
 and guarded by two men and a fierce mastiff. Two 
 of the waggons were loaded with ale, to be dis- 
 tributed to the people ; one carried the vessels 
 and furniture of his chapel; another of his bed- 
 chamber; a fifth was loaded with his kitchen ap- 
 
 paratus; a sixth carried his abundant plate and 
 wardrobe; and the other two were devoted to the 
 use of his household servants. After the waggons 
 came twelve sumpter-horaes, a monkey riding on 
 each, with a groom behind on his knees. Then 
 came the esquires, carrying the shields, and lead- 
 ing the war-hoi'ses of their respective knights; 
 then other esquires (youths of gentle bu-th), fal- 
 coners, officers of the household, knights, and 
 priests; and last of all apjieared the gi'eat chan- 
 cellor himself, with his familiar friends. As 
 Becket passed in this guise, the French were 
 heard to exclaim, "What manner of man must 
 the King of England be, when his chancellor 
 travels in such state!"- Hemy encom-aged all 
 this pomp and magnificence, and seems to have 
 taken a lively enjoyment in the spectacle, though 
 he sometimes twitted the chancellor on the finery 
 of his attire. All such ofiices of government as 
 were not performed by the ready and indefatig- 
 able king himself were left to Becket, who had 
 no competitor in authority. Secret enemies he 
 had in abundance, but never even a momentary 
 rival in the roy;d favoui-. The minister and king 
 lived together like brothei-s; and according to a 
 contemporary,^ who knew more of Henry than 
 any other that has written concerning him, it 
 was notorious to all men that they were cor vnum 
 el animam unam (of one heart and one mind in 
 all things). With his chancellor Henry gave free 
 scope to a facetious, frolicsome humour, which 
 was natural to him, though no prince could as- 
 sume more dignity and sternness when necessary. 
 The chancellor was an admirable horseman, and 
 expert in hunting and hawking, and all the sports 
 of the field. These accomplishments, and a never- 
 failing wit and vivacity, made him the constant 
 companion of the king's leism-e hours, and the 
 sharer (it is hinted) in less innocent jjleasures; 
 for Henry was a very inconstant hu.sliaud, and 
 had much of the Norman licentiousness. At the 
 same time, Becket was an able minister, and his 
 administration was not only advantageous to the 
 interests of his master, but, on the whole, ex- 
 tremely beneficial to the nation. Most of the 
 useful measures which distinguished the early 
 part of the king's reign have been attributed to 
 his advice, his discriminating genius, and good 
 intentions. Such were the restoration of inter- 
 nal tranquillity, the curbing of the baronial ])ower, 
 the better aj^pointment of judges, the reform in 
 the currency, and the encouragement given to 
 trade. He certainly could not be accused of en- 
 tertaining a low notion of the I'oyal prerogative, 
 or of any luke-warmness in exacting the rights 
 of the king. He lunnliled the lay ai-istocracy 
 whenever he could, and more than once attacked 
 
 ' Fitz-Stejihen. 
 tary. 
 
 This .imusing biosi-apher was Becket's secre- 
 
 2 FiU-Step)un. 
 
 ' Petrus Blesenis, or Peter of Plois. See liis Litters.
 
 A.v. iLJ-i— iirr.j 
 
 HENRY II. 
 
 '■■Ji 
 
 the extravagant privileges, imiimnilies, ami ex- 
 emptions claimed by the aristocracy of tlie clmrch. 
 He insisted that tlie bisliops and abbots slioiiUl pay 
 the soutage for tlie war of Toulouse like the lay 
 vassals of the crown, and tliis drew upon him the 
 violent invectives of many of the hierarchy, (Jil- 
 bex-t Foliot, the Bishop of Hereford, among othei-s, 
 accusing him of plunging the sword into the 
 bosom of mother church, and threatening him 
 with excommunication. All this tended to con- 
 vince Henry that Becket was the proper person 
 to nominate to the primacy, as one who had 
 already given proofs of a spirit greatly averse to 
 ecclesiastical encroachments, and that promised 
 to be of the gi-eatest service to him in a project 
 which, in common with other European sove- 
 reigns, he had much at heart — namely, to check 
 the growing power of Home, and curtail the privi- 
 leges of the priesthood. Although his conduct 
 had not been very priest-like, he was popular; the 
 king's favom- and intentions were well known, 
 and accordingly, in 1161, when his old patron, 
 Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, died, the 
 public voice designated Becket as the man who 
 must uievitably succeed him ; and after a vacancy 
 of about thirteen months, dui-ing which Henry 
 drew the revenues, he was appointed Primate of 
 all England. 
 
 From that moment Becket was an altered 
 man: the soldier, statesman, huntei-, courtier, 
 man of the world, and man of pleasure, became 
 a rigid and ascetic monk, renouncing even the 
 innocent enjoyments of life, together with the 
 service of his more friend than master, and re- 
 solving to perish by a slow martjTdom rather 
 than suffer the king to invade the smallest privi- 
 lege of the church. Although he then retamed, 
 and afterwai'ds showed a somewhat inconsistent 
 anxiety to keep certain other worldly honours 
 and places of trust, he resigned the chancellor- 
 shijj in spite of the wishes of the king — he dis- 
 carded all his fonner companions and magnificent 
 retinue — he threw off his splendid attire — he dis- 
 charged his choice cooks and his cup-bearers, to 
 surround himself with monks and beggara (whose 
 feet he daily washed), to clothe himself in sack- 
 cloth, to eat the coarsest food, and drink water 
 rendered bitter by the mixture of unsavom-y 
 herbs. The rest of his penitence, his prayers, 
 his works of chai-ity in hospitals and pest-houses, 
 soon caused his name to be revered as that of a 
 saint, and his person to be followed by the prayers 
 and acclamations of the people. With the views 
 the king was known to entertain in church mat- 
 ters, the collision was inevitable; yet it certainly 
 was the archbishop who began the contest, and 
 it is most unfair to attempt to conceal or slur 
 over this fact. In 1163, about a year after his 
 elevation, Becket raised a loud comi)laint on the 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 usurpations by the king and laity of the riglits 
 and property of the church. He claimed houses 
 aiul lands which, if they ever had been included 
 in the endowments of the see of Canterljurv, had 
 been for generations in the possession of lay fa- 
 milies. It is curious to see castles and places of 
 war figuring in his list. From the king himself 
 he demanded the important castle of Eochester. 
 From the Eaid of Clare — whose family had pos- 
 sessed them in fief ever since the Conquest — he 
 demanded the strong castle and the bai-ony of 
 Tunbridge; and from other barons, possessions 
 of a like nature. But to complete the indigna- 
 tion of Henry, who had laid it down as an indis- 
 pensable and unchangeable rule of government, 
 that no vassal who held in capite of tho crown 
 shoidd be excommunicated without his previous 
 knowledge and consent, he hiu'led the thunders 
 of the church at the head of William de Eyns- 
 ford, a military tenant of the crown, for forcibly 
 ejecting a priest collated to the rectory of that 
 manor by the archbishop; and for pretending, as 
 lord of the manor, to a right over that living. 
 When Henry ordered him to revoke the sen- 
 tence, Becket told him that it was not for the 
 king to inform him whom he should absolve and 
 whom excommunicate — a right ami faculty ap- 
 pertaining solely to the church. The king then 
 resorted from remonstrances to threats of ven- 
 geance; and Becket, bending for awhile before 
 the storm, absolved the knight, but reluctantly, 
 and with a bad grace.' In the course of the fol- 
 lowing year the king matured his i>roject for 
 subjecting the clergy to the authority of the civil 
 cotu'ts for murder, felony, and other civil crimes; 
 and to this i-eform, in a council held at West- 
 minster, he formally demanded the assent of the 
 ai'chbishop and the other prelates. The leniency 
 of the ecclesiasticiil courts to ofienders in holy 
 orders, seemed almost to give an immunity to 
 crime; and a recent case, in which a clerg^'man 
 had been but slightly punished for the most atro- 
 cious of offences, called aloud for a change of 
 com-t and practice, and lent unanswerable argu- 
 ments to the ministers and advocates of the 
 king. The bishops, however, with one voice, 
 rejected the proposed innovations ; upon which 
 Henry asked them if they would merely jn-omise 
 to observe the ancient customs of the realm. 
 Becket and his brethren, with the exception only 
 of Hilary, Bishop of Chichester, answered that 
 they would observe them, " saving their order." 
 On this tlie king immediately deprived the arch- 
 bishop of the manor of Eye, and the castle of 
 Berkhampstead. Finding, however, that the 
 bishojjs fell from his side, and being on one hand 
 menaced by the king and la}' nobles, and oa the 
 
 ' Gcrva-ie of CanUybl'.ri/; Dktto; Fitz-Stoph. Eimt. St. Thorn.: 
 IlUt. Quad. 
 
 33
 
 2.58 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 other, it is said, a<lviserl to suliinit by the pope 
 himself, Beclvet shortly afterwards, at a great 
 council held at Clarendon,' in Wiltshire (25th 
 January, 1164), consented to sign a series of 
 enactments embodying the several points insisted 
 upon by the king, and hence called the " Con- 
 stitutions of Clarendon;" but he refused to put 
 his seal to them, and immediately after with- 
 drew from the court, and even from the service 
 of the altar, to subject himself to the harshest 
 penance for having acted contrary to his inward 
 conviction. Subsequently the pojie rejected the 
 "Constitutions of Clarendon," with the excep- 
 tion only of sis articles of minor importance; and 
 the archbishop was then encouraged to persist 
 by the only superior he acknowledged in this 
 world.' 
 
 The king being now determined to keep no 
 measures, assembled a gi'eat council in the to\\^l 
 of Northampton, and summoned the archbishop 
 to appear before it. He was charged, in the fu-st 
 place, with a breach of allegiance and acts of con- 
 tempt against tlie king. He offered a plea in ex- 
 cuse, but Henry swoi-e, " by God'.s eyes,"^ that 
 he would have justice in its full extent, and the 
 court condemned Becket to forfeit all his goods 
 and chattels; but this forfeitm-e was immediately 
 commuted for a fine of £500. The next day the 
 king requii-ed him to refund .£300 which he had 
 received as warden of Eye and Berkhampstead, 
 and i£500 which he (the king) had given him be- 
 fore the walls of Toulouse; and, on the third day, 
 he was required to render an account of all his 
 receipts from vacant abbeys and bishoprics dur- 
 ing his chancelloi'ship, the balance due thereon 
 to the crown being set down at the enormous 
 sum of 44,000 marks. Becket now perceived 
 that the king was bent on his utter ruin. For a 
 moment he was overpowered ; but, recovering 
 his firmness and self-possession, which never for- 
 sook him for long intervals, he said he was not 
 bound to plead on that coimt, seeing that, at his 
 consecration as archbishop, he had been publicly 
 released by the king from all such claims. He 
 demanded a conference with the bishops; but 
 these dignitaries had ah'eady declared for the 
 
 ' " The assembly at Clarendon seems to have been the most 
 considerable of those which met under the name of the Great or 
 the Common Council of the Realm since the Norman invasion. 
 They were not yet called by the name of a parliament. But 
 whatever difficulty may exist concerning the qualifications of 
 their constituent members, there is no reason to doubt that the 
 fulness of legislative authority was exercised by the king only 
 when he was present in such assemblies, and acted with their 
 advice and consent." — M'icttiUosk, 
 
 ^ Dr. Lingard admits, in speaking of the articles of Clarendon, 
 that "sentences of excommunication had been greatly multi. 
 plied and abused during the middle ages." Ho admits tliat 
 " they were the principal weapons with which the clergy sought 
 to protect themselves and their property fi-om the cnielty aud 
 rapacity of the banditti in the service of the barons. They were 
 feared by the most powerful and unprincipled ; because, at tlie 
 
 court, and the majority of them now advised 
 him to resign the primacy as the only step which 
 could restore peace to the church and nation. 
 His health gave way under these troubles, and 
 he was confined to a sick bed for the two following 
 days. His indomitable mind, however, yielded 
 none of its firmness and (we must add) its pride. 
 He considered the bishops as cowards and time- 
 servers; and resolved to retain that post from 
 which, having once been placed in it, it was held, 
 by all law and custom, he could never be deposed 
 by the temporal power. On the morning of the 
 decisive day (Octolier 18, 1164), he celebrated 
 the mass of St. Stephen, the first martyi-, the 
 office of which begins with these words :— " Sede- 
 runt priucipes et advei-sum me loquebantm-" 
 (Princes also did sit and speak against me, Ps. 
 cxix. 23). After the mass, he set out for the 
 com-t, arrayed as he was in his pontifical robes. 
 He went on horseback, bearing the arcliiepisco- 
 pal cross in his right hand, and holding the reins 
 in his left. When he dismounted at the palace, 
 one of his suffragans would have borne the cross 
 before him in the usual manner, but he would 
 not let it go out of his hands, saying, " It is most 
 reason I should bear the cross myself; under the 
 defence thereof I may remain in safety; and, be- 
 holding this ensign, I need not doubt under what 
 prince I serve." " But," said the Archbishop of 
 York, an old rival and enemy of Becket, " it is 
 defying the king, om- lord, to come in this f;ishion 
 to his court; but the king has a sword, the point 
 of which is sharper than that of thy pastoral 
 staff." As the primate entered, the king rose 
 from his seat, and withdrew to an inner apart- 
 ment, whither the barons and bishops soon fol- 
 lowed him, leaving Becket alone in the vast hall, 
 or attended only by a few of his clerks or the in- 
 ferior clergy, the whole body of which, unlike 
 the dignitaries of the church, inclined to his per- 
 son and cause. These poor clerks trembled and 
 were sore dismayed; but not so Becket, who 
 seated himself on a bench, and still holding his 
 cross erect, calmly awaited the event. He was 
 not made to wait long: the Bishop of Exeter, 
 terrified at the excessive exasperation of the so- 
 same time that they excluded the culprit from the offices of 
 religion, they also cut him off from the intercourse of society." 
 These remarks involve two singular admissions ; fii-st, that the 
 Romanist clergy had faUed to make society Christian enough to 
 secure the safety of them and their property ; second, that over 
 this really heathen society, they exercised, in the name of Christ, 
 a tremendous power of coercion. Both confirm Lappeuberg's 
 remark, that the Romish hierarchy had fallen heii-s to their 
 predecessors — the heathen priesthood. Their influence was im- 
 mense ; but when we analyze it, we find it not the proper influ- 
 ence of Christian pastoi-s over really converted flocks, but of a 
 pagan priesthood over unconverted "banditti." 
 
 3 Tills was Henry's usual oath when much excited. The oaths 
 of all these kings would make a curious collection of blasphemy. 
 The chroniclers have been careful to preserve them, and, accord- 
 ing to their recortls, nearly every king had his distinctive oath.
 
 A.D. 1154—117:2.] 
 
 ITEKRY II. 
 
 259 
 
 vereigii, came forth from tlie iaiier apart luont, 
 and tlirowing liinisolf on his knees, implored the 
 jirimate to have pity on himself and his brethren 
 the bislio]is, for the king had vowed to slay the 
 firet of them that shonld attempt to exeuse his 
 eonduet. '' Thon fearest," replied Becket; "(Ice 
 then ! thou canst not undei-stand the things that 
 are of God!" Soon afterwards, the rest of the 
 bishops appeared in'a body, and Hilai'y of Chi- 
 chester, speaking in the name of all, said, " Thou 
 wast onr ])rimate, but now we disavow thee, be- 
 cause, after having pi-omised faith to the king, our 
 common lord, and sworn to maintain his royal 
 customs, thou hast endeavoured to destroy them, 
 and hast broken thine oath. We jjroclaim thee, 
 then, a traitor, and tell thee we will no longer 
 obey a perjured archbishoji, but place ourselves 
 and oui- cause under the protection of our lord 
 the pope, and summon thee to answer us before 
 him." "I hear," said Becket; and he deigned no 
 fm-ther reply. 
 
 According to Eoger of Hoveden, the arch- 
 bishop was accused m the council chamber of the 
 impossible crime of magic; and the bai-ons pro- 
 nounced a sentence of imprisonment against him. 
 The door of that chamber soon opened, and 
 Robert, Earl of Leicester, followed by the barons, 
 stepped forth into the hall to read the sentence, 
 beginning in the usual old Norman-French form 
 — "Oyez-ci." The archbishop rose, and, inter- 
 rupting him, said, "Son and earl, hear me iii'st. 
 Thou knowest with how mvich faith I served the 
 king — with how much reluctance, and only to 
 ]>lease him, I accepted my present charge, and 
 in what manner I was dechu'ed free from all se- 
 cular claims wliatsoever. Touching the things 
 which happened before my consecration, I ought 
 not to answer, nor will I answer. You, more- 
 over, are all my children in God; and neither law 
 nor reason permits you to sit in judgment upon 
 your father. I forbid you therefore to judge me; 
 I decline your tribunal, and refer my quarrel to 
 the decision of the pope. To him I appeal: and 
 nov7, under the holy protection of the Catholic 
 church and the apostolic see, I depai't in peace." 
 After tills counter-ajipeal to the power which his 
 adversaries had been the first to invoke, Becket 
 slowly strode through the crowd towards the door 
 of the hall. When near the threshold, the spirit 
 of the soldier, which was not yet extinguished by 
 the aspirations of the saint, blazed forth in a 
 withering look and a few hasty but impa?sioned 
 words. Some of the courtiers and attendants of 
 the king threw at him straw or rushes, which 
 they gathered from the floor, and called him 
 traitor and false perjurer. Turning round and 
 drawing himself up to his full height, he cried, 
 "If my holy c:vlling did not foiiiid it, I would 
 make my answer with my sword to those cowards 
 
 who call me traitor!"' ITe then mounted his 
 horse amidst the acclamations of the lower clergy 
 and common peojilo, and rode in a sort of triumph 
 to his lodgings, the populace shouting, "Blessed 
 be God, who hath delivered his servant from the 
 hands of his enemies ! " The strength of Becket's 
 party was in the jiopular body; and it has been 
 supposed, with some reason, that his English 
 birth and Saxon descent contributed no less than 
 his sudden sanctity, to endear him to the people, 
 who had never since the Conquest seen one of 
 their race elevated to such dignities.^ Aban- 
 doned by the gi-cat, both lay and clerical, wdio 
 had hitherto been proud to wait upon him, his 
 house was empty ; and in a sj)irit of inulation 
 which some will deem presumptuous, he deter- 
 mined to fill it with the paupers of the town, 
 and the lowly wayfarers from the road-side. 
 "Suffer," said he, "all the poor people to come 
 into the place, that we may make meny together 
 in the Lord." "And having thus spoken, the 
 people had free entrance, so that aU the hall and 
 all the chambers of the house being furnishe<l 
 with tables and stools, they were con\-eniently 
 placed, and served with meat and drink to the 
 full,"' the archbishop supping with them, and 
 doing the honours of the feast. In the course of 
 the evening he sent to the king to ask le;ive to 
 retire beyond sea, and he was told that he should 
 receive an answer on the following morning. 
 The modern historians who take the most un- 
 favourable view of the king's conduct in these 
 particulars, intimate, more or less broadly, that 
 a design was on foot for preventing the arch- 
 bishop from ever seeing that morrow; but the 
 circumstances of time and place, and the charac- 
 ter of Hem'y, are opposed to the belief that secret 
 assassination was contemplated ; nor does any con- 
 temporary writer give reasonable grounds for 
 entertaining such a belief, or, indeed, say more 
 than that the ai'chbishoiD's friends were sorely 
 frightened, and thought such a tragical termina- 
 tion of the quarrel a probable event. Becket, 
 however, took his departure as if he himself 
 feared violence. He stole out of the town of 
 Northampton at the dead of night, disguised as 
 a simple monk, and calling himself Brother 
 De.arman; and being followed only by two clerks 
 and a domestic servant, he In^stened towards the 
 coast, hiding by day and pursuing his journey bj' 
 night. The season was far advanced, and the 
 stormy winds of November swept the waters of 
 the Channel when he reached the coast; but 
 Becket embarked in a small boat, and after many 
 
 1 Fitz-Stcph.; Gervau; Qrjrm.: Dicdo. Diceto, wo know, waa 
 at this meeting; and wh.it gives singular interest to the accounts 
 of it is, tliat it is pvobablo tlio other thi-ee chroniclers, wlio wcro 
 all closely connected with Becket, were also present. 
 
 - M. Thierry. * lldinshul.
 
 2(50 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil axd Militari-, 
 
 perils and fatigues, lauded at Gravelines, iu 
 Flanders, on the fifteenth day after his depai'ture 
 from Northampton. 
 
 From the seaport of Gravelines he and Ins 
 companions walked on foot, and in very bad con- 
 dition, to the monastery of St. Bertin, at St. 
 Omer, ^here he waited a short time the success 
 of his applications to the King of Franco, and the 
 pope, Alexander III., who had fixed his residence 
 for a time iu the city of Sens. Their answers 
 were most favourable; for, fortunately for Becket, 
 the jealousy and disunion between the Kings of 
 France and England, disposed Louis to protect 
 the obnoxious exile, in order to vex and weaken 
 Henry; and the pope, turning a deaf ear to a 
 magnificent embassy despatched to him by the 
 English sovereign, determined to support the 
 cause of the primate as that of truth, of justice, 
 and the church. The splendid abbey of Pontigny, 
 in Burgundy, was assigned to him as an honour- 
 
 able and secure asylum; and the pope reinvested 
 him with his archiepiscopal dignity, which ho 
 had surrendered into his hands. 
 
 As soon as Henry was informed of these par- 
 ticulai-s, he issued wi-its to the sheriffs of Eng- 
 land, commanding them to seize all rents and 
 possessions of the primate within their jurisdic- 
 tions, and to detain all bearers of appeals to the 
 pope till the king's pleasure should be made 
 known to them. He also commanded the jus- 
 tices of the kingdom to detain, in like manner, all 
 bearers of papers, whether from the pope or 
 Becket, that purported to pronounce excommimi- 
 cation or interdict on the realm — all persons, 
 whether lay or ecclesiastic, who should adhere to 
 such sentence of interdict — and all clerks attempt- 
 ing to leave the kingdom without a pas.sport from 
 the king. The primate's name was struck out of 
 the liturgy, and the revenues of every clergy- 
 man who had- either followed him into France, or 
 
 Abbey of Pontignt.'— Cli,aillou Desbarres, L'Abbaye de Pontigiiy. 
 
 had sent him aid and money, were seized by the 
 crown. If Henry's vengeance had stopped here 
 it might have been excused, if not justified; but, 
 irritated to maduess by the tone of defiance his 
 enemy assumed in a foreign country, he proceeded 
 to further vindictive and most disgracefid mea- 
 sm-es, issuing one common sentence of banish- 
 ment against all who were connected with Becket, 
 either by the ties of relationship or those of 
 friendship. The list of proscrijjtion contained 
 four hundred names, for the wives and children 
 
 of Becket's friends were included; and it is said 
 that they were all bound by an oath to show 
 themselves in then* miserable exile to the cause 
 of their ruin, that his heart might be wrung by 
 the sight of the misery he had brought down 
 upon the heads of all those who were most dear 
 to him. It is added that his cell at Pontigny 
 was accordingly beset by these exiles, but that 
 he finally succeeded in relieving then- immediate 
 wants by interesting the King of Fi-ance, the 
 Queen of Sicily, and the pojje, in their favour.- 
 
 1 This abbey was suppressed in 1790. Tlie churcli lias been 
 preserved, ajid, after tlie catliedrals of Sens and of Aiixen-e, and 
 the church of Vezeiay, is tlie finest and larsest religious edifice 
 in the department of Yonne. The length of its interiorisoo-tft., 
 breadth 77 ft. ; height of centre of transept, 69 ft., 
 
 - " Odo of Kent was one of the intimate friends of Thomas 
 Eecket and of John of tialisbui-y, and is mentioned with expres- 
 sions of gi-eat esteem by the latter writer. He appears fiist iu 
 history in 1172, as prior of Canterbury, when he distinguished 
 himself by a protracted resistance to the attempts of the crowu 
 to usurp the right of electing the archbishop. In 1175 he was 
 
 made abbot of Battle; and in the time of Leland a handsome 
 marble tomb marked the place of his bm-ial in the abbey church." 
 AVright's Bio^i. Brit. Liter, ii. 22i. From the specimen given 
 in Latin of the kind of preaching with which tliis Odo, Jolm 
 of Abbeville, and Roger of Salisbury enlightened such of their 
 hearers as understood Latin, one cannot form any high estimate 
 of the improvement introduced by the Norman clergy into the 
 pulpits of England, or consider that much was lost by those plain 
 Anglo-Saxons who could not understand them. Aii3'thing more 
 silly than the story introduced to iUustrate how the devils aie 
 to spit on the faces of fops in hell, can hardly be imagined.
 
 A.D. 11.34— 1172.' 
 
 ITENRV II. 
 
 2G1 
 
 In 1165, the yeai- after Backet's flight, Heniy 
 sustained no small disgi'ace from the result of 
 a campaign, in which he personally commanded, 
 against the Welsh. That hardy jicople had risen 
 once more in arms in 1 1(13, but had been defeated 
 by an Anglo-Norman army, which subsequently 
 ]ilundered and wasted with tire the county of 
 Cwmarthcn. Somewhat more thp.n a year later 
 a nephew of Eees-ap-Gryffiths, Prince or King 
 of South AVales, was found dead in his bed, and 
 the uncle, asserting he had been assassinated by 
 the secret emissaries of a neighbouring Norman 
 baron, collected the mountaineers of the south, 
 and began a fierce and successful warfare, in 
 which he was presently joined by his old allies, 
 GwjTaned, the Prince of North W:des, and Owen 
 Cy^'elioch, the leader of the clans of Powisland. 
 One Norman casUe fell after another, and, when 
 hostilities had continued for some time, the Welsh 
 pushed their incursions forward into the level 
 country. The king, turning at length his atten- 
 tion from the chiu-ch quai-rel, which had absorbed 
 it, drew together an army " as well of English- 
 men as strangers," and hastened to the Welsh 
 marches. At his approach the mountaineers 
 withdrew " to their starting-holes " — their woods 
 and strait passages. Henry, without regai-d to 
 difficulties and dangers, followed them, and a 
 general action was fought on the banks of the 
 Cieroc. The Welsh were defeated, and fled to their 
 uplands. Heniy, still following 
 them, peneti-ated as far as the 
 lofty Berwin, at the foot of which 
 he encamped. A sudden storm 
 of rain set in, and continued until 
 all the streams and torrents were 
 fearfully swollen, and the valley 
 was deluged. Meanwhile the 
 natives gathered on the ridges 
 of the mountain of Berwin; but 
 it appears to have been more 
 from the war of the elements 
 than of man that the king's army 
 letreated in gi'cat disorder and 
 with some loss. Henry had 
 hitherto showedhimseKremai'k- 
 ably free from the cruelty of 
 his age, but his mind was now 
 embittered, and in a hasty mo- 
 ment he resolved to take a bar- 
 barous vengeance on the persons of the hostages 
 whom the Welsh princes had placed in his hands, 
 seven years before, as pledges of their tranquillity 
 and allegiance. The eyes of the males were picked 
 out of theii- heads, and the noses and ears of the 
 females were cut off. The old clu-oniclers hardly 
 increase our hoiTor when they tell us that the 
 victims belonged to the noblest families of Wales." 
 
 1 Gervast; Newbrifj.; Gixald Camb. Uin.: Dicdo. 
 
 This revei-se in England was soon followed by 
 successes on the Continent. A fornudable insur- 
 rection broke out in Brittany against Henry's 
 subservient ally Conan, who applied to him for 
 succour, according to the terms of the treaty of 
 alliance subsisting between them. The troops of 
 the king entered by the frontier of Normandy, 
 mnler pretext of defending the legitimate Earl of 
 the Bretons against his revolted subjects. Henry 
 soon made himself master of Dol, and several 
 other towns, which he kept and garrisoned with 
 his own soldiers. Conan had shown himself 
 utterly incajiable of managing the fierce Breton 
 nobles, by whose excesses and cruelties the poor 
 people were ground to the dust. Henry's power 
 and abilities were well known to the suffering 
 Bretons, and a considerable party, including the 
 priests of the country, rallied round him, and 
 hailed him as a deliverer.- Submitting in part 
 to the force of circumstances and the wishes of 
 Heniy, and in part, perhaps, following his own 
 indolent inclinations, Conan resigned the remnant 
 of his authority into the hands of his protector, 
 who governed the state in the name of his son 
 Geoffrey, and Conan's heiress Constantia, the 
 espousals of these two children being prematurely 
 solemnized. In the month of December, 116C, 
 Henry kept his court in the famed old castle on 
 Mount St. Michael, whence his eye could range 
 over the long and extending land of Brittanv; and 
 
 Mount St. Michael, Normandy.'— Cotman's Anti<imtics of Nonnandy. 
 
 there he was visited by William the Lion, who 
 had recently ascended the Scottish throne on the 
 death of his brother, Malcolm IV. 
 
 2 Script. Rer, Franc.; Dani, Hist, de la Bretagne. 
 
 3 This singxilar rock is situated in the pi-oviiicso of Nonu-indy 
 and tlie modem department of Manche iu France, seven miles 
 soutli west from Avianclica. It is about 400 ft. high, ijicluding 
 the building; above five miles iu ciixumference; and lies threo 
 miles from the coast, on sandy flats that are covered each tide, 
 and thus isolate it from the m.-unland. It was once strongly
 
 262 
 
 niSTOEY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil akd Milit.\ry. 
 
 While still abroad, he ordered a tax to be levied 
 on all liis subjects, whether English or foreign, 
 for tlie support of the war in the Holy Laiul, 
 wliich was taking a turn more and more unfa- 
 vourable to the Christians; but at that very time 
 his peace was broken by his own war with the 
 church and the unremitting hostility of Becket. 
 In the month of May the banished archbishop 
 went from Pontigny to Vezeley, near Auxerre, 
 and, encouraged by the pope, he repaired to the 
 church on the gi'eat festival of the Ascension, and 
 mounting the pulpit there, " with book, bell, and 
 candle," solemnly ciu'sed and pronounced the sen- 
 tence of excommunication against the defenders 
 of the Constitutions of Clarendon, the detainers 
 of the sequestrated property of the churcli of 
 Canterbury, and those who imj^risoned or perse- 
 cuted either laymen or clergy on his account. 
 This done, he more particulai-ly excommunicated 
 by name Richard de Lucy, Joycelin Baliol, and 
 four- other of Henry's corn-tiers and prime favour- 
 ites.' The king was at Chinon, in Anjou, when 
 he was startled by this new sign of life given by 
 his adversary. Though in general a great mas- 
 ter of his feelings, Henry was subject to excesses 
 of ungovernable fury, and on this occasion he 
 seems fairly to have taken leave of his senses. 
 He cried out that they wanted to kill him, body 
 and soul — that he was wretched in being sm-- 
 rounded by cowards and traitors, not one of 
 whom thought of delivering him from the insuji- 
 jiortable vexations caused him by a single man. 
 He took off his cap and dashed it to the ground, 
 undid his girdle, threw his clothes about the 
 room, tore off the silk coverlet from his bed and 
 rolled upon it, and gnawed the straw and rushes 
 — for it appears that this mighty and splendid 
 monarch had no better bed." His resentment 
 did not pass away with this paroxysm ; and after 
 writing to the pope and the King of France, he 
 tlireatened that, if Becket should retm-n and con- 
 tinue to be sheltered at the abbej' of Pontigny, 
 which belonged to the Cistercians, he would seize 
 all the estates appertaining to that order within 
 his numerous dominions. The threat was an 
 alarming one to the monks, and we find Becket 
 removing out of Burgundy to the town of Sens, 
 where a new asylum was ajipointed him by 
 Louis. A paltry war was begun and ended by 
 a truce, all within a few months : it was fol- 
 lowed the next year by another war, equally 
 
 fortified, but is now used as a state prison. Duke Eollo of Nor- 
 mandy is said to liave endowed the monastery whicli crowns St. 
 Michael's Jlouut on the fourth day after his baptism into tlie 
 Christian faith. Richard I. of England greatly enlarged the 
 church, and added spacious buildings for a body of monks of the 
 Benedictine order. The base of tlie mount is surrounded with 
 high thick walla, fl.anked with semicircular machicol.ated towei-s 
 and bastions. Toward the west end its sides present only steep, 
 black, bare, pointed rocks. The portions lying in an opposite di- 
 
 short and still more inglorious for the French 
 king; for although he had excited fresh dis- 
 turbances in Brittany and Maine, and leagued 
 himself with some of Henry's revolted barons 
 of Poietou and Aquitaine, he gained no ad- 
 vantage whatever for himself, was the cause of 
 ruin to most of his allies, and was compelled to 
 conclude a peace at the beginning of the year 
 IICO. Nothing but an empty pride could have 
 been gratified by a series of feudal oaths; but 
 the designations given to his sons on this occa- 
 sion, by the English king, contributed to fatal 
 consequences which hapjiened four j'ears later. 
 Prince Henry of England, his eldest son, did 
 homage to his father-iu-law, the King of France, 
 for Anjou and Maine, as he had formerly done 
 for Normandy; Prince Eichard, his second son, 
 did homage for Aquitaine; and Geofii-ey, his 
 third son, for Brittany: and it was afterwai'ds 
 assumed that these ceremonies constituted the 
 boys sovereigns and absolute masters of the seve- 
 ral dominions named. At the same time the two 
 kings agreed upon a marriage between Prince 
 Eichard of England, and Alice, another daughter 
 of the King of France, the previous treaty of 
 matrimony with the King of Arragon being set 
 aside. Sixteen months before these events Henry 
 lost his mother, the Empress Matilda, who died 
 at Rouen, and was buried in the celebrated ab- 
 bey of Bee, which she had enriched with the do- 
 nations of her piety and penitence. 
 
 About this time Henry was prevailed upon by 
 the pope, the King of France, and by some of his 
 own friends, to assent to the return of Becket 
 and his jjarty. The Kings of France and Eng- 
 land met at Montmirail, and Becket was admitted 
 to a conference. Henry insisted on qualifying 
 his agreement to the proposed terms of accom- 
 modation by the addition of the words, " saving 
 the honour of his kingdom," a salvo which Becket 
 met by another on his part, saying that he was 
 willing to be reconciled to the king, and obey him 
 in all things, " saving the honour of God and the 
 chui'ch." Upon this, Henry, tm-niug to the 
 King of France, said, " Do you know what would 
 happen if I were to admit this reservation? That 
 man would interpret everything displeasing to 
 himself as being coutraiy to the honour of God, 
 and would so invade all my rights: but to show 
 that I do not withstand God's honour, I will here 
 offer him a concession — what the greatest and 
 
 rection incline in a comparatively easy slope, and are covered w ith 
 houses that follow in successive lines, leaving but a scanty space 
 for some small gardens, in which the vine, the fig-tree, and the 
 almond flourish in great luxm-iance. The waUs of the castellated 
 abbey impend, and jut out in bold, decided masses; and the 
 whole is crowned by the florid choir of the abbey chm-ch. 
 
 I Ejiist. S. Thomcv; liog. Hove.; Gervam. 
 
 " Scrijit. Rer. Franc. Henry seems to have acted in this ra.ad 
 way on more than one occasion.
 
 A.D. IhU — 1172.J 
 
 UENKY II. 
 
 2(1 3 
 
 lioliest of Ills predecessors ditl unto tlie least of 
 mine, that let him do vnito me, and I am con- 
 tented thcrewitli." All present exclaimed that 
 this was enough— that the king liad humbled 
 himself enough. But Beclcet still insisted on his 
 salvo; upon which the King of France said he 
 seemed to wish to Be " gi'eater than the saints, 
 and better than St. Peter;" and the nobles pre- 
 sent murmured at his unbending pride, and said 
 he no longer merited an asylum in France. Tlie 
 two kings mounted their horses and rode away 
 without saluting Becket, who retired much cast 
 down. No one any longer offered him food and 
 lodging in the name of Louis, and on his Journey 
 back to Sens he was reduced to live on the cha- 
 rity of the common people.' 
 
 In another conference the obnoxious clauses 
 on either side were omitted. The business now 
 seemed in fair train; but when Becket asked 
 from the king the kiss of peace,' which was the 
 usual termination to such quai-rels, Henry's ir- 
 ritated feelings prevented him from granting it, 
 and he excused himself by saying it was only a 
 solemn oath taken formerly, in a moment of pas- 
 sion, never to kiss Becket, that hindered him 
 from giving this sign of perfect reconciliation. 
 The primate was resolute to waive no privilege 
 and no ceremony, and this conference was also 
 broken off in auger. Another quarrel between 
 the two kings, and an impotent raising of ban- 
 ners on the part of Louis, which thi'eatened at 
 first to retard the reconciliation between Henry 
 and his primate, were in fact the cavises of has- 
 tening that event; for hostilities dwindled into a 
 truce, the truce led to another conference between 
 the sovereigns, and the conference to another 
 peace, at which Henry, who was apprehensive 
 that the pope would finally consent to Becket's 
 aa-dent wishes, and permit him to excommuni- 
 cate his king by name, and pronounce an inter- 
 dict against the whole kingdom, slowly and re- 
 luctantly pledged his word to be reconciled forth- 
 with to the dangei-ous exile. On the 22d of July, 
 1170, a solemn congi-e.ss was held in a spacious 
 and most pleasant meadow,^ between Freteval 
 and La Fertc-Bernard, on the borders of Tour- 
 aine. The king was there before the archbishoji ; 
 and as soon as Becket appeared, riding leisurely 
 towards the tent, he spurred his horse to meet 
 him, and saluted him, cap in hand. They then 
 rode apart into the field, and discoursed toge- 
 ther for some time in the same familiar manner 
 as in by-gone times. Then retui-ning to his at- 
 tendants, Henry said that he found the arch- 
 
 ' Vila S. Tlioma; Script. Rer. Franc; Oervase: BpUt. S. 
 T/io]tue. 
 
 ^ See a curious discourse on kisses of peace in Ducuiigo, Gloss, 
 in voc. Osciduni Pads. 
 
 * In pi-ato aiiuxnUshito. Script, iit-r. Franc. 
 
 bishop in the best possible disposition, and that 
 it would be sinful in him to nourish rancour any 
 longer. 
 
 The primate came up, accompanied by tlie 
 Archbishop of Sens and other piiests, and the 
 forms of reconciliation were completed; always, 
 however, excepting the kiss of peace, which, 
 according to some, Henry promised he would 
 give in England, where they would soon meet.' 
 The king, however, condescended to hold Becket's 
 stirrup when he mounted. By their agi-eement, 
 Becket was to love, honour, and serve the king 
 in a.s far as an archbishop could " render in the 
 Lord service to his sovereign;" and Henry was 
 to restore immediately all the lands ami livings, 
 and privileges of the church of Canterbury, and 
 to furnish Becket with funds to discharge his 
 debts, and make the journey into England. 
 These terms were certainly not all kept: the 
 lands were not released for four moutlis; and, 
 after many vexatious delays, Becket was obliged 
 to borrow money for his journey. While tan-y- 
 ing on the French coast, he was several times 
 warned that danger awaited him on the opposite 
 shore. This was not improbable, as many reso- 
 lute men had been suddenly driven from the 
 church lands on which they had fattened for 
 years, and as he was kno'mi to carry about his 
 person letters of excommunication from the pope 
 against the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops 
 of London and Salisbmy, whom he held to be 
 his chief enemies, and who were men likely to 
 adopt strong measures to prevent his promulgat- 
 ing the ten-ible sentence. He was even assured 
 that Eanulf de Broc, a knight of a family who 
 all hated him to the death, and who had himself 
 boasted that he would not let the archbishop live 
 to eat a single loaf of bread in England, was 
 lying with a body of soldiers between Canterbury 
 and Dover, in order to intercept him. But 
 nothing could move Becket, who said seven years 
 of absence were long enough both for the shep- 
 herd and his flock, and that he would not stop 
 though he were sure to be cut to pieces as soon 
 as he landed on the opposite coast. The only use 
 he made of the warnings he received, was to con- 
 fide the letters of excommunication to a skilful 
 and devoted messenger, who, preceding him some 
 short time, stole into England without being sus- 
 pected, and actually delivered them publicly to 
 the three bishops, who were as much startled as 
 if a thunderbolt had fallen at their feet. This 
 last measure seems to have had as much to do 
 with Becket's death as any anger of the king's. 
 As he was on the point of embarking, a vessel 
 arrived from England. The sailoi-s were asked 
 what were the feelings of the good English people 
 
 ' Filz-Stcphin; Epist. S. Thoiiiai.
 
 2()l 
 
 lllbTOItY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil axd Mimtart. 
 
 towards their archbishop. They repHed, that the 
 people would hail his return with transports of 
 joy. This was a good omen, and he uo doubt 
 relied much more on the po])uhir favour than on 
 the protection of John of Oxford, one of the royal 
 chajjlains, and some others whom Hemy liad 
 sent to accompany him. He sailed from France 
 in the same gloomy month of the year in which 
 he had begun his exile, and, avoiding Dover, 
 landed at Sandwich on the 1st of December. At 
 the news of his arrival, the marineM, the peasants, 
 and the working people generally, and the Eng- 
 lish burgesses flocked to meet him ; but none of 
 the I'ich and powerful welcomed him; and the 
 fu-st persons of rank he saw presented themselves 
 in a menacing attitude. These latter were a 
 sheriff of Kent, Eeginald de Warenne, Ranulf de 
 Broc (who had ridden across the country from 
 Dover), and some relatives and allies of the three 
 excommunicated bishop.s, who carried swords 
 under their tunics, and drew them when they 
 approached the primate. John of Oxford con- 
 jm'ed them to be quiet, lest they should make 
 their king pass for a traitor; but it is probable 
 that the determined countenance of the English 
 multitude made more impression on them than 
 his peaceful words. They retired to their castles, 
 and spread a report among their feudal compeers 
 that Becket was liberating the serfs of the coun- 
 try, who were marching in his train, drunk with 
 joy and hopes of vengeance. At Canterbury, the 
 primate was received with acclamations ; biit still 
 it was only the poor and lowly that welcomed 
 him. A few days after he set out for Woodstock, 
 to visit the king's eldest son, Prince Henry, who 
 had formerly been his pupil. Becket counted 
 much on his influence over the young prince, but 
 the party opposed to him succeeded in preventing 
 his having an opportmiity to exert that influence. 
 A royal messenger met him on his journey, and 
 ordered him, in the name of the prince, not to 
 enter any of the royal towns or castles, but to 
 return and remain within his own diocese. The 
 primate obeyed, and returning, spent some days 
 at Hai-row-on-tlie-Hill, which belonged to the 
 church of Canterbury a considerable time before 
 the Norman conquest. During his stay at Har- 
 row, Becket kept great hospitality; but this virtue 
 wa.s probably exercised in regard to persons of a 
 condition resembling those whom he had bidden 
 to his memorable feast at Northampton, and the 
 only ecclesiastic of rank mentioned as doing liim 
 honour, was the abbot of the neighbouring mo- 
 nastery of St. Alban's. Two of his own clergy, 
 Nigellus de Sackville, who was called "the usiu-p- 
 ing rector of Harrow," and Robert de Broc, the 
 vicai", a relation of his determined foe, Ramdf de 
 Broc, treated him with great disrespect, and when 
 he was departing, maimed the horse which cai-- 
 
 ried his provisions— an offence which was not for- 
 gotten by one who presumed to hurl the thun- 
 derbolts of damnation. Becket returned to Can- 
 terbury, escorted by a host of poor people, armed 
 with rustic targets and rusty lances. On Christ- 
 mas Day he ascended the pulpit in the gi-eat 
 cathedral church, and delivered an eloquent ser- 
 mon on the words, " Venio ad vos mori inter vos" 
 (I come to die among you). He told his congi'c- 
 gation that one of their archbishops had been a 
 martyr, and that they would probably soon see 
 another; " but," he added, " before I depart hence 
 I will avenge some of the wrongs my chiu'ch has 
 sufl'ered dm-ing the last seven years;" and he 
 forthwith excommunicated Eanulf and Robert 
 de Broc, and Nigellus, the rector of Harrow.' 
 This was Becket's last pulilic act. As soon as 
 his messenger from the Fi'ench coast had de- 
 livered his letters, the three bishops excommuni- 
 cated by them hastened to Prince Henry, to com- 
 plain of his insatiate thirst of revenge, and to 
 accuse him of a fixed plan of violating all the 
 royal privileges and the customs of the land; and 
 almost immediately after they crossed over to 
 the Continent, to demand redress from the king. 
 " We implore it," said the bishops, " both for the 
 sake of royalty and the clergy — for your own re- 
 pose as well as ours. There is a man who sets 
 England on fire; he marches with troops of horse 
 and armed foot, prowling round the fortresses, 
 and trying to get himself received within them."^ 
 The exaggeration was not needed; Heni-y was 
 seized with one of his most violent fits of fury. 
 " How ! " cried he, " a fellow that hath eaten my 
 bread — a beggar that first came to my court on 
 a lame horse — dares insult his king and the royal 
 family, and tread upon the whole kingdom; and 
 not one of the cowards I nourish at my table — • 
 not one will deliver me from this turbulent 
 priest ! " ' There were four knights present, who 
 had probably injuries of their own to avenge, and 
 who took this outburst of temper as a sufficient 
 death-warrant; and, without communicating their 
 sudden determination to the king (or, at least, 
 there is no evidence that they did), hurried over 
 to England. Their names were Reginald Fitz- 
 Urse, William Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and 
 Richard Brito ; and they are described by a con- 
 temporary as being bai'ons, and servants of the 
 king's bed-chamber. Their intention was not 
 suspected, nor was their absence noticed ; and 
 while they were riding with loose rein towards 
 the coast, the king was closeted with his council 
 of barons, who, after some discussion, which 
 seems to have occupied more than one day, ap- 
 
 1 Fitz-Sleph.: Vita i 
 Paris. 
 
 2 Scrii>t. Rer. Franc. 
 
 Thomce; Gcrvase; Ro^j. Hove.: Malt. 
 ^ Vita Qiiadripart.
 
 A.D. 115i— 11:2' 
 
 HENRY II. 
 
 265 
 
 jioiuted three commissioners to go and seize, 
 
 according to the forms of law, the person of 
 
 Thomas k Becket, on tlie charge of high treason. 
 But the couspiratoi-s, who had 
 
 bound themselves together by 
 
 an oath, left the commissioneis 
 
 nothing to do. Three days after ,; 
 
 Christmas Day they arrived se- 
 cretly at Saltwood, in the neigh 
 
 bourhood of Canterbury, where 
 
 the De Broc family had a house 
 
 and here, under the cover of 
 
 night, they arranged their plans 
 
 On the 29th of December, having 
 collected a number of adherents 
 to quell the resistanceof Beckett 
 attendants and the citizens, in 
 case any should be oflcred, they 
 proceeded to the monastery of 
 St. Augustine's, at Canterbury, 
 the abbot of which, like nearly 
 all the superior churchmen, was 
 of the king's party. From St 
 Augustine's thej^ went to the ai-ch- 
 bishop's palace, and entering his 
 apartment abruptly, about two hours after noon, 
 seated themselves on the floor without saluting 
 him, or offering any sign of respect. There was 
 a dead pause — the knights not knowing how to 
 begin, and neither of them liking to speak firat. 
 At length Becket asked what they wanted; but 
 still they sat gazing at him with haggard eyes. 
 There were twelve men of the party, besides the 
 four knights. Eeginald Fitz-Urse, feigning a 
 commission from the king, at last spoke. " We 
 come," said he, "that you may absolve the bishops 
 whom you have excommunicated, re-establish the 
 bishops whom you have suspended, and answer 
 for your ofi'ences against the king." Becket re- 
 ]'Iied with boldness and with great warmth, not 
 sparing taunts aud invectives. He said that he 
 had published the Papal letters of excommunica- 
 tion with the king's consent; that he could not 
 absolve the Archbishop of York, whose heinous 
 case was reserved for the pope alone; but that he 
 would remove the censures from the two other 
 bishops, if they would swear to submit to the 
 decisions of Rome. "But of whom then," de- 
 manded Eeginald, " do you hold your archbishop- 
 ric — of the king, or of the pope i" " I owe the 
 spii-itual rights to God and the pope, and the 
 
 ^ St. Augiistme, having converted King Ethelbort from p.igan- 
 ism to the Christian faith, obtauiod of liim both permission and 
 lands for the erection of a monastery, whicli was also to bo the 
 f iture burial-place of the Kings of Kent and Archbishops of 
 Canterbury. For tliis purpose Ethelbert granted liini his palace, 
 wliich stood on the east side of the city oi Canterbm-y, aud just 
 without the walls. Here St. Augustine founded his raon.i-steiy, 
 A.D. GO.i. It was firet dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul, 
 but Archbishop Dunstan (a.d. 987) added St. Augustine, by 
 Vol. I. 
 
 temporal rights to the king." " How ! is it not 
 the king that liath given you all J" Becket's de- 
 cided negative was received with murnmrs, and 
 
 Rem-^ins of the St. Augustine Monastery, Canterbury.! — Brittou's Canterbury. 
 
 the knights furiously twisted their long gloves, 
 Tlu-ee out of the four cavaliers had followed 
 Becket in the days of his prosperity and vain- 
 glory, and vowed themselves his liege men. He 
 reminded them of this, and observed, it was not 
 for such as they to threaten him in his own house; 
 adding also, that if he were threatened by all the 
 swords in England, he would not yield. "We 
 will do more than threaten," replied the knights, 
 and then departed. When they were gone, his 
 attendants loudly expressed theii' alarm, and 
 blamed him for the rough and provoking tone 
 by which he had inflamed, instead of pacifying 
 his enemies; liut the prelate silenced the latter 
 part of their discourse by telling them he had 
 no need of their advice, and knew what he ought 
 to do. The barons, with their accomplices, who 
 seem to have wished, if they could, to avoitl blood- 
 shed, fintling that threats wei-e inellcctual, put on 
 theii' coats of mail, and taking each a sword in 
 his hand, retm-ned to the palace; but finding that 
 the gate had been shut and barred by the terri- 
 fied servants, Fitz-Urse tried to break it open, and 
 the sounds of his ponderous axe rang through the 
 building. The gate might have oH'cred some con- 
 siderable resistance, but Robert de Broc showeil 
 
 which name it has been since commoidy called. In 1011 the 
 hou^e waji plundered by the Danes; in lltiS the chui'ch w.ia 
 almost destroyed by fire; and in 1271 tho monastery was ne.arly 
 ruined by tloods, occasioned by a prodigious storm. In tho year 
 lOlii the back part of tho building adjoining tho great gate was 
 repaii-od with brick. At this place it is siiid Charles I. con- 
 summated his marriage with the Princess llenrietta of Fi-anco 
 ^auno i02ji, at which time it was the mansion of tho Lord Wot- 
 tou of Eactou-JIalherbe.— Grose's AntifjuUks. 
 34
 
 2CG 
 
 IIISTOUY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 them tlie way in at a wiujow. The people about 
 Becket had in vain urged him to talce refuge in 
 tlie church ; but at this moment the voices of the 
 monks, singing vesijers in the choir, striking liis 
 ear, he said he would go, as his duty called him 
 tliither; and, making his cross-bearer precede him 
 with the crucifix elevated, he traversed the clois- 
 ter with slow and measured steps, and entered 
 the church. His sei-vants would have closed and 
 fastened the doors, but he forbade them, saying 
 that the house of God was not to be barricaded 
 like a castle. He had passed through the north 
 transept, and was ascending the steps which led 
 to the clioir, when Reginald Fitz-Urse appeared 
 at the other end of the church, wavmg his sword, 
 and shouting, " Follow me, Io_yal servants of the 
 king!" The other conspii-ators followed him 
 closely, armed like himself from liead to foot, 
 and brandishing their sw^ords. The shades of 
 evening had fallen, and in the obscurity of the 
 vast church, which was only broken here and 
 there by a lamp glimmering before a shrine, 
 Becket miglit easily have hid himself in the dark 
 and intricate crypts mider gi-oimd, or beneath 
 the roof of the old church. Each of these courses 
 was suggested by his attendants, but he rejected 
 them both, and tui'ned boldly to meet the intru- 
 ders, followed or preceded by his cross-bearer, 
 the faithful Edward Gryme, the only one who 
 did not flee. A voice shouted, " Where is the 
 traitor?" Becket answered not; but when Regi- 
 nald Fitz-Urse said, "Where is the archbishop V' 
 he leplied, "Here am I, an archbishojj, but no 
 traitor, ready to sutler in my Saviour's name." 
 Tracy pulled him by the sleeve, saying, " Come 
 hither, thou art a prisoner." He j^ulled back his 
 arm in so violent a manner, that he made Tracy 
 stagger forward. They advised him to fiee or to 
 go with them; and, on a candid consideration, 
 it seems to us that the conspirators, after all, are 
 entitled to a doubt as to whether they really in- 
 tended a murder, or were not rather hui-ried into 
 it by his obstinacy and provoking language. 
 Addi'essing Fitz-Urse, he said, " I have done thee 
 many pleasures; why comest thou with armed 
 men into my chm-ch V They told him that he 
 must instantly absolve the bishops. " Never, 
 until they have ofl'ered satisfaction," was his 
 answer; aud he applied a foul vituperative term 
 to Fitz-Urse. "Then die!" exclaimed Fitz-Uree, 
 striking at his head. The faithful Gryme inter- 
 posed his arm to save his master; the arm was 
 
 1 Gervase: Fitz-Steph.; Gf^Jiie (who was present, and Euifered 
 on the occasion) ; Neicbfig. 
 
 - The piece represents tlie sufferer on his knees after the fii-st 
 Etroke he received from Tracy, who is represented by the figure 
 witli the shield and the uplifted sword tinged with blood. The 
 kniglit who is plunging his sword into the prelate's brains ap- 
 l)ear3 to be Fitz-Urse, by the bears depicted on his surcoat. The 
 other, distinguished by the muzzled boars' or bears' heads, with 
 
 broken, or nearly cut off, and tlie stroke descended 
 on the primate's liead, .and slightly wounded him. 
 Then another voice cried, " Flee, or thou diest;" 
 but still Becket moved not, but with the blood 
 i-unning down his face, he clasped his hands, and 
 bowing his head,exclaimed, "To God, to St. Mary, 
 to the holy patrons of this church, and to St. Denis, 
 I commend my soul and the church's cause." A 
 second stroke brought him to the gi-ound, close 
 to the foot of St. Bennet's altar; a tliird, given 
 with such force that the sword was broken 
 against the stone pavement, cleft his skull, and 
 his brains -were scattered all about. Ore of the 
 conspirators put liis foot on his neck, and cried, 
 "Thus perishes a traitor!"' The conspirators 
 
 Assassination of Beceet.2 — From an ancient painting on a 
 board hung at the head of the tomb of Hemy IV. in Can- 
 terbury Cathedral. 
 
 then withdrew, without encountering any hinder- 
 ance or molestation; but when the fearful news 
 spread tlirougli Canterbiuy and the neighbour- 
 ing country, the excitement was prodigious; and 
 the then inevitable infei'ence was drawn that 
 Becket was a martyi', and miracles would be 
 wrought at his tomb. For some time, however, 
 the superior orders rejected this faith, and made 
 
 the hoiTzontal sword, must be Moi-viUe, as the lower figure, by 
 the position of his sword and appai'ent inactivity, certaiidy is 
 Brito, the last actor in tliis bloody tragedy. Edward Gi'yme, with 
 ten-or strongly marked in liis countenance, a])pe.ars behind the 
 altar with the episcopal cross in liis hand, which histoiy men- 
 tions to have been cai-ried before our prelate as he entered the 
 cliurch, and liis cap besprinkled with blood lies on the middle step 
 of the altar. — Milner's AccouiU o/tlie Murder 0/ Ttiomasa BcckU,
 
 A.I). 11.5-1—1172.] 
 
 m:Ni!V n. 
 
 2C7 
 
 efforts to sujipress the venor.ation of tho coiuiaun 
 people. An edict was published, proUibitinjf all 
 men fiom jn-eachiug in the cliurclies or reijortiii;^ 
 in the public places that Bccliet was a mai-tyr. 
 Ilis old foe, the Archbishop of York, ascended 
 tlie pulpit to announce his dcatli as an infliction 
 of Divine vengeance, saying that he had perished 
 in his guilt and jiride like Pharaoli.' Other eccle- 
 siastics preaclied that the body of the traitor ought 
 not to be allowed to rest in consecrated gi'ound, 
 but ought to be thrown into a ditch, or hung on 
 a gibbet. An attempt was even made to seize 
 the body, but the monks, who received timely 
 warning, concealed it, and hastily buried it in 
 the subterranean vaults of the cathedral. But it 
 was soon found that the public voice, echoed, for 
 its own purposes, by the coui-t of France, was too 
 loud to be drowned in this manner. Louis, whom 
 Henry had so often humbled, wrote to the pope, 
 imploring him to di-aw the sword of St. Peter 
 against that horrible persecutor of God, who sur- 
 jiassed Nero in cruelty, Julian in apo.stasy, and 
 Judas in treachery. He chose to believe, and the 
 French bishops believed with him, that Henry 
 had ordered the murder. 
 
 On receiving the intelligence of Becket's assas- 
 smatiou, Hemy expressed the greatest grief and 
 horror, shut himself up in his room, and refused to 
 receive either food or consolation for three days; 
 and if he took care to have a touching detail of 
 his distressed feelings transmitted to the pope, in 
 which he declared his innocence in the strongest 
 terms, and entreated that censure miglit be sus- 
 pended till tlie facts of the case were examined, 
 such a measure is not to be taken, in itself, as indi- 
 cating tlie insincerity of his grief and horror. He 
 must have felt that his own liasty exclamations 
 had led to the deed, and that all the penalties of 
 a deliberate crime would be exacted at his hand. 
 
 When Hem-y's envoys fii-st ajipeared at Eome 
 — for the pope (Alexander) was no longer a de- 
 pendent exile — they were coldly received, and 
 everything seemed to threaten that an interdict 
 
 * Einsl. Joan. Sarist}. 
 
 1 would be laid U]jon the kingdom, and the kin" 
 excommunicated by name. In the end, however, 
 Alexander rested satistied with an exconnnuni- 
 cation, in general terms, of the murderers and the 
 abettors of the crime. It is said tliat Ileni-y's 
 gold wa.s not idle on this occasion; but the em- 
 ])loyment of it is rather a proof of the notorious 
 rapacity of the cardinals, than of his having a 
 bad cause to plead. In the month of May, 1172, 
 in a council held at Avranches, at which two 
 legates of the pope attended, Henry swore, on the 
 holy gospels and sacred relics — a great concourse 
 of the clergy and people being present — that he 
 had neither ordered nor desired the murder of 
 the archbishop. This o.ath wafi not demanded 
 from him, but taken of liis own free will. As, 
 however, he could not deny that the assassins 
 might have been moved to the deed by his wrath- 
 ful words, he consented to maintain 200 knights 
 during a year, for the defence of the Holy Land ; 
 and to serve himself, if the po]ie should require 
 it, for throe years against the infidels, either tho 
 Saracens in Palestine or the IMoors in Spain, as 
 the church should appoint. At the same time, 
 he engaged to restore all the lands and posses- 
 sions belonging to the friends of the late arch- 
 bishop; to permit appeals to be made to the pope 
 in good faith, and without fraud, reserving to 
 himself, however, the right of obliging such 
 appellants as he suspected of evil intentions to 
 give security that they would attempt nothing 
 abroad to the detriment of him or his kingdom. 
 To these conditions he made an addition too 
 vague to have any practical efi'ect — that he would 
 relinquish such customs against the church as 
 had been inti-oduced in his time. The legates 
 then fully absolved the king; and thus terminated 
 this quarrel, less to Henry's disadvantage than 
 might have been expected.^ 
 
 In the short interval of this negotiation he had 
 added a kingdom to his dominions. The year 
 that followed the death of Becket was made 
 memorable by the conquest of Ireland. 
 
 - Ilovedeii; Epist. S. Thoma;.; Ejnst. Joan. SarUb.; ffertuse.
 
 2(JS 
 
 UISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and MiLiTAuy, 
 
 CHAPTER VI.— CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY.— ad. 10G1-11S9. 
 
 HENRY II., SURNAMED PL.WTAGENET. ACCESSION, A.D. 1154— DE.\TII, A.D. 1189. 
 
 Summary of Irisli hi.story to the time of Henry II. — Slight connection between Enjland and Ireland — Adrian IV. 
 grants Ireland to Henry II. by a Papal bnU — The King of Leinster driven from bis throne — He applies to 
 Henry for aid — Obtains assistance from the Earl of Pembroke — Tlie conquest of Ireland commenced by tlio 
 En^^lish — They take Wexford — Their successes — Pembroke arrives in Ireland — Takes Waterford by storm — The 
 Irish everywliere defeated — Henry arrives to secure Ireland to the English crown — Tlie Irish chiefs tender 
 tlieir submission — The whole country except Ulster conquered — Dissensions in tlie family of Henry 11. — Prince 
 Henry, his eldest son, commences a rebellion — His brotliers join him — They are aided by the King of France 
 and other foreign princes — The Scots invade England — Henry II., in his distress, does petiance at the tomb of 
 Becket — Tlie King of Scots taken prisoner — Henry subdues his sons and their allies — AVisdom and prompti- 
 tude of Henry's proceedings — His sons again rebel — Conflicts on the Continent — Prince Henry dies — Bertrand 
 de Born, the head of the confederacy, taken prisoner — Death of Geoffrey, Henry's second son — Pvicbard, the 
 third son, compelled to submit — Commencement of the Crusades — Preparations in France and England — Fresli 
 rebellion of Richard, son of Henry II. — Its cause — He is countenanced by Philip of France — Henry II. obliged 
 to submit to humbling conditions — He dies brokendiearted at Chinon — P.ichard'6 conduct at bis father's fune- 
 ral—Character of Henry II. — His family — The story of "Fair llosamoud." 
 
 N the preceding Book, the sketch of 
 Irish history was brought down to 
 the reigu of Tui-logh, the commence- 
 ment of which is assigned to the year 
 1064. Turlogh, however, like his 
 uncle Donchad, whom he had suc- 
 ceeded, and Donch.ad's fatlier, the gi-eat O'Brien, 
 is scarcely acknowledged by the old annalists as 
 having been a legitimate king, not being of the 
 blood of the O'Niells of Ulster, in which line, 
 say the rather inventive Irish historians, the 
 supreme sceptre had been transmitted, with 
 scarcely any interruption, till its seizure by Brien, 
 from the time of O'Niell or Nial of the Nine 
 Hostages, who flom-ished in the beginning of the 
 fifth century. The long acquiescence of the other 
 provincial regal houses in the superiority thus 
 assumed by that of Ulster was broken by the 
 usurpation of the Munster O'Briens, and we shall 
 find that ere long both the O'Connors of Con- 
 naught and the MacMurroghs of Leinster made 
 tlieir apjiearance on the scene, as competitors for 
 the prize of chief dominion, along with the other 
 two families. The whole history of the country 
 from this date is merely the history of these con- 
 tests for the cro\^-n, of which contests we confine 
 oui'selves to the following summary. 
 
 Tm-logh, who kept his court in the palace of 
 his ancestors, the Kings of Munster, at Kinkora, 
 in Clare, died there in July, 1086. His second 
 son, Murtach or Murkertach, acquired the sole 
 possession of the throne of Munster by the death 
 of one of his two brothers, and the banishment 
 of the other; but his attempt to retain the su- 
 preme monarchy in his family was resisted by 
 the other provincial kings, who united in sup- 
 
 porting, against his claims, those of Domnal Mac- 
 Lochlin, or Donald MacLachlan, the head of the 
 ancient royal house of O'NieU. At last,after much 
 fighting, it was arranged, at a solemn convention 
 held in 1094, that the island should be divided 
 between the two competitors — the southern half, 
 called Leath Mogh, or Mogh's Half, remaining 
 subject to Murtach, and the northern, called 
 Leath Cuinn, or Conn's Half, being resigned to 
 the dominion of MacLochlin. This was a well- 
 known ancient division, which, in former times, 
 even wlien the nominal sovereignty of the whole 
 country was conceded to the Kings of Ulster, 
 had often left those of Munster in possession not 
 only of the actual independence, but of a shai-e of 
 the supremacy over both Connaught and Lein- 
 ster; for the line of partition was drawn right 
 across the island from tlue neighbom'hood of the 
 town of Galway to Dublin, and consequently cut 
 through each of these provinces. With this real 
 equality in extent of dominion and authority be- 
 tween the two houses, one circumstance chiefly 
 had for a long period held in check the rising 
 fortunes of that of Munster, the law or custom, 
 namely, of the succession to the crown in that 
 province, which was divided into two jjrineijjali- 
 ties, Desmond or South Munster, and Thomond 
 or North Munster, the reigning families of which, 
 by an arrangement somewhat similar to that 
 which has been described as anciently subsisting 
 in the Scottish monarchy,' enjoyed the supreme 
 sovereignty alternately. The two lines of jirinces 
 derived this right of equal jjarticipation from the 
 will of their common ancestor Olill Ollum; those 
 
 ■ See vol. i. p. 141.
 
 A.D. 1064—1189.1 
 
 HENRY II. 
 
 269 
 
 of Desmoiul, wliieh coniprelieiuled tlie prospiit 
 comities of Kerry, Cork, and Waterford, being 
 descended from that lying's eldest son Eog.an, 
 whence the people of that principality were called 
 Eog;xnactha or Eugeni.ans; while tlie princes of 
 Tbomoud, which consisted of Clare, Limerick, and 
 the gi-eater part of Tipperary, were sprung from 
 his second son Cormac Cas, whence their subjects 
 took tlie name of Dalgais or Dalcassians. But 
 Brien Boru, liimself of the Dalcassian family, 
 had begun his course of inroad upon the ancient 
 institutions of his country by setting at defiance 
 the rights of his Eugeuiau kindred, and had pos- 
 sessed himself, by usurpation, of the provincial 
 throne of Munster, before he seized u]ion the 
 supreme power. The Munster kings had ever 
 since continued to be of his race. 
 
 The compact between MacLochlin and Mur- 
 tach did not put an end to their contention. Se- 
 veral more battles were fonght between them, 
 till at length, in 1103, Mm-tach sustained a defeat 
 at Cobha, in Tyi-one, which so greatly weakened 
 his power as to prevent him from ever after 
 giving his adversary any serious annoyance. 
 They continued to reign, however — MacLochlin 
 at Aileach or Alichia, in Donegal, Murtach at 
 Cashel— till the death of the latter, in 1119, after 
 he had spent the last three or four years of his 
 life iu a monastery, the management of affairs 
 having been meanwhile left in the hands of his 
 brother Dermot. From the date of the death of 
 Murtach, MacLochlin is regarded as having been 
 sole monarch; but he also died in 1121. 
 
 Fifteen years of confusion followed, during 
 which a contest between vai-ious competitors for 
 the supreme authority spread war and devasta- 
 tion over every part of the country. At last, in 
 1136, Turlogh or Tordelvao O'Connor, King of 
 Connaught, was acknowledged monarch of all 
 Ireland; the ancient sceptre of the O'Niells thus 
 passing a second time into a new house. O'Con- 
 nor, however, had to maintain himself on the 
 throne he had thus acquired by a great deal of 
 hard fighting with his neighbours and rivals. 
 Connor O'Brien, the King of Munster, who had 
 vigorously opjiosed his elevation, and his succes- 
 sor Turlogh O'Brien, did not cease to dispute his 
 power, till the overthrow of the latter at the 
 great battle of Moinmor, fought in 1151, placed 
 Munster for the moment completely under the 
 tread of the victor. O'Brien was driven from 
 his kingdom, and the territory was again divided 
 into two principalities, over which O'Connor set 
 two princes of the Eugenian house, that had 
 some time before joined him in his contest with 
 the Dalcassians. A few years after, however, 
 the expelled king was restored by the interfer- 
 ence of Murtogli O'Lochliu, or Murtach Mac- 
 Lachlan, O'Niell, the King of Ulster, and the 
 
 legiliniate heir of the ancient nionarclis of Ire- 
 land, who now also took arms to recover for liim- 
 self the throne of liis ancestors. With this new 
 rival, O'Connor, for whom his martial reign has 
 procured from the annalists the title of The 
 Cireat, continued at war during the remainder of 
 his life; and at his death, in 11.56, O'Locblin was 
 acknowledged supreme king. Some opposition 
 was made to his accession by Roderick O'Connor, 
 the son of the late king, and liis successor to the 
 provincial throne of Connaught; but he also, at 
 hust, as well as the Princes of ^lunster and Lein- 
 ster, acquiesced in the restoration of the old 
 sovereign house, and submitted to O'Niell. 
 
 The rule of ISIm-togh O'Lochlin was distin- 
 guished by vigour and ability; but its close was 
 unfortunate. He was killed along with many of 
 his nobility, in 1166, in a battle with some in- 
 surgent chiefs of his own province of Ulster; to 
 whom he had given abundant cause for taking 
 up arms against him, if it be true that, after 
 having been professedly reconciled to one of 
 them, with whom he had had a quarrel, and 
 sealing the comp.act by the acceptance of host^ 
 ages, he had suddenly seized the unfortunate 
 chief, together with three of his friends, and 
 caused his eyes to be put out, and them to be put 
 to death. On his decease the sovereignty of Ire- 
 land devolved upon his rival, Roderick O'Connor, 
 of Connaught, the son of its former possessor, 
 O'Connor the Great. 
 
 Up to this time almost the only connection be- 
 tween England and Ireland was that of the com- 
 merce carried on between some of the opposite 
 ports; scarcely any political intercom-se had ever 
 taken place between the two countries. Her 
 church, indeed, attached Ireland to the rest of 
 Christendom; and some correspondence is still 
 preserved, that passed between her kings and pre- 
 lates and the English archbislio]>s Laufranc and 
 Aiiselm,relating chiefly to certain points in which 
 the latter conceived the ecclesiastical discipline 
 of the neighbouring island to stand in need of re- 
 formation. The bishops also of the Danish towns 
 in Ireland appear to have been usually conse- 
 crated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. But 
 almost the single weU-autheuticated instance of 
 any interference by the one nation in the civil 
 affairs of the other since the Norman conquest, 
 was in the rebellion of Robert de Belesme, iu the 
 beginning of the reign of Henry I., when that 
 nobleman's brother, Arnulph de Montgomery, is 
 said by some of the Welsh chroniclers to have 
 passed over to Ireland, and to have there ob- 
 tained from King Miu-taeh O'Brien, both sup- 
 plies for the war and the hand of his daughter 
 for himself. It is saiil, indeeil, that both the 
 Conqueror and Heniy I. had mcilitated the sub- 
 jugation of Ireland; and i\Ialmesbury alhrma
 
 270 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militaky. 
 
 that the latter English king had Murtach and 
 his successora so entirely at liia devotion, that 
 they wrote nothing but adulation of Idni, nor 
 did anything but what he ordered. 
 
 It would ajipear that a project of conquest had 
 been entertained by Hemy II., from the very 
 commencement of his reign. The same year in 
 which he came to the throne, witnessed the ele- 
 vation to the popedom of the only Englishman 
 that ever wore the triple crown — Nicholas Break- 
 spear, who assumed the name of Adrian IV. 
 Very soon after his coronation, Henry sent an 
 embassy to Borne, at the head of which was the 
 learned John of Salisbury, ostensibly to congra- 
 tulate Adrian on his accession, but really to so- 
 licit the new pope for his sanction to the scheme 
 of the conquest of Ireland. Adrian granted a 
 bull, in the terms or to the efl'ect desired, and 
 before the end of the same year, the matter was 
 submitted by Hemy to a gi'eat council of his 
 bax-ons ; but the imdertaking was opposed by 
 many of those present, and especially by his 
 mother, the empress ; and in consequence it was 
 for the time given up. 
 
 Henry's attention was not recalled to the sub- 
 ject till many yeai-s after. The com-se of the 
 story now carries us back again to Ii-eland, and 
 to another of the provincial kings of that country 
 of whom we have yet said nothing — Dermond 
 MaoMurrogh, or Dermot MaoMuvchad, King of 
 Lageuia or Leinster. This prince had early sig- 
 nalized himself by his sanguinary ferocity, even 
 on a stage where all the actors were men of blood. 
 So far back as the year 1140, in order to break 
 the power of his nobility, he had seventeen of 
 the chief of them seized at once, all of whom 
 that he did not put to death he deprived of then- 
 eyes. His most noted exploit, however, was of 
 a different character. Dervorgilla, a lady of 
 gi-eat beauty, was the wife of Tiernan O'Euarc, 
 the Lord of Breffuy, a district in Leinster, and 
 the old enemy of MacMm-rogh. The sworn foe 
 of her husband, however, was the object of Der- 
 vorgilla's guilty passion; and, at her own sug- 
 gestion, it is said, when her husband was absent 
 on a military expedition, the King of Leinstci' 
 came and carried her off. This happened in the 
 year 1153, when the supreme sovereignty was in 
 the possession of Tm-logh O'Connor. To him 
 O'Euai-c applied for the means of avenging his 
 wi'ong, and received from him such effective as- 
 sistance as to be enabled to recover both his wife 
 and the property she had cai-ried off with her. 
 But from this time Macilurrogh and O'Ruarc 
 kept up a spiteful contest, with alternating for- 
 tunes, for many years. So long as Turlogh lived, 
 O'Ruarc had a steady ally in the common sove- 
 reign, and the King of Leinster was effectuallj' 
 kept in check by their imited power. The suc- 
 
 ceeding reign of O'Lochlin, on the other hanil, 
 was, for the whole of the ten yeai-s that it lasted, 
 a jieriod of triumphant revenge to JNlacMurrogh. 
 But the recovery of the supremacy, on O'Loch- 
 lin's death, by the house of O'Connor, at last 
 put an end to the long and bitter strife. A 
 general combination was now formed against 
 the King of Leinster; King Roderick, the Loixl 
 of Breffuy, and his father-in-law, the Prince of 
 Meath, united their forces for the avowed pur- 
 pose of driving him from his kingdom; they 
 were joined by many of his own subjects, both 
 Irish and Danish, to whom his tj'rauny had ren- 
 dered him odious; and O'Ruarc put himself at 
 the head of the whole. MacMurrogh made some 
 effort to defend himself ; but finding himself de- 
 serted by all, he sought safety in flight, and left 
 his kingdom for the present to the disposal of his 
 conquerors. They set another prince of his own 
 family on the vacant throne. Meanwhile the 
 deposed and fugitive king had embai'ked for 
 England, to seek the aid of King Hemy, in re- 
 turn for which he was ready to acknowledge 
 himself the vassal of the English monarch. On 
 landing at Bristol, some time in the summer of 
 1167, he found that Henry was on the Continent, 
 and thither he immediately proceeded. Hemy, 
 when he came to him in Aquitaine, was "busied," 
 says Gu-aldus, "in gi-eat and weighty affairs, yet 
 most courteously he received him and liberally 
 rewarded him. And the king, having at ku'ge 
 and orderly heard the causes of his exile, and of 
 his repair unto him, he took his oath of allegi- 
 ance and swore him to be his true vassal and 
 subject, and thereupon granted and gave him 
 letters-patent in manner and form as followeth: 
 ' Henry, King of England, Duke of Normandy 
 and Aquitaine, and Eai-1 of Anjou, unto all his 
 subjects. Englishmen, Normans, Scots, and all 
 other nations and people being his subjects, send- 
 eth greeting. Whensoever these our letters shall 
 come unto you, know ye that we have received 
 Dermond, Prince of Leiustei-, into our protec- 
 tion, grace, and favour; wlierefoi'e, whosoever 
 within our jurisdiction will aid and lieliJ him, 
 our trusty subject, for the recovery of his land, 
 let him be assiu-ed of oui- favour and license in 
 that behalf."" 
 
 It would scai'cely appear, from the tenor of 
 these merely permissive letters, that Hemy looked 
 forward to any result so important as the conquest 
 of Ireland; the other "great and weighty allairs" 
 had long withdi-awn his thoughts from that pro- 
 ject; and embarrassed both by his wai' with the 
 French king, and his more sex-ious contest with 
 
 ' ffiraWtts Cambrensis (Gerald the WelskmaH). This ^mte^■'3 
 real name was Gerald Barry. He was nearly related to some 
 of the chief pereonages who figui-e in the story of the conquest 
 of Ireland, and he was living in Ireland at the time.
 
 A.v. 10G4-1189.] 
 
 HENRY IT. 
 
 271 
 
 Beeket at home, he was at present as little as ever 
 in a condition to resume the serious consideration 
 of it. MacMurrof;li, however, returned to Kng- 
 laud, well satisliod with what he had got. "j\nd 
 by his daily journeying," jiroceeds Giraldus, "he 
 came at length unto the noble town of Bristow 
 (Bristol), wdiere, because shijJS and boats did 
 daily repair, and come from out of Ireland, he, 
 very desirous to hear of the state of his people 
 and countiy, did, for a time, sojourn and make 
 his abode; and whilst he was there, he would 
 oftentimes cause the king's letters to be openly 
 read, and did then offer great entertainment and 
 jiromised liberal wages to all such as would help 
 or ser\-e him ; but it served not." At length, how- 
 ever, he chanced to meet Richard de Clare, Earl 
 of Pembroke, surnamed Strongbow, with whom 
 he soon came to an agreement. Strongbow, on 
 the promise of the hand of Dermoud's eldest 
 daughter, Eva, and the succession to the throne 
 of Leinster, engaged to come over to Ireland, with 
 a sufficient military force to effect the deposed 
 king's restoration, in the following spring. A 
 short time after this, Dermond, having gone to 
 the town of St. David's, there made another en- 
 gagement with two young noblemen, Maurice 
 Fitz-Gerald and Robert Fitz-Stephen, both sons of 
 tlie Lady Nesta, a daughter of one of the Welsh 
 ]irinces, who, after having been mistress to 
 Henry I., married Gerald, governor of Pembroke 
 Castle, and Loi'd of Carew, and finally became 
 mistress to Stephen de Marisco or Maurice, con- 
 stable of the castle of Cardigan : Fitz-Gerald was 
 her son by her marriage, and Fitz-Stephen by her 
 Last-mentioned connection. To these two half- 
 Ijrothers, in consideration of their coming over 
 to him with a certain force at the same time with 
 Strongbow, Bermond engaged to grant the town 
 of Wexford, with two cantreds (or hundi-eds) of 
 land adjoining, in fee for ever. These aiTange- 
 ments being completed, "Dermond," continues 
 the historian, " being weary of his exiled life and 
 distressed estate, and therefore the more desirous 
 to draw homewards for the recovery of his own, 
 and for which he had so long travelled and sought 
 abroad, he first went to the church of St. David's 
 to make his orisons and prayers, and then, the 
 weather being fair and wind good, he adventiu-ed 
 the seas about the middle of August, and having 
 a merry passage, he shortly landed in his ungrate- 
 ful country; and, with a very impatient mind, 
 hazarded himself among and through the middle 
 of his enemies; and, coming safely to Ferns, he 
 was very honourably received of the clergy there, 
 who after their ability did refresh and succour 
 him. But he for a time dissembling his princely 
 estate, continued as a private man all that winter 
 following among them." It would ajipear, how- 
 ever, that he was rash enough to show himself in 
 
 arms in the beginning of the year 1160, before 
 any of his promised English succours had arrived; 
 ami that the result of this premature attempt was, 
 that he was again o:usily beaten by King Roderick 
 and O'Ruarc. 
 
 His allies in England meanwhile did not for- 
 get him. Robert Fitz-Stephen w:is the first to set 
 out about the beginning of May, accompanied 
 with thirty gentlemen of his own kindred, sixty 
 men in coats of mail, and 300 picked archers; 
 they shipped themselves in three small ves.sels, 
 and sailing right across from St. David's Head, 
 landed at a creek now called the Bann, about 
 twelve miles to the south of the city of Wexford. 
 Along with them also came the i>aternal uncle of 
 Strongbow, Hervey de Montemarisco or Mouut- 
 maiirice. On the day following, two more vessels 
 arrived at the same place, beai-ing Maurice of 
 Prendergast, "a lusty and a hardy man, born 
 about Milford, in West Wales," with ten more 
 gentlemen and sixty archers. MacMurrogh was 
 not long in hearing of their arrival, on which he 
 instantly sent 500 men to join them, under his 
 illegitimate son Donald, and " very shortly after, 
 he himself also followed with great joy and glad- 
 ness." ' 
 
 It was now determined to niai'cli upon the town 
 of Wexford. " When they of the town," jn'oceeds 
 the narrative, " heai-d thereof, they being a. fierce 
 and unridy people, but yet much trusting to their 
 wonted fortune, came forth about 2000 of them, 
 and were determined to wage and give battle." 
 On beholding the imposing armour and array of 
 the English, however, they drew back, and, setting 
 the suburbs on fire, took refuge within the walls 
 of the town. For that day all the efforts of the 
 assailants to effect an entrance were vain. The 
 next morning, after the solemn celebration of 
 mass, they made ready to renew the assault upon 
 the town; but the besieged, seeing this, lost heai-t, 
 and saved them further trouble by offering to 
 surrender. Fom- of the chief inhabitants were 
 given up to MacMurrogh as pledges for the fide- 
 lity of their fellow-citizens ; and he, on his jiai-t, 
 immediately performed his promise to his English 
 friends, by making over to Fitz-Stephen and Fitz- 
 Gerald the town that had thus fallen into his 
 hands, with the territories thereunto adjouiing 
 and appertaining. To Hervey of Mountmam-ice 
 he also gave two cantreds, lying along the sea- 
 side between Wexford and Waterford. 
 
 This first exploit was followed up by an incur- 
 sion into the district of Ossory, the jirince of 
 which had well earned the enmity of MacMur- 
 rogh by having some yeai'S before seized his eldest 
 son, and put out his eyes. The Ossorians at fii-st 
 boldly stood their gi-ound, and as long as they 
 
 1 GiraUlus CatiibrensU.
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militap.t. 
 
 kept to tlpir bogs and woods, the invading force, 
 tliougli now increased by an accession from the 
 town of Wexford to about 3000 men, made little 
 impression upon tliem; but at last they were im- 
 prudent enough to allow themselves to be di-awn 
 into the open country, wlien Robert Fitz-Stephen 
 fell upon them with a hodj of horse, and threw 
 down the ill-ai-med and unprotected multitude, 
 or scattered them in all directions ; those that 
 were thrown to the ground the foot - soldiei-s 
 straight despatched, cutting off their heads with 
 their battle-axes. Three hundred bleeding heads 
 were laid at the feet of MacMurrogh, "who, turn- 
 ing every of them, one by one, to know them, did 
 then for joy hold up both his hands, and with a 
 loud voice thanked God most highly. Among 
 these there was the head of one whom especially 
 and above all the rest he mortally hated; and he, 
 taking up that by the hair and ears, witli his teeth 
 most horribly and cruelly bit away his nose and 
 lips!" So nearly did an Irish king of the twelfth 
 century resemble a modern savage chief of New 
 Zealand. After this disaster, the people of Ossory 
 made no fiu-ther resistance ; they suffered their 
 invaders to march across the whole breadth of 
 their country, mui-dering, spoiling, burning, and 
 laying waste wherever they passed. 
 
 All this had taken place befoi-e anything was 
 heard of MacMui-rogh's old enemies. King Ro- 
 derick and O'Ruarc, whom surprise and alarm 
 seem to have deprived at first of the power of 
 action. But news was now brought that the 
 monarch was levying an army, and that the 
 princes and nobility of the land were, at his call, 
 about to meet in a great council at the ancient 
 royal seat of Tara, in Meath. On receiving this 
 intelligence, MacMurrogh and his English friends, 
 withdrawing from Ossory, took up a position of 
 great natui-al strength in the midst of the hills 
 and bogs in the neighbourhood of Ferns. Their 
 small force was speedily surrounded by the nume- 
 rous ai-my of King Roderick, and it would seem 
 that, if they could not have been attacked in 
 their stronghold, they might have been starved 
 into a sm-reuder, at no great expense of patience. 
 But, notwithstanding the inferiority of their 
 numbers, Roderick appears to have been a good 
 deal more afraid of them than they were of him; 
 disunion had broken out in the council, which, 
 after assembling at Tara, had adjourned to Dub- 
 lin; and the Irish king had probably reason to 
 fear that, if he could not bring the affair to a 
 speedy termination, he would soon be left in no 
 condition to keep the field at all. 
 
 In this feeling he attempted, by presents and 
 promises, to seduce Fitz-Stephen; failing in that, 
 he next tried to persuade MacMm-rogh to come 
 over and make common cause with his country- 
 men against the foreigners; at last, when there 
 
 was reason to apprehend that the enemy, encou- 
 raged by these manifestations of timidity, were 
 about to come out and attack liim, he actually 
 sent messengers to sue for peace; on which, after 
 some negotiation, it was agreed that MacMurrogh 
 should be reinstated in his kingdom. 
 
 It does not appear what terms MacMurrogh 
 professed to make in liis treaty for his English 
 allies. It is affirmed, that it was agreed between 
 him and Roderick, that he should send them all 
 home as soon as he had restored his kingdom to 
 order, and in the meantime should pi-ocure no 
 more of them to come over. But other forces 
 were already on their way from England, and 
 those in Ii-eland looked to remain there. This 
 was soon proved by the an-ival at Wexford of 
 two more ships, bringing over Maurice Fitz-Ge- 
 rald, with an additional force of ten gentlemen, 
 thirty horsemen, and about 100 archers and foot 
 soldiers. On receiving this accession of strength, 
 MacMurrogh immediately cast his recent engage- 
 ments aud oaths to the wands. His firet move- 
 ment with his new auxiliaries was against the city 
 of Dublin, which had not fully returned to its 
 submission : he soon compelled the citizens to sue 
 for peace, to swear fealty to him, and to give 
 ho.stages. He then sent a party of lys English 
 friends to assist his son-in-law, the Prince of 
 Limerick, whose territory had been attacked by 
 King Roderick. The royal forces were speedily 
 defeated. 
 
 From this time MacMurrogb and the English 
 adventurers seem to have raised their hopes to 
 nothing short of the conquest of the whole coun- 
 try. By their advice, he despatched messengers 
 to England to urge the Earl of Pembroke to come 
 over with his force immediately. All Leinster, 
 he said, was completely reduced, and there could 
 be no doubt that the eai-l's presence, with the 
 force he had engaged to bring with him, would 
 soon add the other provinces to that conquest. 
 
 Strongbow deemed it prudent, before he took 
 any decided step, to inform King Henry of the 
 proposal, and obtain the royal sanction to com- 
 ply \vith it. Henry, with his usual deep policy, 
 would only answer his request evasively; but the 
 earl ventm-ed to understand him in a favom-able 
 sense, and returned home with his mind made u]) 
 for the venture. As soon as the winter was over, 
 he sent to Ireland, as the first portion of his force, 
 ten gentlemen and seventy archers, under the 
 command of his i-elatious, Raymond Fitz- William, 
 sm-named, from his corpulency, Le Gros, or the 
 Gross, afterwards altered into the Anglo- Irish 
 name of Grace. He and his company landed at 
 a I'ock about four miles east from the city of 
 Waterford, then called Dundonolf, afterwai-da 
 the site of the castle of Diindorogh, in the begin- 
 ning of May, 1170. They had sciu'cely time to
 
 A.D. 10C4— 1189.] 
 
 nENRY n. 
 
 273 
 
 cast a tvoncli and to build themselves a tempo- 
 rary fort of turf and twigs, when they were at- 
 tacked by a body of 3000 of the people of Water- 
 ford; but this mob were scattered with frightful 
 slaughter. Five hundred of them wei-e cut down 
 in the pursuit; and then, as Girahlus asserts, the 
 " victors, being weary with killing, cast a great 
 number of those whom they had taken prisoners 
 headlong from the rocks into the seas, and so 
 drowned them." 
 
 The Earl of Pembroke did not set sail till the 
 beginning of Sejatember. He then embarked at 
 Milford Haven, with a force of 200 gentlemen, 
 and 1000 inferior fighting men, and on the vigil 
 of St. Bartholomew, landed in the ueighbom-hood 
 of the city of Waterford, which still remained 
 unreduced. On the following day, Raymond le 
 Gros came with gi-eat joy to welcome him, at- 
 tended by forty of his company. " And on the 
 morrow, upon St. Bartholomew's Day, being 
 Tuesday, they displayed their bannera, and in 
 good array they marched to the walls of the city, 
 being fully bent and determined to give the as- 
 sault." The citizens, however, defended them- 
 selves with gi-eat spirit; and the assailants were 
 
 Eegih\u> 3 on THE Ring Totter, Waterfoid * — From the Pictoi'esque AJmuaJ 
 
 tmce driven back from the w;Jls. But Ray- 
 mond, who, by the consent of all, had been ap- 
 pointed to the command, now " having espied a 
 little house of timber, standing half upon posts 
 without the walls, called his men together, and 
 encouraged them to give a new assault at that 
 place; and having hewed down the posts where- 
 upon the house stood, the same fell down, to- 
 
 ' The Irish name of this tower is Dundery, or the King's Fort. 
 Its history is brieBy recorded in the following inscription placed 
 over the doorway : — ■' In the year 1003, this Tower was erected 
 by Reginald the Dane— in 1171, was held as a fortress by Strong- 
 bow, Earl of Pembroiie— in 1463, by statute 3d of Edward IV., a 
 mint was established here— in ISl'J, it was re-edified in its ori- 
 ginal form, and appropriated to the police establishment by 
 the corporate body of the city of Waterford." 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 gether with a piece of the town wall; and then, 
 a way being thus opened, they entered into the 
 city, and killed the iieojile in the streets without 
 pity or mercy, leaving them lying in great heaps; 
 and thus, with bloody hands, they obtained a 
 bloody victory." MacMurrogh arrived along with 
 Fitz-Gerald and Fitz-Stejjhen while the work of 
 plunder and carnage was still proceeding; and it 
 was in the midst of the desolation which fol- 
 lowed the sacking of the miserable city, that, 
 in fulfilment of his compact with Strongbow, the 
 maiTiage ceremony was solemnized between his 
 daughter Eva and that nobleman. 
 
 Immediately after this they again spread their 
 banners, and set out on their march for Dublin. 
 The inhabitants of that city, who were mostly 
 of Danish race, had taken the precaution of 
 stationing troojjs at different points along the 
 common road from Waterford ; but INIacMur- 
 rogh led liis followers by another way among 
 the mountains, and, to the coustemation of the 
 citizens, made his appearance befoi-e the walls 
 ere they were aware that he had left Water- 
 ford. A negotiation was attempted, but, while it 
 was still going on, Raymond and his friend, Miles 
 or ililo de Cogan, '' more wil- 
 -___^_^*^ - ling to purchase honour in the 
 
 >5?*^S^*f V- wars than gain it in peace, 
 
 with a company of lusty young 
 gentlemen, suddenly ran to the 
 walls, and, giving the assault, 
 brake in, entered the city, and 
 obtained the victory, making 
 no small slaughter of their 
 enemies." Leaving Dublin in 
 charge of IMilo de Cogan, 
 Strongbow next proceeded, on 
 the instigation of MacMm-- 
 rogh, to invade the district of 
 r ileath, anciently considered 
 the fifth province of Ireland, 
 and set apart as the peculiar- 
 territory of the supreme sove- 
 reign, but which King Rode- 
 rick had lately made over to his friend O'Ruarc. 
 Tlie Anglo-Norman chief, although he seems to 
 have met with no resistance from the inhabitants, 
 now laid it waste from one end to the other. While 
 all this was going on, the only effort in behalf 
 of his crown or his country that Roderick is re- 
 corded to have made, was the sending a rhetorical 
 message to ISIacMurrogh, commanding him to re- 
 tiu-n to his allegiance and dismiss Ids foreio'n 
 allies, if he did not wish that the life of his son, 
 whom he had left in pledge, should be sacrificed. 
 To this threat MacMurrogh at once replied that 
 he never would desist from his enterprise until 
 he had not only subdued all Connaught, but won 
 to himself the monarchy of all Irekuid. Infu- 
 35
 
 274 
 
 HISTORY Of ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Military. 
 
 riated by Ibis defiance, the other savage instantly 
 gave orders to cut off MacjMurrogh's son's head. 
 
 But now the adventurers were struck on a sud- 
 den with no little perplexity by the arrival of a 
 proclamation from King Henry, prohibiting the 
 passing of any more ships from any port in Eng- 
 land to Ii-eland, and commanding all his subjects 
 now in the latter country to return from thence 
 before Easter, on pain of forfeiting all their lands 
 and being for ever banished from the realm. A 
 consultation being held in this emergency, it was 
 resolved that Raymond le Gros should be des- 
 patched to the king, who was in Aquitaine, with 
 letters from Strongbow reminding Henry that 
 he had taken up the cause of Dermond MacMur- 
 rogh (as he conceived) with the royal permission; 
 and acknowledging for himself and his com- 
 panions, that whatever they had acquired in Ire- 
 land, either by gift or otherwise, they considered 
 not their own, but as held for him then-' liege 
 lord, and as being at his absolute disposal. The 
 immediate effect of the proclamation was to deal 
 a hea^'j blow at their cause, by the discourage- 
 ment it spread among their adherents, and by 
 cutting off tlie supplies both of men and victuals 
 they had counted upon receiving from England. 
 
 Things were in this state when a new enemy 
 suddenly appeared — a body of Danes and Nor- 
 wegians brought to attack the city of Dublin by 
 its former Danish ruler, who had made his escape 
 when it was lately taken, and had been actively 
 employed ever since in preparing and fitting out 
 this armament. They came in sixty ships, and 
 as soon as they had landed proceeded to the 
 assault. " They were all mighty men of war," 
 says the description of them in Giraldus, " and 
 well appointed after the Danish manner." The 
 attack was made upon the east gate of the city, 
 and Milo de Cogan soon found that the small 
 force under his command could make no effective 
 resistance. But the good fortune that had all 
 along waited upon him and his associates was 
 still true to them. His brother, seeing how he 
 was pressed, led out a few men by the south 
 gate, and attacking tlie assailants from behind, 
 spread such confusion tlu'ough their ranks, that 
 after a short effort to recover themselves, they 
 gave way to then- panic and took to flight. Gre.at 
 numbers of them were slain, and their leader 
 himself, being taken prisoner, so exasperated the 
 Anglo-Norman commander when he was brought 
 into his pi-esence, that Milo de Cogan ordered his 
 head to be struck off on the spot. 
 
 It would appear to have been not long after 
 this that Dermond MacMuiTogh died, on which 
 it is said that Strongbow took the title and as- 
 sumed the authority of King of Leinster in right 
 of his wife. Raymond le Gros had now also re- 
 turned from Aquitaine ; he had delivered the 
 
 letter with which he was charged, but Henry 
 had sent no answer, and had not even admitted 
 him to his presence. Meanwhile, on the side of 
 the Irish, there was one individual, Laurence, 
 Archbishop of Dublin, who saw that the moment 
 was favourable for yet another effoi-t to save the 
 country. Chiefly by his exertions, a great con- 
 federacy was formed of all the native princes, 
 together with those of Man and the other sur- 
 rounding island.s, and a force was assembled 
 ai-ound Didjlin, witli King Roderick as its com- 
 mander-in-chief, of the amount, it is affirmed, 
 of 30,000 men. Strongbow and Raymond, and 
 Maurice Fitz-Gerald had all thrown themselves 
 into the city, but their united forces did not 
 make twice as many hundreds as the enemy 
 numbered thousands. For the space of two 
 months, however, the investing force appears to 
 have sat stiU in patient expectation. Their hope 
 was, that want of victuals would compel the gai-ri- 
 son to surrender ; and at length a message came 
 from Strongbow, and a negotiation was opened; 
 but before any arrangement was concluded, an 
 extraordinai-y turn of fortune suddenly changed 
 the whole jjosition of affau-s. While the besieged 
 were anxiously deliberating on what it woidd be 
 best for them to do, Donald Kavenagh, a son of 
 the late King MacMurrogh, contrived to make 
 his way into the city, and informed them that 
 their friend, Fitz-Steplien, was besieged by the 
 people of Wexford in his castle of Carrig, near 
 that place, and that, if not relieved within a few 
 days, he would assuredly, with his wife and chil- 
 dren, and the few men who were with him, fall 
 into the hands of the enemy. Fitz-Gerald pro- 
 posed, and Ra3'mond seconded the gallant coun- 
 sel, that, rather than seek to jn'eserve their lives 
 with the loss of all besides, they .should make a 
 bold attempt to cut their way to their distressed 
 comi-ades, and, at the worst, die like soldiers and 
 knights. The animating appeal nerved every 
 heart. With aU speed each man got ready and 
 buckled on his armour, and the little band was 
 soon set in array in three divisions. All things 
 bemg thus arranged, about the horn- of nine in 
 the morning, they suddenly rushed forth from 
 one of the gates, and threw themselves upon the 
 vast thi'ong of the enemy, whom their sudden 
 onset so bewildered and confounded, that, while 
 many were killed or tlirown to the ground, the 
 bold assailants scarcely encountered any resist- 
 ance, and in a short time the scattered host was 
 flying before them in all directions. King Ro- 
 derick himself escaped with difficult}', and almost 
 undi'essed, for he had been regaling himself with 
 the luxm-y of a bath. Great store of victuals, 
 armour, and other spoils was found in the de- 
 serted camp, with which the victors returned at 
 night to the city, and there set everything in
 
 A.D. 10G4— 11S9.] 
 
 UENUY II. 
 
 275 
 
 order, and left a garrison well prov 
 necessaries, before setting out the next morning 
 to the relief of theii- frieads at Wexford. 
 
 %^ 
 
 tn'it»ttif-'.u**> 
 
 Site of Carrick or Carrig Castle, near Wexford.* — From Hall's Ireland, 
 
 The earl and his company marched on unop- 
 posed till they came to a narrow pass in the midst 
 of bogs, in a district called the Odrone or Idi-one. 
 Here they found the way T>locked up by a nume- 
 rous force, but after a sharp action, in which the 
 Irish leader fell, they succeeded in overcoming 
 this hinderance, and were enabled to pursue their 
 joiu-ney. They had neai'ly reached Wexford 
 when intelligence was received that Fitz-Stephen 
 and his companions were in the hands of the 
 enemy. After standing out for several days 
 against the repeated attacks of 3000 men, he and 
 those with hira, consisting of only five gentlemen 
 and a few archers, had been induced to deliver 
 up the fort, on receiving an assurance, solemnly 
 confirmed by the oaths of the Bishops of Kildare 
 and Wexford, and others of the clergy, that Dub- 
 lin had fallen, and that the earl, with all the rest 
 of their friends there, were Idlled. They promised 
 Fitz-Stephen that, if he would sm-render, they 
 would conduct him to a place of safety, and se- 
 cure him and his men from the vengeance of 
 King Roderick. But as soon as they had got 
 possession of their persons, " some," according to 
 Gh-aldus, "they killed, some they beat, some they 
 wounded, and some they cast into prison." Fitz- 
 
 I " A little further on and we arrive at a most interesting relic 
 of ancient days — the site of CaiTick Cattle, the first castle that 
 wa3 built by the Anglo- Xonnans in Ireland — not the small an- 
 tique tower which, situated on the pinnacle of a rock, foi-ms one 
 of the most strikingly picturesque objects in the kingdom, and 
 which has long usurped the name and ' honoui-s' of the fortress 
 of Fitz-Stephen. The true castle of the first Anglo-Norman 
 'adventurer and conqueror' — was on the opposite side of the 
 fiver, a stately pile that cro^vned the summit of a nigged hill, 
 barely enough of which now remains to mark the space it occu- 
 pied — fur the plough has passed over nearly the whole of it." — 
 Hall's Irelaiul. 
 
 .•ided with all ! Stephen himself they carried away wilh them to 
 an island called Bcg-Eri, or Little Erin, lying not 
 f;u- from Wexford, having fled thither, after set- 
 ting tliat town ou fire, when 
 they he;u'd that Strongbow 
 had got out of Dublin, and 
 was on his raai'ch to their dis- 
 trict. They now sent to in- 
 form the earl that, if he con- 
 tinued his approach, they 
 would cut off the heads of 
 Fitz-Stephen and his com- 
 panions. DcteiTcd by this 
 threat, Strongbow deemed it 
 best to turn aside from Wex- 
 ford, and to take his way to 
 Waterford. 
 
 Meanwhile, it had been de- 
 termined to make another ap- 
 plication to Henry; and Her- 
 vey of Mountmaurice had been 
 despatched to England for 
 that purpose. On reaching 
 Waterford, Strongbow found Hervey there, just 
 returned, with the king's commands that the earl 
 should repair to him without delay. He and 
 Hervey accordingly took ship. As soon as they 
 landed, they proceeded to where Henry was, at 
 Ne^vnham, in Gloucestershire. He had returned 
 from the Continent about two months before, and 
 had ever since been actively employed in collect- 
 ing and equipping an army and fleet, and making 
 other preparations for passing over into Ireland. 
 When Strongbow jiresented himself, he at first 
 refused to see him; but after a short time he con- 
 sented to receive his offei'S of entire submission. 
 It was agi-eed that the earl should suiTcnder to the 
 king, in full possession, the city of Dublin, and all 
 other towns and forts which he held along the 
 coast of Ireland; on which condition he should 
 be allowed to retain the rest of his acquisitions 
 under subjection to the English crown. This 
 arrangement being concluded, the king, attended 
 by Strongbow and other lords, embai-ked at Mil- 
 ford. His force consisted of 500 knights or 
 gentlemen, and about 4000 common soldiers. Ho 
 lauded at a place now called the Crook, near 
 Waterford, ou the 18th of October, 1171. 
 
 In the short interval that had elajised since 
 the departm-e of Strongbow, another attack had 
 been made upon Dublin by Tieruan O'lluare; but 
 the forces of the Ii-ish prince were dispersed with 
 great slaughter in a sudden sally by Milo de 
 Cogan. This proved the last efibrt, for the pre- 
 sent, of Irish independence. When the English 
 king made his appearance in the country, he 
 foimd its conquest already achieved, and nothing 
 remaining for him to do except to receive the 
 eagerly-oflered submission of its various princes
 
 27(5 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil asd Miutaky. 
 
 and chieftains. Tlie fii-st that presented them- 
 selves were the citizens of Wexford, wlio had so 
 treacherously obt;uncd ])ossession of the person 
 of Fitz-Stephen ; .and they endeavoured to make a 
 merit of this discreditable exploit — bringing tlieir 
 prisoner along with them as a rebellious subject, 
 whom thuy had seized while engaged in making 
 war Avithout the consent of his sovereign. Before 
 Henry removed from Waterford, the King of 
 Cork, or Desmond, came to him of his own accord, 
 and took his oath of fealty. From "Waterford he 
 proceeded with his army to Lismore, and thence 
 to Cashel, near to which city, on the banks of the 
 Suir, he received tlie homage of the other chief 
 
 Cashzl.'— Drairn by J. S. Prout, from his sketch on the bpoi. 
 
 Munster prince, the King of Thomond or Lime- 
 rick. The Prince of Ossoiy, and the other in- 
 ferior chiefs of Munster, hastened to follow the 
 example of their betters; and Henry, after receiv- 
 ing then- submission, and leaving gai-i-isons both 
 in Cork and Limerick, retm-ned through Tippe- 
 rary to Waterford. Soon after, leaving Robert 
 Fitz-Bei-nard in command there, he set out for 
 Dublin. Wherever he stopped on his march, the 
 neighbouring princes and chiefs i-epaired to him, 
 and acknowledged themselves his vassals. Among 
 them was Tieman O'Ruare. "But Roderick, 
 
 ' On the rock of Cruihel, which rises boldly from a fei-tUe 
 plain, formerly was Bitu,ated the residence of the Kings of Mun- 
 ster. Hero, in 10G6, we ,ire informed by Sir James Ware (Ware's 
 works!, that he has seen the stone on which those reguli were 
 inaugurated, and where tliey are said to have received their 
 subordinate toparchs. The tomi, now much decayed, is chiefly 
 phlnted roimd the southern and eastern sides of a mass of lime- 
 stone. .4. remarkable stone-roofed chapel, and a round tower 
 adjoining, are ascribed to Cormac, son of Cullenan, King of 
 Munster and Bishop of Cashel, about the beginning of the tenth 
 century, whose ancestor, Angus, was a disciple of the famous 
 Patric at the period of the introduction of Christianity into Ire- 
 land i but the chapel is considered, upon better authority, to 
 
 the monarch,'' it is added, " came no nearer than 
 to the side of the river Shamion, which divideth 
 Connaught from Meath, and there Hugh de Lacy 
 and William Fitz-Aldelm, by the king's command- 
 ment, met him, who, desh'ing peace, submitted 
 himself, swore allegiance, became tributary, and 
 did put in (as all others did) hostages and pledges 
 for the keeping of the same. Thus was all Ire- 
 land, saving Ulster, brought in subjection." 
 After this, Henry kept his Christmas in Dublin, 
 the feast being held in a temporary erection, con- 
 structed, after the Irish fashion, of wicker work, 
 while the L-ish princes, his guests, were aston- 
 ished at the sumptuousness of the entertainment. 
 Hemy remained in Ireland 
 for some months longer, and 
 during his stay, called toge- 
 ther a council of the clergy at 
 Cashel, at which a number of 
 constitutions or decrees were 
 passed for the regulation of 
 the chm-ch, and the reform of 
 the ecclesiastical discipline, in 
 regard to certain points where 
 its laxity had long afl'orded 
 ^^ matter of complaint and re- 
 
 proach. He is also said, by 
 Matthew Paris, to have held 
 a lay council at Lismore, at 
 which provision was made for 
 the exteusion to Ireland of the 
 English laws. Henry employed 
 aU his arts of policy to attach 
 Raymond le Gros, and the 
 other principal English adven- 
 turers settled in Ireland, to his 
 interest, that he might thereby the more weaken 
 the Earl of Pembroke and strengthen himself. 
 At last, about the middle of Lent, ships arrived 
 both from England and Aquitaine, and brought 
 such tidings as determined the king to lose no 
 time in again taking his way across the sea. So, 
 having appointed Hugh de Lacy to be governor 
 of Dublin, and, as such, his chief representative 
 in his realm of Ii-eland, he set sail fi-om Wexford 
 at sunrise on Easter Monday, the 17th of April, 
 1172, and about noon of the same day, landed at 
 Portfiiman, in Wales. 
 
 have been founded by Cormac MacCarthy, King of Munster and 
 Bishop of Cashel, in the eleveath century. Both the chapel ai.d 
 the round tower were evidently erected prior to the foimdation 
 of the cathedral, which wai built by Donald O'Brien, King of 
 Limerick, immediately before the arrival of the English, towL-ds 
 the latter part of the twelfth centmy. The cathedral is cruci- 
 form, the choir and southern transept embracing Cormac's 
 chapel on two sides. The abbey of the rock of Cashel, of which 
 some remains still exist, was founded by David MatCarweU 
 about 1260. A wall, intended for defence, surroimds the plat- 
 form on which the nuns stand. Some of the bastions belong- 
 ing to tliis waU were standing at the beguming of the present 
 century.
 
 A.D. 1064 
 
 -1180.' 
 
 IIENUY II. 
 
 277 
 
 It ia probable that Henry's very imperfect 
 occupation of Ii'clauil did not greatly increase 
 his resoiu'ces, but it added to his reputation both 
 in England and on the (Continent. The envy that 
 accompanied his successes, and the old jealousy 
 of his power, might have failed to do him any 
 serious injury, or touch any sensitive i)art, but 
 for the dissensions existing in liis own family. 
 At this period the king had four sons living — ■ 
 Heni-y, Kichard, Geo&ey, and John — of the re- 
 spective ages of eighteen, sixteen, fifteen, and five 
 years. He had been an indulgent father, and 
 had made a splendid, and what he considered a 
 judicious provision, for them all. His 
 eldest son was to succeed, not only to 
 England, but to Normandy, Anjou, 
 Maine, and Touraiue; Eichaj-d was 
 invested with the states of his 
 mother, Aquitaine and Poictou ; Geof- 
 frey was to have Brittany, in right of 
 his wife, the daughter of Conan ; and 
 Ireland was destined to be the ap- 
 panage of John. 
 
 At the coronation of Prince Henry 
 by the Archbishop of York, w-hich 
 had ah-eady occasioned much trouble, 
 his consort, the daughter of the 
 French king, was not allowed to be 
 crowned with him; and this omission 
 being resented by Louis, led to fresh 
 quai-rels. The king at last consented 
 that the ceremony should be repeated ; 
 and Margaret was then crowned as 
 well as her husband. Soon after this, 
 the yoimg couple visited the French 
 com-t, where Louis stimulated the 
 impatient ambition of his youthful 
 son-in-law, and incited him to an 
 unnatural rebellion against his own 
 father. It had been the practice in 
 France, ever since the estalvlishmont 
 of the Capetian dynasty, to crown the 
 eldest son during the father's life- 
 time, without giving him any present 
 share of the territories or government; 
 but young Hemy was persuaded by 
 
 niandy. Henry rejected this strange demand, 
 telling the youth to have patience till his deatli, 
 when he would have states and power enough. 
 Ilis son expressed astonishment at the refusal, 
 used very undutiful language, and never more 
 exchanged words of real love or sincere jieace 
 with his parent. The vindictive Eleanor gave 
 encouragement to her son, and fomented his hor- 
 rible hatred; and the "elder king,"' as Henry 
 was now called, was punished for the infidelities 
 which had long since alienated the allections of 
 his wife. Being at Limoges, Raymond, the Karl 
 of Toidouse, who had quarrelled with the King 
 of France, and renounced his alle- 
 giance, went suddenly to Henry, and 
 warned him to have an eye on his 
 wife and son, and make sure of the 
 castles of Poictou and Aquitaine. 
 Without showing his suspicions to 
 5'oung Henry, who was with him, the 
 king contrived to provision his for- 
 tresses, and assure himself of the 
 fidelity of the commanders. On their 
 l^turn from Aquitaine, he and his 
 son stopped to sleep at the town of 
 Ohinon; and during the night the son 
 fled. The father jiursued, but could 
 not overtake the fugitive, who reached 
 Argenton,and thence passed by night 
 into the territories of the French 
 king. 
 
 , , A few davs 
 A.D. 11-3 (March), ^^er the flight 
 
 of Henry, his brothers, Richai'd and 
 Geoftrev, also fled to the French 
 court, aud Queen Eleanor herself, 
 who had urged them to the step, 
 absconded from her husband. Though 
 not for any love that he bore her, 
 the king was anxious to recover his 
 wife; aud at his orders the Norman 
 bishojis threatened her with the cen- 
 sures of the church, imless she re- 
 turned and brought her sons with 
 her. She was seized as she was try- 
 ing to find her way to the French 
 
 Louis, thiit by being crowned, lie Eleanor. Queen of ncNTtT II. '^ com-t (where she must have met her 
 obtained a right of immediate pai*- From the effigy at Fontevraud. f^j.^^^ husband), dressed in man's 
 ticipation; and, as soon as he returned, he ex- 'clothes. Henry, the husband of her old age, was 
 pressed his desire that the king, his father, not so soft and meek towiirds her as Louis, the 
 would resi^ to him either England or Nor- consort of her youthful yeara. He committed 
 
 • Rex senior. 
 
 2 It wa3 commonly understood that the royal effigies at 
 Fontevraud were destroyed diu'ing the French revolution. The 
 depository of our early kings was found by Stothard, in the | 
 course of his researches, in a state of ruin; but proceeding 
 further, ho found the whole of the effigies in a cellai- of one of 
 the buildings adjoining the abbey. When the fury of the Revo- 
 lution had subsided, they were removed from the ruined church 
 to a building called the Tour d'Evraud, where they remained 
 
 for eighteen years; but this being converted into a prison, they 
 were again removed to the place where they were discovered by 
 Stothaid. The effigies are four in number:— Henry If., hia 
 queen Eleanor de Guienne, Richard I., and Isabel d'Aiigoul^me, 
 the queen of John. They have all been i)aiuted and gilt tliroe 
 or four times; and from the style of the last painting, it is pro- 
 bable that it was executed when the effigies were removed from 
 their original situation in the choir. — Stothard's Monum&Uai 
 Ejfigks of Great Britain.
 
 278 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militaht. 
 
 hvv to the custody of one of liis most trustwortliy 
 chatelaius; and with the exception of a few weeks, 
 when her -presence was necessary for a political 
 object, she was kept in confiuement for sixteen 
 years,' and not liberated till after his death. Be- 
 fore matters came to extremities, Hemy despatched 
 two bishops to the French court to demand, in the 
 name of paternal authority, that his fugitive sons 
 should be deli\'cred up to him. Louis received 
 these ambassadors in a public manner, ha\dng at 
 his right hand young Henry, who wore his crown 
 as King of England; and when they recapitu- 
 lated, as usual, the titles and style of their em- 
 ployer, they were told that there was no other 
 King of England than the one beside him. In 
 fact, j-oung Hemy was recognized as sole King 
 of England in a general assembly of the barons 
 and bishops of the kingdom of Fi-ance. King 
 Louis swore fii'st, and his lords swore after him, 
 to aid and assist the son with aU theii- might to 
 expel his father from his kuigdom; ;md then 
 young Hemy swore iii'st, and his brothers swoi-e 
 after him, in the order of their seniority, that 
 they would never conclude peace or truce with 
 their father without the consent and concurrence 
 of the barons of France." A gi'eat seal, like that 
 of England, was maiiufactiu-ed, in order that 
 young Hemy might affix it to his treaties and 
 charters. By the feast of Easter the plans of the 
 rebellious boy and his confederates weve ma- 
 tured. The scheme was bold and extensive; the 
 confederates were numerous, including, besides 
 the King of France, whose reward was not com- 
 mitted to a written treaty, William, King of 
 Scotland, who was to receive aU that his prede- 
 cessor had possessed in Northuiaberland and 
 Cumberland, in payment of his sendees, and 
 Philip, Earl of Flanders, who was to have a 
 grant of the eai-ldom of Kent, with the castles of 
 Dover and Rochester, for his share in the pai-ri- 
 cidal war. 
 
 Like the great Conqixeror under similar' cu-- 
 cumstances, Henry saw himself deserted even by 
 his favom-ite courtiers, and by many of the men 
 whom he had taught the art of war, and invested 
 with the honoui-s of chivahy with his own hands. 
 According to a contemporaiy, it was a painful and 
 desolating sight for him to see those whom he 
 had honoured with his confidence, and intrusted 
 with the care of his chamber, his person, his very 
 life, deserting him, one by one, to join his enemies; 
 for neaa-ly eveiy night some of them stole away, 
 and those who had attended him in the evening 
 did not appear at his call in the morning.^ But 
 Henry's strength of character and consummate 
 abilities were quite equal to the difficidties of his 
 situation, and in the midst of his gi-eatest trouble 
 
 ' Hoved.; It. Diceto; 
 2 Gervase. 
 
 Neub.; 
 
 Script. Rer. Franc. 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 he maintained a cheerful couiitenaiice, and pur- 
 sued his xisual amusements, hunting and hawk- 
 ing, even more than hia wont, and was more gay 
 and aflable than ever towai-ds the companions 
 that remained with him.* His courtiers and 
 knights might flee, but Hemy had a strong party, 
 and wise ministers and commanders, selected by 
 his sagacity, in most of his states, and in Eng- 
 land more than all; he had also money in abun- 
 dance; and these circumstances gave him con- 
 fidence, without relaxing his precaution and 
 exertions. Twenty thousand Br.aban9ons, who 
 sold their services to the best bidder, flocked to 
 the standai'd of the richest monarch of the west 
 of Europe. Not relying wholly on arms, he sent 
 messengers to all the neighboui'ing princes who 
 had sons, to interest them in his favour; and, as 
 his case might be their own, should encourage- 
 ment and success attend filial disobedience, then- 
 sympathy was tolerably complete. In adch'ess- 
 iugthe pope, he worked upon other feelings; and 
 here his present object hvirried him into expres- 
 sions of submission and vassalage, which contri- 
 buted no doubt to form the gromids of f utui-e and 
 dangerous pretensions. He declai-ed that the 
 kingdom of England belonged to the jm-isdiction 
 of the pope, and that he, as king thereof, was 
 bound to him by all the obligations imposed by 
 the feudal law; and he implored the pontiff to 
 defend with his spiritual arms the patrimony of 
 St. Peter. The rebellious son applied to the 
 coiu't of Rome as well as his father; and it may 
 be stated generally, that if the pojies meddled 
 largely with the secular aflau-s of princes, it was 
 not without theii' being tempted and invited so to 
 do. The letter of the " junior king," as the yoimg 
 Hemy was called, was a composition of singulai- 
 impudence and falsehood. He attributed his 
 quarrel with his father to the interest he took 
 in the cause of Becket, and his desh-e of avenging 
 his death. "The villains," he said, "who mm-- 
 dered within the walls of the temple my foster- 
 father, the glorious martjT of Chi'ist, St. Thomas 
 of Canterbury, remain safe and sound ; they still 
 strike their roots in the earth, and no act of royal 
 vengeance has followed so atrocious and unheai-d- 
 of a crime. I could not sufl'er this criminal ne- 
 glect, and such was the fii-st and strongest cause 
 of the present discord; the blood of the mai'tyr 
 cried to me; I could not render it the vengeance 
 and honom-s'that were due to him, but at least 
 I showed my reverence in visiting the tomb of 
 the holy martyr in the view and to the astonish- 
 ment of the whole kingdom. My father was 
 wrathful against me therefore, but I fear not 
 oflending my father when the cause of Christ is 
 concerned."^ The youthful hypocrite made most 
 
 ^ noved.; Mait. Par.: Gere. Vorob. 
 * Scrijit. Rer. Fraiic.
 
 A.D. 10G4-11S9.] 
 
 HENRY II, 
 
 279 
 
 liberal offers to the clnirch; but the pope rejected 
 his application, and even confirmed the sentence 
 of exeonimimication pronounced by the bishops 
 of Normandy against the king's revolted subjects. 
 At the same time a legate was despatched across 
 the Alps with the laudable object of putting an 
 end to the unnatural quarrel by exhortation and 
 friendly mediation; but before he arrived, the 
 sword Wius drawn which it was diflicult to sheathe; 
 for national antipathies, and jiopular interests 
 and passions were engaged, that would not follow 
 the uncertain movements of paternal indulgence, 
 on one side, or fdial repentance on the other. In 
 the month of June, the wai- began on several 
 points at once. Philip, Eai-1 of Flanders, entered 
 Normandy, and gained considerable advantages; 
 but his brother and heir being killed at a siege, 
 he thought he saw the hand of God in the event, 
 and he soon left the coimtry, most bitterly re- 
 penting having engaged in such an impious war. 
 The King of France, with his loving son-in-law. 
 Prince Henry of England, were not more suc- 
 cessful than the Earl of Flanders, and were first 
 checked and then put to rapid flight by a division 
 of the Brabangons. Prince Geoifi-ey, who had 
 been joined by the Eiu-l of Chester, was equally 
 unfortunate in Brittany, and the cause of the 
 confederates was covered with defeat and shame. 
 King Louis, according to his old custom, soon 
 gi-ew weary of the w.ar, and desired .an interview 
 with Henry, who condescended to gi-ant it. This 
 conference of peace was held on an open plain, 
 between Gisors and Trie, under a venerable elm 
 of " most grateful aspect," the branches of which 
 descended to the earth,' the centre of the primi- 
 tive scene where the French kings and the Nor- 
 man dukes had been accustomed for some gene- 
 rations to hold their parleys for truce or peace. 
 
 Instead of leading to peace, the present con- 
 ference embittered the war, and ended in a dis- 
 gi-aceful exhiljition of violence. The Earl of 
 Leicester, who attended with the princes, insidted 
 Henry to his face, and, drawing his sword, woidd 
 have killed or wounded his king had he not been 
 forcibly prevented. Hostilities commenced forth- 
 with; but when Louis was a principal in a war 
 against Henry, it was seldom prosecuted with 
 any vigour, and the rest of that year was spent 
 on the Continent in insignificant operations. In 
 England, however, some important events took 
 place; for Richard de Lucy repulsed the Scots, 
 who had begun to make jncm'sions, burned their 
 town of Ber^vick, ravaged the Lothians, and, 
 on his return from this victorious expedition, 
 defeated and took prisoner the gi-eat Earl of 
 Leicester, who had recrossed the Channel, and, 
 in alliance with Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, was 
 
 ' Ulmiis erat visu gratissima, ramis ad terram rodeuntibus. — 
 Script. Her. Franc. 
 
 A.D. 1174. 
 
 attempting to light the flames of ciril war in tho 
 heart of England. It is honourable alike to 
 Henry and his government and the jieople, that 
 the insurgents never had a chance of success in 
 England. 
 
 The allies now showed more re- 
 solution than during the preceding 
 ycai-, and acted upon a jilan which was well cal- 
 culated to embarrass Henry. Louis, with the 
 junior King of England, attacked the frontiers of 
 Normandy. Geoli'rey tried his fortune again in 
 Brittany. Prince Richard, who began his cele- 
 brated warlike career by fighting against his own 
 father, headed a formidable insurrection in Poic- 
 ton and Aquitaine. Relying on the Norman 
 barons for the defence of Normandy and Brit- 
 tany, Henry m.arehed against his son Richard, 
 and soon took the town of Saintes and the for- 
 tress of Taillebom'g, drove the insurgents from 
 several other castles, and partially restored order 
 to the country. Returning then towai-ds Anjou, 
 he devastated the frontier of Poictou, and was 
 pi-eparing to reduce the castles there, when the 
 Bishop of Winchester arrived with news which 
 rendered the king's jjresence indispensable on the 
 other side of the sea. The Scots, as had been 
 preconcerted, were again pouring into the north- 
 ern counties, and had already taken several towns. 
 Roger de Mowbray had raised the standard of 
 revolt in Yorkshire; Earl Ferrers, joined by Da- 
 vid, Earl of Huntingdon, brother to the Scottish 
 kuig, had done the same in the central counties. 
 In the east, Hugh Bigod, with 700 knights, had 
 taken the castle of Norwich; and at the same 
 time a formidable fleet, prepared by his eldest 
 son and the Earl of Flanders, was ready on the 
 opposite coast to attempt a descent on England, 
 where endeavours were again making to alienate 
 the alTections of the people by the old story of 
 the king being guilty of Becket's murder. The 
 bishop had scai-cely finished his dismal news ere 
 the king, with his com-t, was on horseback for 
 the coast, and, embarking in the midst of a storm, 
 he sailed for England, taking with him, as pri- 
 sonei's, his own wife Eleanor, and his eldest son's 
 wife Margaret, who had not been able to follow 
 her husband to the court of her father. Although 
 he had still maintained an outward appearance 
 of tranquillity, his heart was aching at the re- 
 bellion of his children and the treachery of his 
 friends. Son-ow disposes the mind to devotional 
 feelings, and Henry's liigh powera of intellect 
 did not exempt him from the superstition of the 
 times. Some sincerity may possibly have min- 
 gled in the feelings and motives that dictated 
 the extraordinaiy course he now pursued, though, 
 seeing the political expediency of resorting to a 
 striking measure to remove all doidits from the 
 people, and bring their devotional feelings to his
 
 280 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [UlVIL AND MiLlTABr. 
 
 8ide, we would not venture to affirm that this 
 sincerity was very great, or was the sole motive 
 of his conduct. All attempts to depress the fame 
 of Becket had failed — the pope had recently in- 
 scribed his name in the list of saints and mai-tyrs 
 — the miracles said to be worked over his fester- 
 ing body were now recognized by bishojjs and 
 priests, and reported with amplifications which 
 grew in proportion to their distance from the 
 spot, by the credulous multitude. The English 
 had not had a native saint for a long time, and 
 they determined to make the most of him. It 
 was on the 8th of July that Henry landed at 
 Southamjjton. He had scarcely set foot on shore, 
 when, without waiting to refresh himself after 
 the fatigiies and discomforts of a rough sea voy- 
 age, he mounted his horse and took the neai'est 
 road to Canterbury, performing his pilgrimage 
 in a manner far from being so agi-eeable as those 
 jocund expeditions described by Chaucer a cen- 
 tury and a half later. He took no refreshment 
 save bread and water, and rode on his way by 
 night. As the day dawned he came in sight of 
 the towers of Canterbury Cathedral, still at the 
 distance of some miles, and instantly dismount- 
 ing from his horse, he threw off 
 his royal dress, undid his san- 
 dals, and walked the rest of his 
 way barefoot like the veriest 
 penitent. The roads were 
 rough, and as the king passed 
 through the gateway of Canter- 
 bury, his subjectswere touched 
 and edified by the sight of his 
 blood, which fell at every step 
 he took from his wounded feet, 
 When he ai-rived at the cathe- 
 dral, he descended at once intc 
 the crypt, and, while the bells 
 tolled slowly, he threw himself 
 with sobs and tears upon the 
 grave of Becket, and there re- 
 mained with his face pressed 
 to the cold earth in the pre- 
 sence of many people ; an atti- 
 tude more affecting and con- 
 vincing perhaps than the dis- 
 course of the bishop overhead. 
 
 ingly caused, or even f!esired the death of the 
 saint; but, as possibly the murderers took advan- 
 tage of some words imprudently pronounced, he 
 has come to do penance before the bishops hero 
 assembled, and has consented to submit his naked 
 flesh to the rods of discipline." The bishop con- 
 jured the people to believe the assertions of then- 
 king; and, as he ceased speaking, Henry arose 
 like a spectre, and walked through the church 
 and cloisters to the chapter-house, where, again 
 prostrating himself, and throwing off the upper 
 part of his dress, he confessed to the minor of- 
 fence, and was scourged by all the ecclesiastics 
 present, who amounted to eighty pei-sons. The 
 bishops and abbots, who were few, handled the 
 knotted cords first, and then followed the monks, 
 eveiy one inflicting from throe to five lashes, and 
 sa}"ing, as he gave them, " Even as Christ was 
 scoiu-ged for the sins of men, so be thou sco\irged 
 for thine own sin." The blows, no doubt, were 
 dealt with a light hand, but the whole show was 
 startling, and such as had never before been 
 heard of. Nor was the penance of the king yet 
 over. He retm-ned to the subterranean vault, 
 and a^aii. pro ti i*in_,' liii i^^U by Becket's tomb. 
 
 Crytt ok CAXiraBunv r.iniFPr m.. looKing nonh-wfHt.-Blittous CanteibiUT. 
 
 Gilbert Foliot, I he spent the rest of the day and the following 
 
 formerly Bishop of Hereford, now of London, and | mght in prayers and tears taking ^o nouri^>- 
 ■' ' ' '• ment, and never quitting the spot; but as ne 
 
 the same who, tlu-ee years and a half before, had 
 proposed to throw the body of Becket into a 
 ditch, or hang it on a gibbet, but who now, with 
 the rest, acknowledged him to be a blessed and 
 glorious mai-tyi-, ascended the pulpit aud ad- 
 dressed the multitude. " Be it known to you, 
 as many as ai-e here present, that Hem-y, King 
 of England, invoking, for his soul's salvation, 
 God and the holy martyrs, solemnly protests 
 before you all that he never ordered, or know- 
 
 came so he remained, without carpet or any such 
 thing beneath him.'" At early da.vni, after the 
 service of matins, he ;.scended from the vault 
 and made the torn- of the upper church, praying 
 before all the altars aud relics there. When the 
 ■ose he heard mass, and then, having drunk 
 holy water blessed by the martyr huiiself, 
 
 sun r 
 some 
 
 1 Gcrv. Borob.
 
 A.D. 1064—1189,] 
 
 IIENBY II. 
 
 281 
 
 ,ind having filled a small botlle with the iireci<nia 
 fluid, he mounted his horse and rode to London 
 with a light and joyous heart. A burning fever, 
 however, followed all this fatigue and penance, 
 and confined him for several days to his chamber.' 
 On the fifth night of his malady, a messenger 
 arrived from the north, and announced himself 
 to the suflVring monarch as the servant of Rauulf 
 de Glanville, a name memorable in the history 
 of our laws and constitution, and a most dear 
 friend of Henry. "Is Glanville in health ?" said 
 the king. " My lord is well," replied the servant, 
 " and your enemy, the King of Scots, is his pri- 
 soner." Starting upright, Henry cried, " Repeat 
 those words." The man repeated them, and 
 delivei-ed his master's lettei-s, which fully in- 
 formed the overjoyed king of the fact. On the 
 morning of the 12th of July, Glanville had sur- 
 prised William the Lion as he was tilting in a 
 meadow near Alnwick Castle, with only sixty 
 Scottish lords near him, and had made the whole 
 party captives. By a remarkable coincidence, 
 this signal advantage was gained on the very 
 day (it was said by some on the very hour) on 
 which Heniy achieved his reconciliation with 
 the martyr at Canterbury." 
 
 Indisposition, and the languor it leaves, soon 
 departed, and Henry was again on horseback, 
 and at the head of a numerous and enthusiastic 
 army; for the people of England flocked to his 
 standai'd, and filled the land with an indignant 
 cry against the leaders and abettors of an unna- 
 tiu-al revolt. The insui-gents did not wait the 
 coming of the king, but dispersed in all direc- 
 tions, their chiefs purchasing their pardon by 
 the surrender of their castles. According to a 
 French clu-onicler, so many were taken that it 
 was difficult to find prisons for them all.' The 
 Scots, disheartened by the captm-e of their sove- 
 reign, retreated beyond the border, and peace 
 being restored at home, the -active Henry was 
 enabled, within thi-ee weeks, to cany the army 
 which had been raised to subdue the revolt in 
 England, across the seas to Normandy. 
 
 When the Earl of Flanders, who was now the 
 soul of the confederacy, had made ready to invade 
 England, he counted on the absence of the king, 
 whose prompt return disconcerted that raeasui-e. 
 Changing his plan, therefore, he repaired to Nor- 
 mandy, and joining his forces with those of King 
 Louis and Henry's eldest son, laid siege to Rouen, 
 the capital. But he was scarcely there when the 
 King of England was after him, and surprised 
 
 ^ Ga-xase: Ikn. Hunt,: Gh-ald.; BicHo; Jlovcd.; Neub. Pre- 
 vions to tliis pilgrimago to Canterbury, Henry liad done pen-inco 
 for Backet's murder in the cathedral of Avranches in Normandy. 
 The church is now a ruin, but according to ti-adition, a Hat 
 ptone, with a cup engraved upon it, still marks the spot of kingly 
 Immiliation. — Stothard's Tour iti Norraambj. 
 
 ■ Kmh.: Hovcj.; Gervase. ' kcrijit. Scr. Franc. 
 
 Vol I. 
 
 all his stores and provisions. In a few days the 
 allied army was not only obliged to raise the 
 siege, but also to retreat out of Normandy. 
 Humbled by the rapidity, the geniu.s, and good 
 fortune of the English monai-ch, the confederates, 
 following the advice of Ijouis, the very king of 
 conferences, requested an ai-mistice and a meeting 
 for the arrangement of a general peace. Of his 
 rebellious children, Henry and Geoffrey offered 
 to submit to these arrangements; but young 
 Richard, wlio had begun to taste the joys of war, 
 and the " raptures of the fight," which were to 
 be his greatest pleasures till the hour of Ids death 
 — and who was supported by the restless uobUity 
 of Aquitaine, and was led by the counsels of the 
 indefatigable lord who held Hautefort,' the fa- 
 mous Bertrand de Born — refused to be included, 
 and persisted in open war against his father. 
 But the rash boy lost castle after castle, and, at 
 the end of six weeks, was fain to throw himaclf 
 at the feet of his forgiving parent, and accom- 
 pany liim to the congress or conference. 
 
 The conditions of the peace were made easy by 
 the mildness and moderation of Hemy. He re- 
 ceived from the French king and the Flemish 
 earl all the ten-itories they had overrun since the 
 commencement of the war, and he restored to 
 those princes whatever he had conquered or occu- 
 pied himself. With 07ie important exception, he 
 also set at liberty all his prisoners, to the number 
 of 969 knights. To his eldest son lie assigned, 
 for present enjoyment, two castles in Normandy, 
 and a yearly allowance of £15,000 Angevin 
 money; to Richard, two castles in Poictou, with 
 half tlie revenue of that cai-ldom; to Geoffrey, 
 two castles in Bi-ittany, with half the rents of the 
 estates that had belonged to his father-in-law 
 elect (for the mai-riage was not yet consummated) 
 Earl Conan, with a promise of the remainder. 
 With these conditions the impatient youths pro- 
 fessed themselves satisfied, and they engaged 
 henceforth to love, honour, and obey theii- father. 
 Richard and Geoffrey did homage, and took the 
 oaths of fealty; but Henry, the eldest son, was 
 exempted from these ceremonies. The exception 
 made in liberating the prisoners, was in the im- 
 portant person of the Scottish king, who had 
 been carried over to the Continent, .and thrown 
 into the strong castle of Falaise, where he was 
 kept until the following month of December, 
 when he obtained his enlargement by kneeling to 
 Henry, and acknowledging himself, in (lie set 
 forms of vassalage, his " Uege man against all 
 men." By the degrading treaty of Falaise, the 
 independence of Scotland wa-s nominally sacri- 
 ficed; and from the signing of it in December, 
 1 174, to the accession of Richard I., in December, 
 
 * " Colui oho gi?i tenne Altaforte.' 
 36 
 
 -Dante's /n/enio.
 
 282 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil asd Military. 
 
 A.D. 1175. 
 
 1189, viieii a formal release from all oblioiations 
 was granted for the sum of 10,000 marks, sLe' 
 may be said to have figured as a dependent pro- 
 vince of England.' 
 
 Hem-y now enjoyed about eight 
 years of profound peace; but, as 
 active in civil affairs aa in those of war, he de- 
 voted this time, and all his energies, to the 
 i-cform of the intei-nal administration of his do- 
 minions. His reputation for wisdom, judicial 
 ability, and power, now stood so high in Europe, 
 that Alfonso, Bang of Castile, and his uncle, 
 Sancho, King of Navan-e, who had been disput- 
 ing for some years about the boundaries of their 
 respective territories, turning from the uncertain 
 arbitrament of the sword, referred their differ- 
 ence to the decision of the "just and impartial" 
 English monarch, binding themselves in the mo.st 
 solemn manner to submit to his award, be it 
 what it might. And in the month of Mai-ch, 
 1177, Hemy, holding his eoiu-t at Westminster, 
 attended by the bishops, earls, barons, and jus- 
 tices, both of England and Normandy, heard and 
 discussed the ai-guments proposed on the pai-t of 
 King Alfonso by the Bishop of Palencia, and on 
 the part of King Sancho by the Bishop of Pam- 
 pelima; and, after taking the opinion of the best 
 and most learned of the court, pronounced a wise 
 and conciliating award, with which both ambas- 
 sadors expressed then- entire satisfaction .- 
 
 We have some cm-ious evidence of Henry's 
 pei'sonal activity, as evinced by his rapid change 
 of residence, just at this period of peace and tran- 
 quillity, in a letter addressed to him, in the most 
 familiar terms, by his confidential friend, Peter 
 of Blois. Peter, who was not a timid, loitering 
 wayfarer, or a luxurious, ease-loving chm'chman, 
 but a bold and experienced traveller himself, see- 
 ing that, in the disch.arge of his duty, he had 
 fought his way more than once across the then 
 pathless Alps, in the heart of winter, braving the 
 snow hurricane and the tremendous avalanches, 
 seems to h.ave been lost in amazement at the in- 
 cessant and untirmg progresses of the king. He 
 had just retui'ned from a royal mission to King 
 Louis, the results of which he was anxious to re- 
 port. He tells Henry that he has been hunting 
 after him up and down England, but in vain ! — 
 that when Solomon set down four things as being 
 too hai-d for him to discover, he ought to have 
 added a fifth — and that was, the path of the 
 King of England ! Poor Peter goes on to say, 
 that he really knoweth not whither he is going 
 — that he has been laid up with the dysenteiy at 
 Newport, from fatigue in travelling after his 
 majesty, and has sent scouts and messengers on 
 all sides to look for him. He proceeds to express 
 
 ' Allen's yindication of the Ancient Independence of ScoUand. 
 
 A.D. 1183. 
 
 an earnest wish that Henry would let him know 
 where he is to bo found, as he really has imjwr- 
 tant affairs to treat of, and the ambassadors of 
 the Kings of Spain have .arrived with a great 
 retinue, in order to refer the old quarrel of their 
 masters to his majesty. 
 
 The moment was now approaching when those 
 energies, as yet undiminished by age or the pre- 
 mature decay which they probably caused in the 
 end, were again to be called into full exercise; 
 for foreign jealousies and intrigues, the name and 
 history of his captive wife Eleanor, and the un- 
 ])opularity of the Anglo-Norman rule in the pro- 
 vinces of the South, contributed, with their own 
 impatience, turbulence, and presumption, to di-ive 
 his children once more into rebellion. 
 
 Richard, who was the darling of 
 his imprisoned mother, and who, on 
 account of the more general unpopularity of his 
 father in Aquitaine and Poictou, w;is stronger 
 than his brother.?, was the first to renew the 
 family war. When called upon by his father to 
 do homage to his elder brother, Hem-y, for the 
 duchy of Aquitaine, which he was to inherit, he 
 arrogantly refused. Upon this, young Henry, or 
 the junior king, allied himself with Prince Geof- 
 frey, and marched with an army of Bretons and 
 Brabancons into Aquitaine, where Richard had 
 published his ban of war. The king flew to put 
 an end to these disgraceful hostilities, and having 
 induced his two sons to come into his presence, 
 he reconciled them with one another. But the 
 i-econciliation was rather apparent than real, and 
 Prince Geoffrey had the honnble frankness to 
 declai'e, shortly after, that they could never J30S- 
 sibly live in peace with one another, unless they 
 were united in a common war against then' own 
 father. The recorded gallantries, and the worse 
 whispered ofiences of Eleanor, did not alienate 
 the affections of the people of Poictou and Aqui- 
 taine, among whDm she had been born and 
 brought up. In their eyes she was still theii- 
 chieftainess — the princess of their old native 
 stock; and Henry had no right over them ex- 
 cept what he could claim through her, and by 
 his affectionate treatment of her. Now, he had 
 kept her for years a prisoner, and in their esti- 
 mation it was loyal and right to work for her de- 
 livex-ance, and punish her cruel husband by what- 
 ever means they could command, even to the 
 arming of Eleanor's sons against then- sii-e. In 
 the fervid heads and hearts of these men of the 
 South such feelings became absolute passions; 
 and the graces as well as the ai'dour of their 
 popular poetry wei-e engaged in the service of 
 their c.ajrtive princess. The troubadours, with 
 Bertrand de Born at then- head, never tired of 
 this theme; and oven the local chroniclers raised 
 their monkish Latin into a sort of ]igetical jirosc,
 
 A.D. 10(U— 1189.] 
 
 HEXKY II. 
 
 2'''3 
 
 whenever they touehcd on the woes aiul wrongs 
 of Eleanor — for iu Poictou ami Aquitaino the 
 manifolJ provocations she had given her husband 
 were all unknown or forgotten. 
 
 With the exception of Richard, whose liery 
 nature now and tlien, for transitory intervals, 
 gave access to the tenderer feelings, the ambitious 
 3'oung men seem to have cared little about their 
 mother; but they could raise no such good excuse 
 for being in arms against one parent as that of 
 their anxiety to pi-ocure better treatment for the 
 other; and Henry, and Geofii-ey, and Eichard, at 
 times in unison, and at times separately, con- 
 tinued to take the name of Eleanor as their cri 
 de guerre in the South. These family wars were 
 more frequent, of longer duration, and of far 
 gi-eater importance than would be imagined from 
 the accounts given of them in our popular Eng- 
 lish histories. 
 
 The reconciliation which took place in 1183-4 
 was speedily interrupted; for Bertrand de Born, 
 nearly indifferent as to wdiicli prince he acted 
 with, but who, of the three, rather prefen-ed 
 Henry, on seeing that Richard was inclined to 
 keep his oaths to his father, renewed his in- 
 trigues with the eldest sou, and got ready a for- 
 midable party in Aqultaine, who pressed Prince 
 Henry to throw himself among them. Henry 
 consequently revolted again, and his brother 
 Geoffi'ey soon followed his example. The French 
 sovereign openly announced himself aa the ally 
 of the junior king and the nobles of Aquitaine. 
 As Richard continued steady for a while, the 
 King of England joined his forces with his, and 
 they marched together to lay siege to Limoges, 
 which had opened its gates to Henry and Geof- 
 frey. In little more than a month, however, the 
 younger Henry deserted his pai'tizans of Aqui- 
 taine, and submitted to his father, who forgave 
 him as he had forgiven him before, and once 
 more accepted his oath of fealty. Geoffrey did 
 not on this occasion follow his elde.st brother's 
 example; and the men of Aquitaine and Poictou, 
 now regarding him as then- chief, confirmed him 
 in his resistance, apprehending that the King of 
 England would not extend the remarkable cle- 
 mency he had shown to his children, to men who 
 were strangers to his blood, and who had incensed 
 him by repeated revolt. Prince Henry kept 
 up a private correspondence with Bei-trand de 
 Bom and others of the insui^ents, and this en- 
 abled him to arrange a meeting for the purpose 
 of conciliation. The King of England rode to 
 Limoges, which was still in the hands of the in- 
 surgents, to keep his appointment with his son 
 Geoffrey and the Aquitaine barons: to his sur- 
 prise he found the gates of the town closed against 
 him, althougli he had taken only a few knights 
 with him, and when he applied for admittance. 
 
 he was answered by a flight of aiTows and cross- 
 bow bolts from the rampai'ts, one of which pierced 
 his cuu'ass, while another of thcni wounded a 
 knight at his side. This treacherous-looking oc- 
 cm-rence was explained away as being a mere 
 mistake on the part of the soldiery, and it was 
 subsequently agi-ced that the king should have 
 free entrance into the town. He met his son 
 Geoffrey in the midst of the max-ket-place of Li- 
 moges, and begun the conference for peace; but 
 here again he was saluted by a fliglit of arrows 
 from the battlements. One of these arrows 
 wounded the horse he rode. He ordered an at- 
 tendant to pick up the arrow, and presenting it 
 to Geoffrey with sobs and tears, he said — " O, son ! 
 what hath thy imhappy father done to deserve 
 that thou shouldost make hun a mark for thine 
 arrows?'" 
 
 This foul attempt at assassination is laid by 
 some wTiters to the chai-go of Geoffrey himself; 
 but it is quite as probable that the bows were 
 drawn without any order from the prince, by some 
 of the fiery spnits of Aquitaine, labom'ing under 
 the conviction that their interests were about to 
 be sacrificed in the accommodation between father 
 and son. Prince Henry, who accompanied his 
 fathei', expressed horror at the attempt, and dis- 
 gust at the ob.stinacy of the men of Aquitaine; 
 and he declared he would never more have alli- 
 ance, or peace, or truce with them." Not many 
 days after, he once more deserted and betrayed 
 his sire, and went to join the insurgents, who 
 then held their head-quarters at Dorat, in Poic- 
 tou. The bishops of Normandy, by command 
 of the pope, fuhninated their excommunications; 
 but as Prince Henry had been excommunicated 
 before this, it was probably not the thunders of 
 the church, but other considerations, that in- 
 duced him to abandon the insurgents at Dorat as 
 suddenly e,.=; he had abandoned his father, and to 
 return once more to the feet of the king, who, with 
 unexampled clemency or weakness, once more par- 
 doned him, and not only permitted him to go at 
 large, but to meddle again with political afiairs. 
 Having persuaded his father to adopt measures 
 which cost him the lives of some of his most 
 faithful followers, this manifold traitor, or veriest 
 wheel-about that ever lived, again deserted his 
 banner, and prepared, with his brother Geoffrey 
 and the insm'gent barons of the South, to give 
 him battle. A short time after this revolt, whicli 
 was destined to be his last, and before his pre- 
 parations for aiming at his father's life or thr-one, 
 or both, were completed, a messenger announced 
 to the king that his eldest son had fallen danger- 
 ously sick at Chateau-Marcel, near Limoges, and 
 desii-ed most earnestly that Ids father would for- 
 
 ^ Script. Rev. Franc. 
 
 » Uoved.
 
 284 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil anu Military. 
 
 give him and visit him. The king would have 
 gone forthwith, but liis friends implored him not 
 to hazard his life again among men who had 
 proved themselves capable of so much treachery 
 and cruelty; and they represented that the ac- 
 coimts he had i-eceived might be all a feigned 
 story, got up by the insurgents of Aquitaiue and 
 Poictou, for the worst of purposes. Taking, then, 
 a ring from his finger, he gave it to the Ai-ch- 
 bishop of Bordeaux, and begged that prelate 
 to convey it with all speed to his repentant 
 son, as a token of his forgiveness and paternal 
 affection. He cherished the hope that the youth 
 and robust constitution of the invalid would 
 triumph over the disease; but soon there came a 
 second messenger, to anuoimce that his son was 
 uo more. 
 
 Prince Hemy died at Chateau-Marcel, on the 
 11th of Jime, 1183, in the twenty-seventh year 
 of his age.' In his last agony he expressed the 
 deepest contrition ; he pressed to his lips his 
 father's ring, which had mercifully been delivered 
 to him; he publicly confessed his imdutifulness 
 to his indulgent parent, and his other sins, and 
 ordered the priests to di-ag him by a rope out of 
 his bed, and lay him on a bed of ashes, that he 
 might die in an extremity of penance.- 
 
 The heart of the king was divided between 
 grief at the death of his fii'st-born and rage 
 against the insurgents, whom he held to have 
 been not only the cause of his son's decease, but 
 the impediment which had prevented him from 
 seeing and embracing him in his last moments. 
 The feeling of revenge, however, allying itself 
 with the sense of his immediate interests, soon 
 obtained entii'e masteiy, and he proceeded with 
 all his old activity against the barons of Aqui- 
 taiue and Poictou. The veiy day after his son's 
 fimeral he took Limoges by assault; then castle 
 after castle was stormed and utterly destroyed; 
 and at last Bertraud de Born — the soul of the 
 conspiracy, the seducer of his children — fell into 
 his hands. Never had enemy been more per- 
 severing, insidious, and dangerous— never had 
 vassal so outraged his liege lord, or in such a 
 variety of ways; for Bertrand, like Luke de 
 Barre, was a jjoet as well as knight, and had 
 cruelly satirized Hemy in productions which 
 were populai' wherever the langiie d' Oc^ was 
 imdei-stood. All men said he must surely die, 
 and Hemy said so himself. The troubadour was 
 brought into his presence, to hear his sentence; 
 the king taunted him with a boast he had been 
 accustomed to make — namely, that he had so 
 
 ' Jtog. Hovcd. 2 IbiJ.; also Dicdo. 
 
 ^ The dialect spoken in the south of France, where, instead of 
 oui (yes) they said oc: hence the name of the part of this district, 
 etni called Languedoc. The rest of France was called Langus- 
 (Toui, or Langue-d'o^t. 
 
 much wit in reserve as never to have occasion to 
 use one-half of it, and told him he w;is now in a 
 plight in which the whole of his wit would not 
 serve him. The troubadour acknowledged lie 
 had made the boast, and that not without trutli 
 and reason. " And I," said the king — " I think 
 thou hast lost thy wits." " Yes, sire," replied 
 Bertrand, mom'nfully; " I lost them that day the 
 valiant young king died! — then, indeed, I lost 
 my wits, my senses, and all wisdom." At this 
 allusion to his son, the king bm-st into tears, and 
 nearly swooned. When he came to himself his 
 vengeance had departed from him. " Sir Ber- 
 trand," said he, "Sir Bertraud, thou mightest 
 well lose thy wits because of my son, for he loved 
 thee more than any other man upon earth ; and 
 I, for love of him, give thee thy life, thy pro- 
 perty, thy castle." ' The details of this singular 
 scene may have been slightly over-coloured by 
 the warm poetical imagination of the South, but 
 that Henry pardoned his inveterate enemy is an 
 historical fact. 
 
 If Bertraud de Born was a vUlain, he was a 
 most accomplished one; he ajjpears to have ex- 
 celled all his coniemporaries in insinuation, ele- 
 gance, and addi'es.3 — in versatility of talent, and 
 abimdance of resource.^ Attempts have been 
 made by M. Thierry to set off his patriotism 
 against his treachery; and it has been hinted, 
 that while labouring to free his native country 
 from the yoke of the English king, he was justi- 
 fiable in making use of whatever means he could. 
 It is perhajjs ditficult to fix precise limits to what 
 may be done in such a cause; but though we may 
 affect to admire the conduct of the elder Brutus, 
 who slew his own son for the liberties of Rome, 
 we doubt whether the sympathies of our natm-e 
 will not always be against the man who armed 
 the sons of another against theii- father's life. 
 Such appears to have been the sentiment of the 
 time; and Dante, who wrote about 120 years after 
 the event, and who merely took up the popular 
 legend, placed Bertrand de Born in one of the 
 worst ch-cles of hell." 
 
 Prince Geoffrey sought his father's pardon soon 
 after the death of his brother Hemy, and aban- 
 doned the insurgents of Aquitaiue, who then saw 
 themselves opposed to a united family (for Richard 
 was as yet true to his last oaths) whose luiuatural 
 divisions had hitherto proved their main strength 
 
 * Poesies dcs TroubadouTS, Collection de Rmjnov/ird: Millot, 
 Hist. Litteraire diS Trouljadours, 
 
 ^ We learn fi-om Dante, who seems to have been forcibly im- 
 pressed with his strange character, that besides x^oems on other 
 subjects. Sir Bertrand "treated of wax, which no Italian poet 
 had yet done " — {Arma vero nullum Italum adhuc poetasse ia- 
 venio}. — Be Vulg. Eloq. Bei-trand left a son of the same name, 
 who was also a poet, and who satii-ized King John. 
 
 fi Inferno, canto xxviii. The passage is terrific, and one of 
 the most characteristic in the whole poem.
 
 ^.n. 10U4— US9.] 
 
 HENRY II. 
 
 285 
 
 and eiicounigement. The confederacy, no longer 
 formidable, was paitly broken up by the victo- 
 rious lU'ius of the king, and jiartly dissolved of 
 itself. A momentary reconciliation took place 
 between Henry and Eleanor, who was released 
 for a shoi-t time to be present at a solemn meet- 
 ing, wherein "peace and final concord" was estab- 
 lished between the king and his sons, confirmed 
 by "writing and by sacrament." ' In this trans- 
 action Prince John was included, who had hitherto 
 been too young to wield the sword against his 
 father. The family concoi-d lasted only a few 
 months, when Geofl'rey demanded the earldom 
 of Anjovi; and on receiving his father's refusal, 
 wthdrew to the French court, to prepare for 
 another war. But soon after (in August, 1186), 
 his tm'buleut career was cut short at a toui-na- 
 ment, where he was dismounted and trampled to 
 death under the feet of the horses. Louis VII., 
 the soft and incompetent rival of Hemy, had now 
 been dead several years, and his son, Philip II., 
 a young and active prince, sat on the throne of 
 France. He buried Gooftrey with great pomp, 
 and then invited to his com-t his brother Eichai'd, 
 the Lion-hearted, wlio was to hate him with a 
 deadly hatred in after yeai-s, but who now ac- 
 cepted his invitation, and lived with him on the 
 most afiectionate terms, "eating at the same table 
 and out of the same dish by day, and sleeping in 
 the same bed by night."- King Henry well knew 
 that this friendship betokened mischief to him, 
 and he sent repeated messages to recal Eichai'd, 
 who always replied that he was coming, without 
 hastening his departiu'c. At last he moved, but 
 it was only to surprise and seize a treasm'e of his 
 father's, deposited at Chinon, and then to raise 
 the banner of revolt once more in Aquitaine. 
 But this time his standard failed to attract a 
 dispii-ited people, and he was fain to accept his 
 father's pardon. Henry, who had seen so many 
 oaths disregarded, made liim swear fealty, upon 
 this occasion, on a copy of the Holy Evangelists, 
 in the presence of a great assembly of chvu-ch- 
 men and laymen. 
 
 The misfortimes of the Christians 
 A.D. 1188. ;^ ^Yie Holy Land were the means 
 of producing a brief peace between Henry and 
 Philip, who had been waging an insignificiuit war 
 with each other, and preparing for more decisive 
 hostilities. Jerusidem had fallen again before 
 the Mahometan crescent, in the September of the 
 preceding year; the reigning pontiff was said to 
 have died of grief at the news; and the new pope 
 called upon all Christian princes to rescue the 
 tomb of Christ and the wood of the true cross, 
 which latter, it was said, had been carried away 
 
 • Scripto et Sacramento. — Rog. Iloved. 
 
 - yingulia diebus in una mensa ad unum catiniun manduca- 
 taut et in noctibus non separabat eo3 lectiia. — Rog. Hovcd. 
 
 by the victorious Saladin. No one resjwuded to 
 the appeal more promptly and entluisiastically 
 than Henry, who at once declared himself willing 
 to proceed with an army to Asia. A well-settled 
 peace with Fi-ance wa.s, however, an indispensable 
 preliminary; and Philij) being also pressed by the 
 pope to take the cross, an interview for the settle- 
 ment of all diflerences was easily ai-ranged. The 
 two kings met in the month of January, at tlie 
 usual place between Trie and Gisors, near to the 
 old elm-tree. William, the eloquent and enthu- 
 siastic Archbishop of Tyre, attended the meeting, 
 with many bishops and priests, of whom some had 
 witnessed the reverees of the Christians in Pales- 
 tine. Henry and Philip swore to be "brothers 
 in ai-ms for the cause of God ;" and in sign of their 
 voluntary engagement, each took the cross from 
 the hands of the Ai'chbishop of Tyre, and attached 
 it to his di'ess, swearing never to quit it or neglect 
 the duties of a soldier of Christ, " either upon land 
 or sea, in town or in the field," until his victorious 
 retm-u to his home. Many of the gi-eat vassals 
 of both mouarchs followed their masters' example, 
 and took the same oaths.' 
 
 The crosses given to the King of France and his 
 people were red; those distributed to the King of 
 England and his people were white. Richai'd, 
 who was to connect his name inseparably with 
 the subject of the Crusades, had neither waited 
 for his father's example nor pei-mission, but had 
 taken the cross some time before.* The old elm- 
 tree witnes.sed another solemn peace, which was 
 about as lasting as its predecessors; and Henry 
 i-eturned to England, evidently with a smcere 
 desii-e of keeping it on his part, and making ready 
 for the Holy War. In the month of February 
 he called together a gi-eat council of the kingdom 
 at Gidington, in Northamptonshii-e, to provide 
 the means of such a costly expedition. The 
 bai'ous, both lay and ecclesiastic, readily enacted 
 that a tenth of all rents for one year, and a tenth 
 of all the moveable property in the land, with the 
 exception of the books of the clergy, and the anns 
 and horses of the knights, should be levied to 
 meet the expenses. The lords of manors who 
 engaged to accompany the king in person were 
 permitted to receive the assessments of then' own 
 vassals and tenants ; but those of all others were 
 to be paid into the royal exchequer. It appears 
 that no more than .£70,000 was raised in this 
 manner. To make up the deficiency, Henry had 
 
 * Rog. Uoud.; Script, Rer. Franc, 
 
 * Nor was this tlio first time the king talked of going to the 
 Holy Land. Sovcnol years before, the Patriareh of Jenituilem 
 offered him that kingdom, with the keys of tlio eity and of the 
 holy sepulehi-G. Henry, who was not then cai'ried away by tho 
 popular enthusiasm, referred tho matter to an assembly of his 
 bishops and barons, who, jnost wistl^, determined that *' for tho 
 good of his omi soul,^' ho would do much better by remaining 
 at homo .md taking care of liis own subjects.
 
 2S6 
 
 nisTonv OF kngland. 
 
 [ClVlt, AND MlI.ITAr.T, 
 
 recourse to exloi-tioii and \ iflent measures against 
 the Jews, wliom he liad hitherto treated with 
 leniency; and from that oppressed fragment of 
 an unliap]\v pco])U' lie procured i^GO,000, or almost 
 as much money as he got from all the rest of las 
 kingdom put together. Auothercouneilof bishops, 
 abbots, and lay barons, held at Mans, regulated 
 the tax for Heme's continental dominions. 
 
 But the money w^^mg from Jew and Gentile 
 was never spent against the Turk. " The malice 
 of the ancient enemy of mankind," says the ho- 
 nest chronicler, "was not asleep;"' and he goes 
 on to deplore how that infernal malice turned 
 the oaths of Christian princes into a mockery, 
 and relit the flames of war among Christian 
 people on the continent of Europe. The fiery 
 Eichard appears to have been the first cause of 
 this new commotion, in which the Fi'ench king 
 soon took a part. Another conference was agi-eed 
 upon, and the two kings again met under the 
 peaceful shadow of the elm ; they could not, how- 
 ever, agree as to terms of accommodation; and 
 Philip, venting his spite on the tree, swore by 
 all the saints of France, that no more parleys 
 shoidd be held there, and cut it down.- Had 
 causes of dissension been wanting, the ingenuity 
 of the King of France, and the jealous impatience 
 of Eichard, would have raised imaginary wrongs; 
 but unfortunately for the fame of Hemy, there 
 was a real existing cause, and one singularly cal- 
 culated to excite and combine those two princes 
 against him. Eichard, when a child, had been 
 affianced, as already mentioned, to the infant 
 Aliz, or Adelais, of France. Henry had obtained 
 possession of the person of the royal infant, and 
 of part of her dowry, and had kept both. By 
 the time the pai'ties were of proper age for the 
 completion of the mai-riage, Eichai-d was at open 
 war with his father; but it is curious to remark, 
 that at none of the numerous peaces and recon- 
 ciliations was there any deep anxiety shown, 
 either by her affianced sjiouse Eichard, or her 
 father King Louis, or her brother Philijj, about 
 the fate of the fair Adelais, who i-emained some 
 time ostensibly as a hostage, but, of late years, 
 in a very ambiguous situation, at the court of 
 Henry. A report, true or false, had got abroad 
 that the king was enamoured of her person; and 
 when he made an unsuccessful application to the 
 Church of Eome for a divorce from Eichard's 
 mother, Eleanor, it was believed that he had 
 taken the step in order to espouse Eichard's afli- 
 anced bride. Of late, however. King Philip, 
 feeling that the reputation of his sister waa com- 
 mitted, had repeatedly lu-ged that Adelais should 
 be given to Eichard, and the mai'riage comjileted; 
 and the Chm-ch of Eome had even tlu-eatened 
 
 ' Ro(f. HovecT. 
 
 2 Ibid.; Script. Rer. Franc. 
 
 Henry with its severest censures in case of his 
 resisting this demand. An air of mystery iri- 
 volvcs the whole story and every part of it: how 
 Henry evaded the demand we know not, but of 
 this we are perfectly well informed, that he had 
 detained the lady — that no consequences had en- 
 sued therefrom on the part of the pope — and 
 that Philip had even made peace more than once, 
 and had vowed eternal friendship to him wliile 
 he was thus detaining her. If Eichard credited 
 the worst part of the cm-rent reports (as he after- 
 wards averred he did), he was not likely to feel 
 anything but the strongest aversion to the mar- 
 riage. Affection for his affianced bride was, 
 however, a very colom-able j^retext; and as he 
 was now haunted by a more real and serious un- 
 easiness — namely, by the belief tliat his father 
 destined the English crown for his youngest son 
 John — he set this plea forward in justification of 
 his rebellion, and co-operated heart and hand 
 with the French king. In the month of Novem- 
 ber in this same year (a.d. 1188) another confer- 
 ence was held, not, however, between Trie and 
 Gisors, but near to Bonsmoulins in Normandy. 
 Philip proposed that Adelais should be given up 
 to Eichai'd, and that Henry should declare that 
 prince heu-, not only to his kingdom of England, 
 but also to all his continental dominions, and 
 cause his vassals immediately to swear fealty to 
 Eichard. Henry, who could not forget the 
 miseries he liad suffered in consequence of ele- 
 vating his eldest son in this manner, resolutely 
 refused the latter proposition. A violent alter- 
 cation ensued, and ended in a manner which 
 sufficiently proved that Eichard was thinking 
 little of the first proposition or of his bride. 
 Turning fi'om his father, he furiously exclaimed, 
 " This forces me to believe that which I before 
 deemed impossible" (that is, the report concern- 
 ing his younger brother John). He then un- 
 girded his sword, and kneeling at the 'eet of 
 King Philip, and placing his hands between his, 
 said, " To you, sire, I commit the protection of 
 myself and my hereditary rights, and to you I 
 do homage for aU my father's dominions on this 
 side the sea." Philip ostentatiously accepted his 
 homage, and made him a present grant of some 
 towns and castles he had captiu-ed from his 
 father. Henry, violently agitated, rushed from 
 the scene, and, mounting his horse, rode away to 
 Saumur, to prepare for the further prosecution 
 of the interminable war.' But his iron frame 
 now felt the ini-oads of disease and grief; his 
 activity and decision at last forsook him, and, 
 relying on exertions making in his favom- by the 
 pope's legate, he remained supine while Philij) 
 and Eichard took several of his towns and se- 
 
 ' IJovcd.: Bkclo: Script. Rer. Franc.
 
 A.D. lOGJr-nso.' 
 
 HKNin jr. 
 
 287 
 
 duced many of his kniyhts. Even at this extre- 
 mity the good people of Normandy were faithful 
 to him, and, wishing to secure that diu-hy for 
 his favourite sou, of whose love and faith he had 
 never doubted, he was careful to procure an oath 
 from the seneschal of Normandy, that he would 
 deliver the fortresses of that pi-ovince to John in 
 case of his death. The church was on this 
 occasion zealously engaged on the side of Henry; 
 Richard and the French king were menaced with 
 excommunication, and though elated by unusual 
 success, Philip was obliged to consent to another 
 conference. The meeting took jjlace iu the 
 month of June in the following yeai" (a.d. 1189), 
 at La FertS-Beruai'd ; and Richard, John of 
 Anagni, cardinal and legate, the Archbishops 
 of Canterbury, Rouen, Rheims, and Bourges, 
 were present. Philip proposed the same condi- 
 tions as at the conference of Bonsmoulins seven 
 months before ; Hemy, who had been hurt in 
 every feeling by Richai'd, iu the interval, rejected 
 them, and proposed that Adelais should be un- 
 ited to his dutiful son John — au overture that 
 tends to shake the credibility of the existing 
 scandal even more than does the circumstance of 
 Henry's advanced age. Should Philip agi-ee to 
 this arrangement, he declared his i-eadiness to 
 name Prince John heir to his continental do- 
 minions — a distribution which he seems to have 
 long contemplated. Bat Philip would not enter 
 into the new plan, or abandon Richard, who was 
 present, and who joined the French king iu 
 violent abuse of his father. John of Anagni, 
 the cai'dinal-legate, then threatened to put the 
 kingdom of France under an interdict; but these 
 menaces depended much for their effect on cir- 
 cumstances and the character of the princes to 
 whom they were addressed. Philip had boldness 
 enough to despise them: he even accused the 
 legate of partial and venal motives; telling him 
 it was easy to perceive he had already scented 
 the pounds sterling of the English king.' Rich- 
 ard, who was never exemplary for command of 
 temper, went still further : he di-ew his sword 
 against the canlinal, and would have cut him 
 down but for the timely interposition of some 
 more moderate members of the party. 
 
 Henry again rode away fi-om the conference, 
 and this time with a desponding heart. The 
 people of Aquitaine, Poictou, and Brittany were 
 induced to rise in mass against then- now falling 
 master; and, under the command of Richard, 
 they fell upou him on the west and south, Thile 
 the French king attacked him in Anjou, on the 
 north. He had, on former occasions, made head 
 against almost equally formidable confederacies; 
 but the strength of frame, the eagle-glance, and 
 
 ' Jam sterlingos resis AngUsQ olfec3rat. — Rog. Hoved.; Matt. 
 
 the buoyancy of spirits which had then carried 
 him through a victor, were now crippled and 
 dimmed by sickness and sorrow. His bai-on-s 
 continued their open desertions or secret treach- 
 ery; and at last he was induced to solicit peace, 
 with the offer of resigning himself to whatever 
 terms Philip and Richard should propose.'-' The 
 two monarclis met on a plain between Tours and 
 Azay-sur-Cher. It appears that Richard did not 
 attend to witness the humiliation of his father, 
 but expected the issue of the negotiations at a 
 short distance. AVhile the kings were conversing 
 together in the open field and on horseback, a 
 loud peal of thunder was heard, though the sky 
 appeared cloudless, and the lightning fell between 
 them, but without hurting them. They separated 
 in great alarm, but after a brief space mot again. 
 Then a second peal of thunder, more awful than 
 the first, roUed over their heads. The state of 
 Henry's health I'endered him more nervous than 
 his young and then triumphant rival ; he di'opped 
 the reins, and, reeling in his saddle, would have 
 fallen from his horse had not his attendants sup- 
 ported him.' He recovered his self-possession, 
 but he was too ill to renew the conference, and 
 the humiliating conditions of peace, i-educed to 
 writing, were sent to his quarters for his signa- 
 ture. It was stijiulated that Henry should pay 
 an indemnity of 20,000 marks to Philip, renounce 
 all his rights of sovereignty over the town of 
 Berry, and submit in all things to his decisions;' 
 that he should permit all his vassals, both Eng- 
 lish and continental, to do homage to Richard; 
 that all such barons as had espoused Richard's 
 party should be considered the liege men and 
 vassals of the son, unless they voluntarily chose 
 to return to the father; that he should deliver 
 Adelais to one out of five jiereons named by Rich- 
 ard, who, at the return of Philip and Richard 
 from the crusade, on which they proposed to de- 
 part immediately (there was no longer any talk 
 of Henry's going), would restore her in all honour, 
 either to her brother or her affianced; and, finally, 
 that he should give the kiss of peace to Richard, 
 and banish from his heart all sentiments of anger 
 and animosity against him.'^ The envoys of the 
 French king read the treaty, ai-ticle by article, 
 to Henry as he lay suffering on his bed. When 
 they came to the article which regarded the 
 vassals who had deserted him to join Richard, he 
 asked for a list of their names. The list was given 
 him, and the vei-y first name upou it which struck 
 his eye was that of his darling son John, of whose 
 
 - Rt>ger lined.: Script, liar. J'mnc. ^ JJ»(7. Uoved. 
 
 ■* " Ex toto se poswit iii volunUito regis Francias," says Roger 
 of Hovodeii. Except ill one clause the uaiiie of Englaud seems 
 hardly to h.avo been mentioned; and tlus submission was evidently 
 limited to tlie continental dominions, over which (at least in 
 theory) tlie authority of the French crown was always cxteiisivi\ 
 
 5 Rog. lloi-ed.: Script. Ret: Franc.
 
 288 
 
 HISTORY' OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [Civil and Militaut. 
 
 base treachery lie had hitherto been kept happily 
 iffnorant. Tiic broken-hearted king started up 
 fi-oni his bed and gazed wildly around. " Is it 
 true," he cried, " that Jolm, the child of my heart 
 
 Castle of Chinon. — TcucLai-d Lafosse, La Loii-e Hiatorique, Pittorosque, &c. 
 
 — he whom I have cherished more than all the 
 rest, and for love of whom I have drawn down 
 on mine own head all these troubles, hath vei'ily 
 betrayed me?" They told him it vras even so. 
 "Now, then," he exclaimed, falling back on his 
 bed, and turning his face to the wall, " let every- 
 thing go a.s it will — I have 
 no longer cai-e for myself 
 or for the world !' ' 
 
 Shortly after, he caused -iS^i 
 himself to be transported 
 to the pleasant town of 
 Chinon;- but those favourite 
 scenes made no impression 
 on his profound melancholy 
 and hopelessness of heai-t, 
 and in a few days he laid 
 himself down to die. In 
 h's last moments, as his in- 
 tellects wandered, he was 
 heard uttermg imconneoted 
 exclamations. " O shame!" 
 he cried, " a conquered king ! 
 I, a conquered king ! . . 
 . . . . Cursed be the day on which I was 
 born, and cursed of God the children I leave 
 
 behind me!" Some priests exhorted the disor- 
 dered, raving man to retract these curses, but he 
 would not. He was sensible, however, to the 
 aftection and unweaiying attentions of his na- 
 tural son, Geoffrey, who had 
 Ijeen faithful to him through 
 life, and who received his 
 last sigh. As soon as the 
 breath was out of his body, 
 all the ministers, priests, 
 bishops, and barons, that had 
 waited solong, took a hurried 
 departure, and his personal 
 attendants followed the ex- 
 ample of their betters, but 
 not before they had stripped 
 his dead body, and seized 
 everything of any value in 
 the apartment where he 
 died. 
 
 The disrespect and utter 
 abandonment which had fol- 
 lowed the demise of the 
 gi-eat Conqueror 102 years 
 before, were repeated towards the corpse of his 
 great-gi-andson. It was not without delay and 
 diiSculty that people were found to ■rn-ap the 
 body in a winding-sheet, and a hearse and horses 
 to convey it to the abbey of Fontevraud.^ While 
 it was on its wnv to rpceive the last rites of se- 
 
 ABbET OF FoNTKTF.Ain>.*~Mrs. Stotliaid's Normandy. 
 
 pulture, Richard, who had learned the news of 
 his father's death, met the procession and accom- 
 
 ^ ScHpt. Rer. Franc. " Iterura se lecto reddens, et facLem 
 Euam .Id parietem verteus," &c. 
 
 2 Chinon, beautifully situated on the river Loire, was the 
 French Windsor of oxir Korman kings; and ITontevraud, at the 
 distance of about seven miles, their favourite place of burial. 
 
 ^ Script. Jler. Franc; Gii-ald.; Anff. Sac; Rag. Uovcd. 
 
 * Fontevraud, or Fontrevauld (anciently Fons Ebraldi). a 
 town of France, in the department of the Maine and Loire. 
 Tlio abbey, to whicl^ it owes its origin, was most richly en- 
 dowed, and \va3 the he.ad of an order in which the men of the 
 
 establisliment were subservient to the women. It was founded 
 in 1099, Ijy Robert d'Ai-brissel, a celebrated preacher in Brit- 
 tany, charged by Pope Urban II. to preacli in favour of the 
 second erus.adM. His popularity induced so many of all classes 
 to follow him, that he resolved to choose a spot where he might 
 establish them in regular order. The wild forest of Fontrev.aud, 
 watered by a piu-e fountain that issued from a reck, was selected 
 .as a suitable retreat, .and a Lady named Aramburge gave them 
 the valley in which the great church w.as afterwards erected. — 
 Mrs. Stothard's Tour in France.
 
 BLACKIE AND SON: 
 
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