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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part A.

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Title: The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part A.

Author: David Hume


        
Release date: September 8, 2006 [eBook #19211]
                Most recently updated: September 6, 2016

Language: English

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[Illustration: frontispiece.jpg  PORTRAIT OF HUME.]

[Illustration: titlepage.jpg BOADICEA HARANGUING THE BRITONS]





THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND

FROM THE INVASION OF JULIUS CÆSAR

TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND,


BY DAVID HUME, ESQ.

1688



London: James S. Virtue, City Road and Ivy Lane
New York: 26 John Street
1860

And

Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott & Co.
March 17, 1901



In Three Volumes:

VOLUME ONE: The History Of England From The Invasion Of Julius Cæsar To
The End Of The Reign Of James The Second............ By David Hume, Esq.

VOLUME TWO: Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of
George II........................................... by Tobias Smollett.

VOLUME THREE: From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year
of the Reign of Queen Victoria............... by E. Farr and E.H. Nolan.




VOLUME ONE

Part A.

THE EARLY BRITONS TO KING JOHN




TO WHICH IS PREFIXED

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF HIS LIFE.

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.




THE LIFE OF DAVID HUME, ESQ.

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.


MY OWN LIFE.

It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity;
therefore I shall be short. It may be thought an instance of vanity
that I pretend at all to write my life; but this narrative shall contain
little more than the history of my writings; as, indeed, almost all
my life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations. The first
success of most of my writings was not such as to be an object of
vanity.

I was born the twenty-sixth of April, 1711, old style, at Edinburgh. I
was of a good family, both by father and mother: my father’s family is
a branch of the earl of Home’s, or Hume’s; and my ancestors had been
proprietors of the estate which my brother possesses, for several
generations. My mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, president of
the college of justice; the title of Lord Halkerton came by succession
to her brother.

My family, however, was not rich; and being myself a younger brother,
my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very
slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died when I was an
infant, leaving me, with an elder brother and a sister, under the
care of our mother, a woman of singular merit, who, though young and
handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of
her children. I passed through the ordinary course of education with
success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which
has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my
enjoyments. My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave
my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me; but
I found an insurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of
philosophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring
upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was
secretly devouring.

My very slender fortune, however, being unsuitable to this plan of life,
and my health being a little broken by my ardent application, I was
tempted, or rather forced, to make a very feeble trial for entering
into a more active scene of life. In 1734, I went to Bristol, with some
recommendations to several eminent merchants; but in a few months found
that scene totally unsuitable to me. I went over to France, with a view
of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat; and I there laid that
plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved
to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to
maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as
contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature.

During my retreat in France, first at Rheims, but chiefly at La Fleche,
in Anjou, I composed my Treatise of Human Nature. After passing three
years very agreeably in that country, I came over to London in 1737. In
the end of 1738, I published my Treatise, and immediately went down
to my mother and my brother, who lived at his country house, and was
employing himself very judiciously and successfully in the improvement
of his fortune.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of
Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such
distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots. But being
naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I very soon recovered the
blow, and prosecuted with great ardor my studies in the country. In
1742, I printed at Edinburgh the first part of my Essays. The work
was favorably received, and soon made me entirely forget my former
disappointment. I continued with my mother and brother in the country,
and in that time recovered the knowledge of the Greek language, which I
had too much neglected in my early youth.

In 1745, I received a letter from the marquis of Annandale, inviting me
to come and live with him in England; I found also that the friends and
family of that young nobleman were desirous of putting him under my care
and direction, for the state of his mind and health required it. I
lived with him a twelve-month. My appointments during that time made
a considerable accession to my small fortune. I then received an
invitation from General St. Clair to attend him as a secretary to his
expedition, which was at first meant against Canada, but ended in an
incursion on the coast of France. Next year, to wit, 1747, I received
an invitation from the general to attend him in the same station in
his military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin. I then wore the
uniform of an officer, and was introduced at these courts as aid-de-camp
to the general, along with Sir Harry Erskine and Captain Grant, now
General Grant. These two years were almost the only interruptions which
my studies have received during the course of my life: I passed them
agreeably, and in good company; and my appointments, with my frugality,
had made me reach a fortune which I called independent, though most of
my friends were inclined to smile when I said so: in short, I was now
master of near a thousand pounds.

I had always entertained a notion, that my want of success in publishing
the Treatise of Human Nature had proceeded more from the manner than
the matter, and that I had been guilty of a very usual indiscretion, in
going to the press too early. I, therefore, cast the first part of
that work anew in the Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, which was
published while I was at Turin. But this piece was at first little more
successful than the Treatise on Human Nature. On my return from Italy,
I had the mortification to find all England in a ferment, on account
of Dr. Middleton’s Free Inquiry, while my performance was entirely
overlooked and neglected, A new edition, which had been published at
London, of my Essays, moral and political, met not with a much better
reception.

Such is the force of natural temper, that these disappointments made
little or no impression on me. I went down, in 1749, and lived two years
with my brother at his country house, for my mother was now dead. I
there composed the second part of my Essay, which I called Political
Discourses, and also my Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,
which is another part of my Treatise that I cast anew. Meanwhile, my
bookseller, A. Millar, informed me, that my former publications (all
but the unfortunate Treatise) were beginning to be the subject of
conversation; that the sale of them was gradually increasing, and that
new editions were demanded. Answers by reverends and right reverends
came out two or three in a year; and I found, by Dr. Warburton’s
railing, that the books were beginning to be esteemed in good company.
However, I had fixed a resolution, which I inflexibly maintained, never
to reply to any body; and not being very irascible in my temper, I have
easily kept myself clear of all literary squabbles. These symptoms of a
rising reputation gave me encouragement, as I was ever more disposed to
see the favorable than unfavorable side of things; a turn of mind
which it is more happy to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten
thousand a year.

In 1751, I removed from the country to the town, the true scene for a
man of letters. In 1752 were published at Edinburgh, where I then lived,
my Political Discourses, the only work of mine that was successful on
the first publication. It was well received at home and abroad. In the
same year was published, at London, my Inquiry concerning the Principles
of Morals; which, in my own opinion, (who ought not to judge on
that subject,) is, of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or
literary, incomparably the best, It came unnoticed and unobserved into
the world.

In 1752, the Faculty of Advocates chose me their librarian, an office
from which I received little or no emolument, but which gave me the
command of a large library, I then formed the plan of writing the
History of England; but being frightened with the notion of continuing a
narrative through a period of seventeen hundred years, I commenced with
the accession of the house of Stuart, an epoch when, I thought, the
misrepresentations of faction began chiefly to take place. I was, I own,
sanguine in my expectations of the success of this work. I thought
that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power,
interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and as the
subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause.
But miserable was my disappointment; I was assailed by one cry of
reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; English, Scotch,
and Irish, whig and tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and
religionist, patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man
who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and
the earl of Stratford; and after the first ebullitions of their fury
were over, what was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink
into oblivion. Mr. Millar told me that in a twelvemonth he sold only
forty-five copies of it. I scarcely, indeed head of one man in the three
kingdoms, considerable for rank or letters, that could endure the book.
I must only except the primate of England, Dr. Herring, and the primate
of Ireland, Dr. Stone, which seem two odd exceptions. These dignified
prelates separately sent me messages not to be discouraged.

I was, however, I confess, discouraged; and had not the war been at that
time breaking out between France and England, I had certainly retired
to some provincial town of the former kingdom, have changed my name, and
never more have returned to my native country. But as this scheme
was not now practicable, and the subsequent volume was considerably
advanced, I resolved to pick up courage and to persevere.

In this interval, I published, at London, my Natural History of
Religion, along with some other small pieces. Its public entry was
rather obscure, except only that Dr. Hurd wrote a pamphlet against
it, with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility,
which distinguish the Warburtonian school. This pamphlet gave me some
consolation for the otherwise indifferent reception of my performance.

In 1756, two years after the fall of the first volume, was published
the second volume of my history, containing the period from the death of
Charles I. till the revolution. This performance happened to give less
displeasure to the whigs, and was better received. It not only rose
itself, but helped to buoy up its unfortunate brother.

But though I had been taught by experience that the whig party were in
possession of bestowing all places, both in the state and in Literature,
I was so little inclined to yield to their senseless clamor, that in
above a hundred alterations, which further study, reading, or reflection
engaged me to make in the reigns of the two first Stuarts, I have made
all of them invariably to the tory side. It is ridiculous to consider
the English constitution before that period as a regular plan of
liberty.

In 1759, I published my history of the house of Tudor. The clamor
against this performance was almost equal to that against the history
of the two first Stuarts. The reign of Elizabeth was particularly
obnoxious. But I was now callous against the impressions of public
folly, and continued very peaceably and contentedly, in my retreat at
Edinburgh, to finish, in two volumes, the more early part of the English
history, which I gave to the public in 1761, with tolerable, and but
tolerable, success.

But, notwithstanding this variety of winds and seasons, to which my
writings had been exposed, they had still been making such advances,
that the copy-money given me by the booksellers much exceeded any
thing formerly known in England; I was become not only independent, but
opulent. I retired to my native country of Scotland, determined never
more to set my foot out of it; and retaining the satisfaction of never
having preferred a request to one great man, or even making advances of
friendship to any of them. As I was now turned of fifty, I thought of
passing all the rest of my life in this philosophical manner: when I
received, in 1763, an invitation from the earl of Hertford, with whom I
was not in the least acquainted, to attend him on his embassy to Paris,
with a near prospect of being appointed secretary to the embassy; and,
in the mean while, of performing the functions of that office. This
offer, however inviting, I at first declined; both because I was
reluctant to begin connections with the great, and because I was afraid
that the civilities and gay company of Paris would prove disagreeable
to a person of my age and humor; but on his lordship’s repeating the
invitation, I accepted of it. I have every reason, both of pleasure and
interest; to think myself happy in my connections with that nobleman, as
well as afterwards with his brother, General Conway.

Those who have not seen the strange effects of modes, will never imagine
the reception I met with at Paris, from men and women of all ranks and
stations. The more I resiled from their excessive civilities, the more
I was loaded with them. There is, however, a real satisfaction in living
at Paris, from the great number of sensible, knowing, and polite company
with which that city abounds above all places in the universe. I thought
once of settling there for life.

I was appointed secretary to the embassy; and, in summer, 1765, Lord
Hertford left me, being appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland. I was
chargé d’affaires till the arrival of the duke of Richmond, towards the
end of the year. In the beginning of 1766, I left Paris, and next summer
went to Edinburgh, with the same view as formerly, of burying myself in
a philosophical retreat. I returned to that place, not richer, but with
much more money, and a much larger income, by means of Lord Hertford’s
friendship, than I left it; and I was desirous of trying what
superfluity could produce, as I had formerly made an experiment of a
competency. But in 1767, I received from Mr. Conway an invitation to be
under-secretary; and this invitation, both the character of the person,
and my connections with Lord Hertford, prevented me from declining. I
returned to Edinburgh in 1769, very opulent, (for I possessed a revenue
of one thousand pounds a year,) healthy, and though somewhat stricken
in years, with the prospect of enjoying long my ease, and of seeing the
increase of my reputation.

In spring, 1775, I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at
first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal
and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered
very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have,
notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a
moment’s abatement of my spirits; insomuch, that were I to name a period
of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be
tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardor as ever
in study, and the same gayety in company. I consider, besides, that a
man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities;
and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation’s breaking out
at last with additional lustre, I know that I could have but few years
to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at
present.

To conclude historically with my own character: I am, or rather was,
(for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which
imboldens me the more to speak my sentiments;) I was, I say, a man of
mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful
humor, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of
great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame,
my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent
disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and
careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a
particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to
be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though
most men, anywise eminent, have found reason to complain of Calumny, I
never was touched, or even attacked, by her baleful tooth; and though
I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious
factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury.
My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my
character and conduct; not but that the zealots, we may well
suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my
disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would
wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making
this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one;
and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.



April 18, 1776.

LETTER FROM ADAM SMITH, LL. D. TO WILLLIAM STRAHAN, ESQ.

Kirkaldy, Fifeshire, Nov. 9, 1778.[**]

DEAR SIR,

It is with a real, though a very melancholy pleasure, that I sit down to
give you some account of the behavior of our late excellent friend, Mr.
Hume, during his last illness.

Though, in his own judgment, his disease was mortal and incurable, yet
he allowed himself to be prevailed upon, by the entreaty of his friends,
to try what might be the effects of a long journey. A few days before he
set out, he wrote that account of his own life, which, together with
his other papers, he has left to your care. My account, therefore, shall
begin where his ends.

He set out for London towards the end of April, and at Morpeth met with
Mr. John Home and myself, who had both come down from London on purpose
to see him, expecting to have found him at Edinburgh. Mr. Home returned
with him, and attended him during the whole of his stay in England,
with that care and attention which might be expected from a temper so
perfectly friendly and affectionate. As I had written to my mother that
she might expect me in Scotland, I was under the necessity of continuing
my journey. His disease seemed to yield to exercise and change of air;
and when he arrived in London, he was apparently in much better health
than when he left Edinburgh. He was advised to go to Bath to drink the
waters, which appeared for some time to have so good an effect upon him,
that even he himself began to entertain, what he was not apt to do, a
better opinion of his own health. His symptoms, however, soon returned
with their usual violence; and from that moment he gave up all thoughts
of recovery, but submitted with the utmost cheerfulness, and the most
perfect complacency and resignation. Upon his return to Edinburgh,
though he found himself much weaker, yet his cheerfulness never abated,
and he continued to divert himself, as usual, with correcting his own
works for a new edition, with reading books of amusement, with the
conversation of his friends; and, sometimes in the evening, with a party
at his favorite game of whist. His cheerfulness was so great, and his
conversation and amusements ran so much in their usual strain, that,
notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was
dying. “I shall tell your friend, Colonel Edmonstone,” said Dr. Dundas,
to him one day, “that I left you much better, and in a fair way of
recovery.” “Doctor,” said he, “as I believe you would not choose to tell
any thing but the truth, you had better tell him that I am dying as fast
as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully
as my best friends could desire.” Colonel Edmonstone soon afterwards
came to see him, and take leave of him; and on his way home he could not
forbear writing him a letter, bidding him once more an eternal adieu,
and applying to him, as to a dying man, the beautiful French verses in
which the abbé Chaulieu in expectation of his own death, laments his
approaching separation from his friend the marquis de la Fare. Mr.
Hume’s magnanimity and firmness were such, that his most affectionate
friends knew that they hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as
to a dying man, and that so far from being hurt by this frankness, he
was rather pleased and flattered by it. I happened to come into his room
while he was reading this letter, which he had just received, and which
he immediately showed me. I told him, that though I was sensible how
very much he was weakened, and that appearances were in many respects
very bad, yet his cheerfulness was still so great, the spirit of
life seemed still to be so very strong in him, that I could not help
entertaining some faint hopes. He answered, “Your hopes are groundless.
An habitual diarrhoea of more than a year’s standing, would be a very
bad disease at any age; at my age it is a mortal one. When I lie down in
the evening, I feel myself weaker than when I rose in the morning; and
when I rise in the morning, weaker than when I lay down in the evening.
I am sensible besides, that some of my vital parts are affected, so that
I must soon die.” “Well,” said I, “if it must be so, you have at least
the satisfaction of leaving all your friends, your brother’s family in
particular, in great prosperity.” He said that he felt that satisfaction
so sensibly, that when he was reading, a few days before, Lucian’s
Dialogues of the Dead, among all the excuses which are alleged to Charon
for not entering readily into his boat, he could not find one that
fitted him: he had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for
he had no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge himself. “I could not
well imagine,” said he, “what excuse I could make to Charon in order to
obtain a little delay. I have done every thing of consequence which I
ever meant to do; and I could at no time expect to leave my relations
and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely
to leave them: I, therefore, have all reason to die contented.” He
then diverted himself with inventing several jocular excuses, which
he supposed he might make to Charon, and with imagining the very surly
answers which it might suit the character of Charon to return to them.
“Upon further consideration,” said he, “I thought I might say to him,
‘Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition.
Allow me a little time, that I may see how the public receives the
alterations.’ But Charon would answer, ‘When you have seen the effect of
these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end of
such excuses; so, honest friend, please step into the boat.’ But I
might still urge, ‘Have a little patience, good Charon: I have been
endeavoring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years
longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of
the prevailing systems of superstition.’ But Charon would then lose all
temper and decency. ‘You loitering rogue, that will not happen these
many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a
term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering rogue.’”

But, though Mr. Hume always talked of his approaching dissolution
with great cheerfulness, he never affected to make any parade of his
magnanimity. He never mentioned the subject but when the conversation
naturally led to it, and never dwelt longer upon it than the course
of the conversation happened to require; it was a subject indeed which
occurred pretty frequently, in consequence of the inquiries which his
friends, who came to see him, naturally made concerning the state of his
health. The conversation which I mentioned above, and which passed on
Thursday the eighth of August, was the last, except one, that I ever had
with him. He had now become so very weak, that the company of his most
intimate friends fatigued him; for his cheerfulness was still so great,
his complaisance and social disposition were still so entire, that
when any friend was with him, he could not help talking more, and with
greater exertion, than suited the weakness of his body. At his own
desire, therefore, I agreed to leave Edinburgh, where I was staying
partly upon his account and returned to my mother’s house here at
Kirkaldy, upon condition that he would send for me whenever he wished
to see me; the physician who saw him most frequently, Dr. Black,
undertaking, in the mean time, to write me occasionally an account of
the state of his health.

On the twenty-second of August, the doctor wrote me the following
letter;--

“Since my last, Mr. Hume has passed his time pretty easily, but is much
weaker. He sits up, goes down stairs once a day, and amuses himself with
reading, but seldom sees any body. He finds that even the conversation
of his most intimate friends fatigues and oppresses him; and it is happy
that he does not need it, for he is quite free from anxiety, impatience,
or low spirits, and passes his time very well with the assistance of
amusing books.”


I received, the day after, a letter from Mr. Hume himself, of which the
following is an extract:--

     “Edinburgh, 23d August, 1776.

     “MY DEAREST FRIEND,

     “I am obliged to make use of my nephew’s hand
     in writing to you, as I do not rise to-day.

     “I go very fast to decline, and last night had a
     small fever, which I hoped might put a quicker period
     to this tedious illness; but unluckily it has, in a
     great measure, gone off. I cannot submit to your
     coming over here on my account, as it is possible for
     me to see you so small a part of the day; but Dr.
     Black can better inform you concerning the degree of
     strength which may from time to time remain with
     me. Adieu, etc.”

Three days after, I received the following letter from Dr. Black:--

     “Edinburgh, Monday, 26th August, 1776.

     “DEAR SIR,

     “Yesterday, about four o’clock, afternoon, Mr. Hume expired.
     The near approach of his death became evident in the night
     between Thursday and Friday, when his disease became
     excessive, and soon weakened him so much, that he could no
     longer rise out of his bed He continued to the last
     perfectly sensible, and free from much pain or feelings of
     distress. He never dropped the smallest expression of
     impatience; but when he had occasion to speak to the people
     about him, always did it with affection and tenderness. I
     thought it improper to write to bring you over, especially
     as I heard that he had dictated a letter to you, desiring
     you not to come. When he became very weak, it cost him an
     effort to speak; and he died in such a happy composure of
     mind, that nothing could exceed it.”

Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend;
concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge
variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they
happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose
character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion. His
temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced, if I may be allowed
such an expression, than that perhaps of any other man I have ever
known. Even in the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary
frugality never hindered him from exercising, upon proper occasions,
acts both of charity and generosity. It was a frugality founded not upon
avarice, but upon the love of independency. The extreme gentleness
of his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind or the
steadiness of his resolutions. His constant pleasantry was the genuine
effusion of good nature and good humor, tempered with delicacy and
modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so
frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men.
It never was the meaning of his raillery to mortify; and therefore, far
from offending, it seldom failed to please and delight, even those who
were the objects of it. To his friends who were frequently the objects
of it, there was not perhaps any one of all his great and amiable
qualities which contributed more to endear his conversation. And
that gayety of temper, so agreeable in society, but which is so often
accompanied with frivolous and superficial qualities, was in him
certainly attended with the most severe application, the most extensive
learning, the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every respect
the most comprehensive. Upon the whole, I have always considered him,
both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to
the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of
human frailty will permit.

I ever am, dear sir,

Most affectionately yours,

ADAM SMITH.




HISTORY OF ENGLAND.




CHAPTER I.




THE BRITONS.

The curiosity entertained by all civilized nations, of inquiring into
the exploits and adventures of their ancestors, commonly excites a
regret that the history of remote ages should always be so much involved
in obscurity, uncertainty, and contradiction. Ingenious men, possessed
of leisure, are apt to push their researches beyond the period in which
literary monuments are framed or preserved; without reflecting, that the
history of past events is immediately lost or disfigured when intrusted
to memory and oral tradition, and that the adventures of barbarous
nations, even if they were recorded, could afford little or no
entertainment to men born in a more cultivated age. The convulsions of
a civilized state usually compose the most instructive and most
interesting part of its history; but the sudden, violent, and unprepared
revolutions incident to barbarians, are so much guided by caprice, and
terminate so often in cruelty, that they disgust us by the uniformity of
their appearance; and it is rather fortunate for letters that they are
buried in silence and oblivion. The only certain means by which nations
can indulge their curiosity in researches concerning their remote
origin, is to consider the language, manners, and customs of their
ancestors, and to compare them with those of the neighboring nations.
The fables, which are commonly employed to supply the place of true
history, ought entirely to be disregarded; or if any exception be
admitted to this general rule, it can only be in favor of the ancient
Grecian fictions, which are so celebrated and so agreeable, that they
will ever be the objects of the attention of mankind. Neglecting,
therefore, all traditions, or rather tales, concerning the more early
history of Britain, we shall only consider the state of the inhabitants
as it appeared to the Romans on their invasion of this country: we shall
briefly run over the events which attended the conquest made by that
empire, as belonging more to Roman than British story: we shall hasten
through the obscure and uninteresting period of Saxon annals; and shall
reserve a more full narration for those times, when the truth is both
so well ascertained, and so complete, as to promise entertainment and
instruction to the reader.

All ancient writers agree in representing the first inhabitants of
Britain as a tribe of the Gauls or Celtæ, who peopled that island from
the neighboring continent. Their language was the same, their manners,
their government, their superstition; varied only by those small
differences which time or a communication with the bordering nations
must necessarily introduce. The inhabitants of Gaul, especially in those
parts which lie contiguous to Italy, had acquired, from a commerce with
their southern neighbors, some refinement in the arts, which gradually
diffused themselves northwards, and spread but a very faint light over
this island. The Greek and Roman navigators or merchants (for there
were scarcely any other travellers in those ages) brought back the most
shocking accounts of the ferocity of the people, which they magnified,
as usual, in order to excite the admiration of their countrymen. The
south-east parts, however, of Britain had already, before the age
of Cæsar, made the first and most requisite step towards a civil
settlement; and the Britons, by tillage and agriculture, had there
increased to a great multitude.[*]

     [* Cæsar, lib. iv.]

The other inhabitants of the island still maintained themselves by
pasture: they were clothed with skins of beasts: they dwelt in huts,
which they reared in the forests and marshes, with which the country was
covered: they shifted easily their habitation, when actuated either by
the hopes of plunder or the fear of an enemy: the convenience of feeding
their cattle was even a sufficient motive for removing their seats and
as they were ignorant of all the refinements of life, their wants and
their possessions were equally scanty and limited.

The Britons were divided into many small nations or tribes and being a
military people, whose sole property was then arms and their cattle, It
was impossible, after they had acquired a relish of liberty for their
princes or chieftains to establish any despotic authority over them.
Their governments, though monarchical,[*] were free, as well as those of
all the Celtic nations; and the common people seem even to have enjoyed
more liberty among them,[**] than among the nations of Gaul,[***] from
whom they were descended. Each state was divided into factions within
itself:[****] it was agitated with jealousy or animosity against the
neighboring states: and while the arts of peace were yet unknown, wars
were the chief occupation, and formed the chief object of ambition,
among the people.

     [* Diod. Sic. lib. iv. Mela, lib. iii. cap. 6.
     Strabo, lib. iv.]

     [** Dion Cassius, lib. lxxv.]

     [*** Cæsar, lib. vi.]

     [**** Tacit. Agr.]

The religion of the Britons was one of the most considerable parts of
their government; and the druids, who were their priests, possessed
great authority among them. Besides ministering at the altar, and
directing all religious duties, they presided over the education of
youth; they enjoyed an immunity from wars and taxes; they possessed
both the civil and criminal jurisdiction; they decided all controversies
among states as well as among private persons, and whoever refused to
submit to their decree was exposed to the most severe penalties. The
sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him: he was forbidden
access to the sacrifices or public worship: he was debarred all
intercourse with his fellow-citizens, even in the common affairs of
life: his company was universally shunned, as profane and dangerous:
he was refused the protection of law:[*] and death itself became an
acceptable relief from the misery and infamy to which he was exposed.
Thus the bands of government, which were naturally loose among that rude
and turbulent people, were happily corroborated by the terrors of their
superstition.

     [* Cæsar, lib. vi. Strabo, lib. iv.]

No species of superstition was ever more terrible than that of the
druids. Besides the severe penalties, which it was in the power of the
ecclesiastics to inflict in this world, they inculcated the eternal
transmigration of souls; and thereby extended their authority as far as
the fears of their timorous votaries. They practised their rites in
dark groves or other secret recesses;[*] and in order to throw a greater
mystery over their religion, they communicated their doctrines only to
the initiated, and strictly forbade the committing of them to writing,
lest they should at any time be exposed to the examination of the
profane vulgar.

     [* Plin. lib. xii. cap. 1.]

Human sacrifices were practised among them: the spoils of war were
often devoted to their divinities; and they punished with the severest
tortures whoever dared to secrete any part of the consecrated offering:
these treasures they kept in woods and forests, secured by no other
guard than the terrors of their religion;[*] and this steady conquest
over human avidity may be regarded as more signal than their prompting
men to the most extraordinary and most violent efforts. No idolatrous
worship ever attained such an ascendant over mankind as that of the
ancient Gauls and Britons; and the Romans, after their conquest, finding
it impossible to reconcile those nations to the laws and institutions of
their masters, while it maintained its authority, were at last obliged
to abolish it by penal statutes; a violence which had never, in any
other instance, been practised by those tolerating conquerors.[**]

     [* Cæsar, lib. vi.]

     [* Sueton. in vita Claudii.]




THE ROMANS.

The Britons had long remained in this rude but independent state, when
Cæsar, having overrun all Gaul by his victories, first cast his eye on
their island. He was not allured either by its riches or its renown; but
being ambitious of carrying the Roman arms into a new world, then mostly
unknown, he took advantage of a short interval in his Gaulic wars, and
made an invasion on Britain. The natives, informed of his intention,
were sensible of the unequal contest, and endeavored to appease him by
submissions, which, however, retarded not the execution of his design.
After some resistance, he landed, as is supposed, at Deal, [Anno ante,
C. 55;] and having obtained several advantages over the Britons, and
obliged them to promise hostages for their future obedience, he was
constrained, by the necessity of his affairs, and the approach of
winter, to withdraw his forces into Gaul. The Britons relieved, from the
terror of his arms, neglected the performance of their stipulations; and
that haughty conqueror resolved next summer to chastise them for this
breach of treaty. He landed with a greater force; and though he found
a more regular resistance from the Britons, who had united under
Cassivelaunus, one of their petty princes, he discomfited them in every
action. He advanced into the country; passed the Thames in the face of
the enemy; took and burned the capital of Cassivelaunus; established his
ally, Mandubratius, in the sovereignty of the Trinobantes; and having
obliged the inhabitants to make him new submissions, he again returned
with his army into Gaul, and left the authority of the Romans more
nominal than real in this island.

The civil wars which ensued, and which prepared the way for the
establishment of monarchy in Rome, saved the Britons from that yoke
which was ready to be imposed upon them. Augustus, the successor of
Cæsar, content with the victory obtained over the liberties of his own
country, was little ambitious of acquiring fame by foreign wars; and
being apprehensive lest the same unlimited extent of dominion, which had
subverted the republic, might also overwhelm the empire, he recommended
it to his successors never to enlarge the territories of the Romans.
Tiberius, jealous of the fame which might be acquired by his generals,
made this advice of Augustus a pretence for his inactivity.[*]

     [* Tacit. Agr.]

The mad sallies of Caligula, in which he menaced Britain with an
invasion, served only to expose himself and the empire to ridicule;
and the Britons had now, during almost a century, enjoyed their liberty
unmolested, when the Romans, in the reign of Claudius, began to think
seriously of reducing them under their dominion. Without seeking any
more justifiable reasons of hostility than were employed by the late
Europeans in subjecting the Africans and Americans, they sent over an
army, [A. D. 43,] under the command of Plautius, an able general, who
gained some victories, and made a considerable progress in subduing the
inhabitants. Claudius himself, finding matters sufficiently prepared for
his reception, made a journey into Britain, and received the
submission of several British states, the Cantii, Atrebates, Regni, and
Trinobantes, who inhabited the south-east parts of the island, and whom
their possessions and more cultivated manner of life rendered willing to
purchase peace at the expense of their liberty. The other Britons, under
the command of Caractacus, still maintained an obstinate resistance, and
the Romans made little progress against them; till Ostorius Scapula was
sent over to command their armies. [A. D. 50.] This general advanced
the Roman conquests over the Britons; pierced into the country of
the Silures, a warlike nation, who inhabited the banks of the Severn;
defeated Caractacus in a great battle; took him prisoner, and sent him
to Rome, where his magnanimous behavior procured him better treatment
than those conquerors usually bestowed on captive princes.[*]

     [* Tacit. Ann lib. xii.]

Notwithstanding these misfortunes, the Britons were not subdued; and
this island was regarded by the ambitious Romans as a field in which
military honor might still be acquired. [A. D. 59.] Under the reign of
Nero, Suetonius Paulinus was invested with the command, and prepared to
signalize his name by victories over those barbarians. Finding that
the island of Mona, now Anglesey, was the chief seat of the druids, he
resolved to attack it, and to subject a place which was the centre of
their superstition, and which afforded protection to all their baffled
forces. The Britons endeavored to obstruct his landing on this sacred
island, both by the force of their arms and the terrors of their
religion. The women and priests were intermingled with the soldiers upon
the shore; and running about with flaming torches in their hands, and
tossing their dishevelled hair, they struck greater terror into the
astonished Romans by their bowlings, cries, and execrations, than the
real danger from the armed forces was able to inspire. But Suetonius,
exhorting his troops to despise the menaces of a superstition which they
despised, impelled them to the attack, drove the Britons off the field,
burned the druids in the same fires which those priests had prepared for
their captive enemies, destroyed all the consecrated groves and altars;
and having thus triumphed over the religion of the Britons, he thought
his future progress would be easy in reducing the people to subjection.
But he was disappointed in his expectations. The Britons, taking
advantage of his absence, were all in arms; and headed by Boadicea,
queen of the Iceni, who had been treated in the most ignominious manner
by the Roman tribunes, had already attacked, with success, several
settlements of their insulting conquerors. Suetonius hastened to the
protection of London, which was already a flourishing Roman colony;
but found, on his arrival, that it would be requisite for the general
safety, to abandon that place to the merciless fury of the enemy. London
was reduced to ashes; such of the inhabitants as remained in it were
cruelly massacred; the Romans and all strangers, to the number of
seventy thousand, were every where put to the sword without distinction;
and the Britons, by rendering the war thus bloody, seemed determined
to cut off all hopes of peace or composition with the enemy. But this
cruelty was revenged by Suetonius in a great and decisive battle, where
eighty thousand of the Britons are said to have perished, and Boadicea
herself, rather than fall into the hands of the enraged victor, put an
end to her own life by poison.[*] Nero soon after recalled Suetonius
from a government, where, by suffering and inflicting so many
severities, he was judged improper for composing the angry and alarmed
minds of the inhabitants. After some interval, Cerealis received the
command from Vespasian, and by his bravery propagated the terror of the
Roman arms, Julius Frontinus succeeded Cerealis both in authority and in
reputation: but the general who finally established the dominion of
the Romans in this island, was Julius Agricola, who governed it in the
reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, and distinguished himself in
that scene of action.

This great commander formed a regular plan for subduing Britain, and
rendering the acquisition useful to the conquerors. He carried his
victorious arms northwards, defeated the Britons in every encounter,
pierced into the inaccessible forests and mountains of Caledonia,
reduced every state to subjection in the southern parts of the island,
and chased before him all the men of fiercer and more intractable
spirits, who deemed war and death itself less intolerable than servitude
under the victors. He even defeated them in a decisive action, which
they fought under Galgacus, their leader; and having fixed a chain of
garrisons between the Friths of Clyde and Forth, he thereby cut off
the ruder and more barren parts of the island, and secured the Roman
province from the incursions of the barbarous inhabitants.[*]

     [* Tacit Ann. lib. xiv.]

During these military enterprises, he neglected not the arts of peace.
He introduced laws and civility among the Britons, taught them to desire
and raise all the conveniences of life, reconciled them to the Roman
language and manners, instructed them in letters and science, and
employed every expedient to render those chains which he had forged both
easy and agreeable to them.[*]

     [* Tacit. Agr.]

The inhabitants, having experienced how unequal their own force was to
resist that of the Romans, acquiesced in the dominion of their masters,
and were gradually incorporated as a part of that mighty empire.

This was the last durable conquest made by the Romans, and Britain,
once subdued, gave no further inquietude to the victor. Caledonia alone,
defended by its barren mountains, and by the contempt which the Romans
entertained for it, sometimes infested the more cultivated parts of the
island by the incursions of its inhabitants. The better to secure
the frontiers of the empire, Adrian, who visited this island, built a
rampart between the River Tyne and the Frith of Solway; Lollius Urbicus,
under Antoninus Pius, erected one in the place where Agricola had
formerly established his garrisons, Severus, who made an expedition
into Britain, and carried his arms to the most northern extremity of it,
added new fortifications to the wall of Adrian; and during the reigns
of all the Roman emperors, such a profound tranquillity prevailed in
Britain, that little mention is made of the affairs of that island by
any historian. The only incidents which occur, are some seditions or
rebellions of the Roman legions quartered there, and some usurpations
of the imperial dignity by the Roman governors. The natives, disarmed,
dispirited, and submissive, had lost all desire and even idea of their
former liberty and independence.


But the period was now come, when that enormous fabric of the Roman
empire, which had diffused slavery and oppression, together with peace
and civility, over so considerable a part of the globe, was approaching
towards its final dissolution. Italy, and the centre of the empire,
removed during so many ages from all concern in the wars, had entirely
lost the military spirit, and were peopled by an enervated race, equally
disposed to submit to a foreign yoke, or to the tyranny of their own
rulers. The emperors found themselves obliged to recruit their
legions from the frontier provinces, where the genius of war, though
languishing, was not totally extinct; and these mercenary forces,
careless of laws and civil institutions, established a military
government no less dangerous to the sovereign than to the people.
The further progress of the same disorders introduced the bordering
barbarians into the service of the Romans; and those fierce nations,
having now added discipline to their native bravery, could no longer be
restrained by the impotent policy of the emperors, who were accustomed
to employ one in the destruction of the others. Sensible of their own
force, and allured by the prospect of so rich a prize, the northern
barbarians, in the reign of Arcadius and Honorius, assailed at once
all the frontiers of the Roman empire; and having first satiated their
avidity by plunder, began to think of fixing a settlement in the wasted
provinces. The more distant barbarians, who occupied the deserted
habitations of the former, advanced in their acquisitions, and pressed
with their incumbent weight the Roman state, already unequal to the load
which it sustained. Instead of arming the people in their own defence,
the emperors recalled all the distant legions, in whom alone they
could repose confidence; and collected the whole military force for
the defence of the capital and centre of the empire. The necessity of
self-preservation had superseded the ambition of power; and the ancient
point of honor, never to contract the limits of the empire, could no
longer be attended to in this desperate extremity.

Britain by its situation was removed from the fury of these barbarous
incursions; and being also a remote province, not much valued by
the Romans, the legions which defended it were carried over to the
protection of Italy and Gaul. But that province, though secured by
the sea against the inroads of the greater tribes of barbarians, found
enemies on its frontiers, who took advantage of its present defenceless
situation. The Picts and Scots, who dwelt in the northern parts,
beyond the wall of Antoninus, made incursions upon their peaceable and
effeminate neighbors; and besides the temporary depredations which they
committed, these combined nations threatened the whole province with
subjection, or, what the inhabitants more dreaded, with plunder and
devastation, The Picts seem to have been a tribe of the native British
race, who, having been chased into the northern parts by the conquests
of Agricola, had there intermingled with the ancient inhabitants:
the Scots were derived from the same Celtic origin, had first been
established in Ireland, had migrated to the north-west coasts of this
island, and had long been accustomed, as well from their old as their
new seats, to infest the Roman province by piracy and rapine. [1]

     [* See note A, at the end of the volume.]

These tribes finding their more opulent neighbors exposed to invasion,
soon broke over the Roman wall, no longer defended by the Roman arms;
and, though a contemptible enemy in themselves, met with no resistance
from the unwarlike inhabitants. The Britons, accustomed to have recourse
to the emperors for defence as well as government, made supplications to
Rome: and one legion was sent over for their protection. This force was
an overmatch for the barbarians, repelled their invasion, touted them
in every engagement, and having chased them into their ancient limits,
returned in triumph to the defence of the southern provinces of the
empire.[*]

     [* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. cap. 12.]

Their retreat brought on a new invasion of the enemy. The Britons made
again an application to Rome, and again obtained the assistance of a
legion, which proved effectual for their relief: but the Romans, reduced
to extremities at home, and fatigued with those distant expeditions,
informed the Britons that they must no longer look to them for succor,
exhorted them to arm in their own defence, and urged, that, as they were
now their own masters, it became them to protect by their valor that
independence which their ancient lords had conferred upon them.[*] That
they might leave the island with the better grace, the Romans assisted
them in erecting anew the wall of Severus, which was built entirely of
stone, and which the Britons had not at that time artificers skilful
enough to repair.[*]

     [* Paul. Diacon. p. 43.]

And having done this last good office to the inhabitants, they bade a
final adieu to Britain, about the year 448, after being masters of the
more considerable part of it during the course of near four centuries.




THE BRITONS.

The abject Britons regarded this present of liberty as fatal to them;
and were in no condition to put in practice the prudent counsel given
them by the Romans, to arm in their own defence. Unaccustomed both
to the perils of war and to the cares of civil government, they found
themselves incapable of forming or executing any measures for resisting
the incursions of the barbarians. Gratian also and Constantine, two
Romans who had a little before assumed the purple in Britain, had
carried over to the continent the flower of the British youth; and
having perished in their unsuccessful attempts on the imperial throne,
had despoiled the island of those who, in this desperate extremity, were
best able to defend it. The Picts and Scots, finding that the Romans had
finally relinquished Britain, now regarded the whole as their prey, and
attacked the northern wall with redoubled forces. The Britons, already
subdued by their own fears, found the ramparts but a weak defence for
them; and deserting their station, left the country entirely open to
the inroads of the barbarous enemy. The invaders carried devastation and
ruin along with them; and exerted to the utmost their native ferocity,
which was not mitigated by the helpless condition and submissive
behavior of the inhabitants.[*]

     [* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. Allured. Beverl. p. 45.]

The unhappy Britons had a third time recourse to Rome, which had
declared its resolution forever to abandon them. Ætius, the patrician,
sustained at that time, by his valor and magnanimity, the tottering
ruins of the empire, and revived for a moment among the degenerate
Romans the spirit, as well as discipline, of their ancestors. The
British ambassadors carried to him the letter of their countrymen, which
was inscribed, “The groans of the Britons.” The tenor of the epistle was
suitable to its superscription. “The barbarians,” say they, “on the one
hand, chase us into the sea; the sea, on the other, throws us back upon
the barbarians; and we have only the hard choice left us of perishing by
the sword or by the waves.”[*]

     [* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. cap. 13. William of
     Malmesbury, lib. i. cap. 1 Alured. Beverl. p. 45.]

But Ætius, pressed by the arms of Attila, the most terrible enemy that
ever assailed the empire, had no leisure to attend to the complaints of
allies, whom generosity alone could induce him to assist.[*]

     [* Saxon Chron. p. 11, edit. 1692.]

The Britons, thus rejected, were reduced to despair, deserted their
habitations, abandoned tillage, and flying for protection to the forests
and mountains, suffered equally from hunger and from the enemy. The
barbarians themselves began to feel the pressures of famine in a country
which they had ravaged; and being harassed by the dispersed Britons, who
had not dared to resist them in a body, they retreated with their spoils
into their own country.[*]

     [* Alured. Beverl, p. 45.]

The Britons, taking advantage of this interval, returned to their usual
occupations; and the favorable seasons which succeeded, seconding their
industry, made them soon forget their past miseries, and restored
to them great plenty of all the necessaries of life. No more can be
imagined to have been possessed by a people so rude, who had not,
without the assistance of the Romans, art of masonry sufficient to raise
a stone rampart for their own defence; yet the monkish historians,[*]
who treat of those events, complain of the luxury of the Britons
during this period, and ascribe to that vice, not to their cowardice or
improvident counsels, all their subsequent calamities.

     [* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. cap. 14.]

The Britons, entirely occupied in the enjoyment of the present interval
of peace, made no provision for resisting the enemy, who, invited by
their former timid behavior, soon threatened them with a new invasion.
We are not exactly informed what species of civil government the Romans,
on their departure, had left among the Britons, but it appears probable
that the great men in the different districts assumed a kind of regal,
though precarious authority, and lived in a great measure independent of
each other.[*]

     [* Gildas, Usher, Ant. Brit. p. 248, 347.]

To this disunion of counsels were also added the disputes of theology;
and the disciples of Pelagius, who was himself a native of Britain,
having increased to a great multitude, gave alarm to the clergy, who
seem to have been more intent on suppressing them, than on opposing the
public enemy.[*]

     [* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. cap. 17. Constant, in Vita Germ.]

Laboring under these domestic evils, and menaced with a foreign
invasion, the Britons attended only to the suggestions of their present
fears, and following the counsels of Vortigern, prince of Dumnonium,
who, though stained with every vice, possessed the chief authority among
them,[*] they sent into Germany a deputation to invite over the Saxons
for their protection and assistance.

     [* Gildas, W. Malms. p. 8.]




THE SAXONS.

Of all the barbarous nations, known either in ancient or modern times,
the Germans seem to have been the most distinguished both by their
manners and political institutions, and to have carried to the highest
pitch the virtues of valor and love of liberty; the only virtues which
can have place among an uncivilized people, where justice and humanity
are commonly neglected. Kingly government, even when established among
the Germans, (for it was not universal,) possessed a very limited
authority; and though the sovereign was usually chosen from among the
royal family, he was directed in every measure by the common consent
of the nation over whom he presided. When any important affairs were
transacted, all the warriors met in arms; the men of greatest authority
employed persuasion to engage their consent; the people expressed their
approbation by rattling their armor, or their dissent by murmurs; there
was no necessity for a nice scrutiny of votes among a multitude, who
were usually carried with a strong current to one side or the other;
and the measure, thus suddenly chosen by general agreement, was executed
with alacrity, and prosecuted with vigor. Even in war, the princes
governed more by example than by authority, but in peace, the civil
union was in a great measure dissolved, and the inferior leaders
administered justice, after an independent manner, each in his
particular district. These were elected by the votes of the people in
their great councils; and though regard was paid to nobility in the
choice, their personal qualities, chiefly their valor, procured
them, from the suffrages of their fellow-citizens, that honorable but
dangerous distinction. The warriors of each tribe attached themselves
to the[**possibly this word is their] leader, with the most devoted
affection and most unshaken constancy. They attended him as his ornament
in peace, as his defence in war, as his council in the administration of
justice. Their constant emulation in military renown dissolved not that
inviolable friendship which they professed to their chieftain and to
each other. To die for the honor of their band was their chief ambition;
to survive its disgrace, or the death of their leader, was infamous.
They even carried into the field their women and children, who adopted
all the martial sentiments of the men: and being thus impelled by every
human motive, they were invincible; where they were no[**possibly the
word is not] opposed, either by the similar manners and institutions
of the neighboring Germans, or by the superior discipline, arms, and
numbers of the Romans.[*]

     [* Caesar, lib. vi.]

The leaders and their military companions were maintained by the labor
of their slaves, or by that of the weaker and less warlike part of the
community whom they defended. The contributions which they levied went
not beyond a bare subsistence; and the honors, acquired by a superior
rank, were the only reward of their superior dangers and fatigues. All
the refined arts of life were unknown among the Germans: tillage itself
was almost wholly neglected; they even seem to have been anxious to
prevent any improvements of that nature; and the leaders, by annually
distributing anew all the land among the inhabitants of each village,
kept them from attaching themselves to particular possessions, or
making such progress in agriculture as might divert their attention from
military expeditions, the chief occupation of the community.[*]

     [* Tacit. de Mor. Germ]

The Saxons had been for some time regarded as one of the most warlike
tribes of this fierce people, and had become the terror of the
neighboring nations.[*]

     [* Amm. Marcell. lib. xxviii. Orosius.]

They had diffused themselves from the northern parts of Germany and the
Cimbrian Chersonesus, and had taken possession of all the sea-coast
from the mouth of the Rhine to Jutland; whence they had long infested
by their piracies all the eastern and southern parts of Britain, and the
northern of Gaul.[*]

     [* Amm. Marcell. lib. xxvii. cap. 7. lib. xxviii. cap. 7]

In order to oppose their inroads, the Romans had established an officer,
whom they called “Count of the Saxon shore;” and as the naval arts can
flourish among a civilized people alone, they seem to have been more
successful in repelling the Saxons than any of the other barbarians by
whom they were invaded. The dissolution of the Roman power invited them
to renew their inroads; and it was an acceptable circumstance that
the deputies of the Britons appeared among them, and prompted them to
undertake an enterprise to which they were of themselves sufficiently
inclined.[*]

     [* W. Malms, p. 8.]

Hengist and Horsa, two brothers, possessed great credit among the
Saxons, and were much celebrated both for their valor and nobility. They
were reputed, as most of the Saxon princes, to be sprung from Woden, who
was worshipped as a god among those nations, and they are said to be his
great grandsons;[*] a circumstance which added much to their authority.

     [* Bede, lib. i. cap. 15. Chron. Sax. p. 13. Nennius, cap.
     28.]

We shall not attempt to trace any higher the origin of those princes
and nations. It is evident what fruitless labor it must be to search,
in those barbarous and illiterate ages, for the annals of a people, when
their first leaders, known in any true history, were believed by them to
be the fourth in descent from a fabulous deity, or from a man exalted by
ignorance into that character. The dark industry of antiquaries, led by
imaginary analogies of names, or by uncertain traditions, would in
vain attempt to pierce into that deep obscurity which covers the remote
history of those nations.

These two brothers, observing the other provinces of Germany to be
occupied by a warlike and necessitous people, and the rich provinces of
Gaul already conquered or overrun by other German tribes, found it
easy to persuade their countrymen to embrace the sole enterprise
which promised a favorable opportunity of displaying their valor and
gratifying their avidity. They embarked their troops in three vessels
and about the year 449 or 450,[*] earned over one thousand six hundred
men, who landed in the Isle of Thanet, and immediately marched to the
defence of the Britons against the northern invaders. The Scots and
Picts were unable to resist the valor of these auxiliaries; and the
Britons, applauding their own wisdom in calling over the Saxons, hoped
thenceforth to enjoy peace and security under the powerful protection of
that warlike people.

But Hengist and Horsa, perceiving, from their easy victory over the
Scots and Picts, with what facility they might subdue tae Britons
themselves, who had not been able to resist those feeble invaders, were
determined to conquer and fight for their own grandeur, not for the
defence of their degenerate allies. They sent intelligence to Saxony
of the fertility and riches of Britain, and represented as certain the
subjection of a people so long disused to arms, who, being now cut off
from the Roman empire, of which they had been a province during so
many ages, had not yet acquired any union among themselves, and were
destitute of all affection to their new liberties, and of all national
attachments and regards.[**] The vices, and pusillanimity of Vortigern,
the British leader, were a new ground of hope; and the Saxons in
Germany, following such agreeable prospects, soon reënforced Hengist and
Horsa with five thousand men, who came over in seventeen vessels. The
Britons now began to entertain apprehensions of their allies, whose
numbers they found continually augmenting; but thought of no remedy,
except a passive submission and connivance. This weak expedient soon
failed them. The Saxons sought a quarrel, by complaining that their
subsidies were ill paid, and their provisions withdrawn;[***] and
immediately taking off the mask, they formed an alliance with the Picts
and Scots, and proceeded to open hostility against the Britons.

The Britons, impelled by these violent extremities, ana roused to
indignation against their treacherous auxiliaries, were necessitated to
take arms; and having deposed Vortigern, who had become odious from his
vices, and from the bad event of his rash counsels, they put themselves
under the Command of his son, Vortimer. They fought many battles with
their enemies; and though the victories in these actions be disputed
between the British and Saxon annalists, the progress still made by the
Saxons proves that the advantage was commonly on their side.

     [* Chron. Sax. p. 12. W. Malms, p. 11. Hunting,
     lib. U. p. 309. Ethelwerd, Brompton, p. 728.]

     [** Chron. Sax. p. 12. Alured. Beverl. p. 49.]

     [*** Bede, lib. i cap. 15. Nennius, cap. 35. Gildas,
     sect 2d.]

In one battle, however, fought at Faglesford, now Ailsford, Horsa, the
Saxon general, was slain and left the sole command over his countrymen
in the hands of Hengist. This active general, continually reënforced
oy fresh numbers from Germany, carried devastation into the most remote
corners of Britain; and being chiefly anxious to spread the terror of
his arms, he spared neither age, nor sex, nor condition, wherever he
marched with his victorious forces. The private and public edifices of
the Britons were reduced to ashes; the priests were slaughtered on the
altars by those idolatrous ravagers; the bishops and nobility shared
the fate of the vulgar; the people, flying to the mountains and deserts,
were intercepted and butchered in heaps: some were glad to accept of
life and servitude under their victors: others, deserting their
native country, took shelter in the province of Armorica; where, being
charitably received by a people of the same language and manners, they
settled in great numbers, and gave the country the name of Brittany.[*]

The British writers assign one cause which facilitated the entrance of
the Saxons into this island--the love with which Vortigern was at
first seized for Rovena, the daughter of Hengist, and which that artful
warrior made use of to blind the eyes of the imprudent monarch.[**]
The same historians add, that Vortimer died; and that Vortigern,
being restored to the throne, accepted of a banquet from Hengist, at
Stonehenge, where three hundred of his nobility were treacherously
slaughtered, and himself detained captive.[***] But these stories seem
to have been invented by the Welsh authors, in order to palliate the
weak resistance made at first by their countrymen, and to account for
the rapid progress and licentious devastations of the Saxons.[****]

After the death of Vortimer, Ambrosius, a Briton, though of Roman
descent, was invested with the command over his countrymen, and
endeavored, not without success, to unite them in their resistance
against the Saxons. Those contests increased the animosity between the
two rations, and roused the military spirit of the ancient inhabitants,
which had before been sunk into a fatal lethargy.

     [* Bede, lib. i. cap. 15. Usher, p. 226. Gildas,
     sect. 24.]


     [** Nennius, Galfr. lib. vi. cap. 12.]


     [*** Nennius, cap. 47. Galfr.]


     [**** Stillingfleet’s Orig. Britt. p. 324,325.]

Hengist, however, notwithstanding their opposition, still maintained his
ground in Britain and in order to divide the forces and attention of the
natives he called over a new tribe of Saxons, under the command of his
brother Octa, and of Ebissa, the son of Octa; and he settled them in
Northumberland. He himself remained in the southern parts of the island,
and laid the foundation of their kingdom of Kent, comprehending the
county of that name Middlesex, Essex, and part of Surrey. He fixed his
royal seat at Canterbury, where he governed about forty years, and he
died in or near the year 488, leaving his new-acquired dominions to his
posterity.

The success of Hengist excited the avidity of the other northern
Germans; and at different times, and under different leaders, they
flocked over in multitudes to the invasion of mis island. These
conquerors were chiefly composed of three tribes, the Saxons, Angles,
and Jutes,[*] who all passed under the common appellation, sometimes,
of _Saxons_, sometimes of _Angles_; and speaking the same
language, and being governed by the same institutions, they were
naturally led, from these causes, as well as from their common interest,
to unite themselves against the ancient inhabitants. The resistance,
however, though unequal, was still maintained by the Britons; but became
every day more feeble; and their calamities admitted of few intervals,
till they were driven into Cornwall and Wales, and received protection
from the remote situation or inaccessible mountains of those countries.

The first Saxon state, after that of Kent, which was established in
Britain, was the kingdom of South Saxony. In the year 477,[**] Ælla,
a Saxon chief, brought over an army from Germany; and, landing on
the southern coast, proceeded to take possession of the neighboring
territory. The Britons, now armed, did not tamely abandon their
possessions; nor were they expelled till defeated in many battles
by their war-like invaders. The most memorable action, mentioned by
historians, is that of Mearcredes Burn;[***] where, though the Saxons
seem to have obtained the victory, they suffered so considerable a loss,
as somewhat retarded the progress of their conquests.

     [* Bede, lib. i. cap. 15. Ethelwerd, p. 833, edit.
     Camdeni. Chron. Sax. p. 12. Alured. Beverl. p. 78. The
     inhabitants of Kent and the Isle of Wight were Jutes. Essex,
     Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex, and all the southern counties to
     Cornwall, were peopled by Saxons: Mercis mud other parts of
     the kingdom were inhabited by Angles.]

     [** Chron. Sax. p.14. Alured Beverl. p. 81.]

     [*** Chron. Sax. A. D. 485. Flor. Wigron]

But Ælla, reénforced by fresh numbers of his countrymen, again took the
field against the Britons; and laid siege to Ancired Ceaster, which was
defended by the garrison and inhabitants with desperate valor.[*] The
Saxons, enraged by this resistance, and by the fatigues and dangers
which they had sustained, redoubled their efforts against the place;
and, when masters of it, put all their enemies to the sword without
distinction. This decisive advantage secured the conquests of Ælla, who
assumed the name of king, and extended his dominion over Sussex and a
great part of Surrey He was stopped in his progress to the east by the
kingdom of Kent; in that to the west by another tribe of Saxons, who had
taken possession of that territory.

These Saxons, from the situation of the country in which they settled,
were called the _West Saxons_, and landed in the year 495, under
the command of Cerdic, and of his son Kenric.[**] The Britons were, by
past experience, so much on their guard, and so well prepared to receive
the enemy, that they gave battle to Cerdic the very day of his landing;
and, though vanquished, still defended, for some time, their liberties
against the invaders. None of the other tribes of Saxons met with such
vigorous resistance, or exerted such valor and perseverance in pushing
their conquests. Cerdic was even obliged to call for the assistance of
his countrymen from the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex, as well as from
Germany, and he was thence joined by a fresh army under the command
of Porte, and of his sons Bleda and Megla.[***] Strengthened by these
succors, he fought, in the year 508, a desperate battle with the
Britons, commanded by Nazan Leod, who was victorious in the beginning of
the action, and routed the wing in which Cerdic himself commanded. But
Kenric, who had prevailed in the other wing, brought timely assistance
to his father, and restored the battle, which ended in a complete
victory gained by the Saxons.[****] Nazan Leod perished, with
five thousand of his army; but left the Britons more weakened than
discouraged by his death. The war still continued, though the success
was commonly on the side of the Saxons, whose short swords and manner
of fighting gave them great advantage over the missile weapons of the
Britons.

     [* H. Hunting, lib. ii.]

     [** W. Malms, lib. i. cap. I, p. 12. Chron. Sax. p.
     15.]

     [*** Chron. Sax. p. 17.]

     [**** H. Hunting, lib ii. Ethelwerd, lib. i. Chron.
     Sax. p. 17.]

Cerdic was not wanting to in good fortune; and in order to extend
his conquests, he laid siege to Mount Badon or Banesdowne, near Bath,
whither the most obstinate of the discomfited Britons had retired. The
southern Britons, in this extremity, applied for assistance to Arthur,
prince of the Silures, whose heroic valor now sustained the declining
fate of his country.[*] This is that Arthur so much celebrated in the
songs of Thaliessin, and the other British bards, and whose military
achievements have been blended with so many fables, as even to give
occasion for entertaining a doubt of his real existence. But poets,
though they disfigure the most certain history by their fictions, ana
use strange liberties with truth where they are the sole historians, as
among the Britons, have commonly some foundation for their wildest
exaggerations. Certain it is, that the siege of Badon was raised by the
Britons in the year 520; and the Saxons were there discomfited in a
great battle.[**] This misfortune stopped the progress of Cerdic; but
was not sufficient to wrest from him the conquests which he had already
made. He and his son Kenric, who succeeded him, established the kingdom
of the West Saxons, or of Wessex, over the counties of Hants, Dorset,
Wilts, Berks, and the Isle of Wight, and left their new-acquired
dominions to their posterity. Cerdic died in 534, Kenric in 560.


While the Saxons made this progress in the south, their countrymen were
not less active in other quarters. In the year 527, a great tribe of
adventurers, under several leaders, landed on the east coast of Britain;
and after fighting many battles, of which history has preserved no
particular account, they established three new kingdoms in this island.
Uffa assumed the title of king of the East Angles in 575; Crida, that of
Mercia in 585;[***] and Erkenwin, that of East Saxony, or Essex, nearly
about the same time; but the year is uncertain. This latter kingdom was
dismembered from that of Kent, and comprehended Essex, Middlesex,
and part of Hertfordshire; that of the East Angles, the counties of
Cambridge, Suffolk, and Norfolk: Mercia was extended over all the middle
counties from the banks of the Severn to the frontiers of these two
kingdoms.

     [* H. Hunting, lib. ii.]

     [** Gildas, Chron. Sax. H. Hunting, lib. ii.]

     [*** M. West. H. Hunting, lib. ii.]

The Saxons, soon after the landing of Hengist, had been planted in
Northumberland; but as they met with an obstinate resistance, and made
but small progress in subduing the inhabitants, their affairs were in
so unsettled a condition, that none of their princes for a long time
assumed the appellation of king. At last, in 547,[*] Ida, a Saxon prince
of great valor,[**] who claimed a descent, as did all the other princes
of that nation, from Woden, brought over a reénforcement from Germany,
and enabled the Northumbrians to carry on their conquests over the
Britons. He entirely subdued the county now called Northumberland,
the bishopric of Durham, as well as some of the south-east counties of
Scotland; and he assumed the crown under the title of king of Bernicia.
Nearly about the same time, Ælla, another Saxon prince, having conquered
Lancashire and the greater part of Yorkshire, received the appellation
of king of Deïri.[***] These two kingdoms were united in the person of
Ethelfrid, grandson of Ida, who married Acca, the daughter of Ælla; and
expelling her brother Edwin, established one of the most powerful of the
Saxon kingdoms, by the title of Northumberland. How far his dominions
extended into the country now called Scotland is uncertain: but it
cannot be doubted, that all the lowlands, especially the east coast of
that country, were peopled in a great measure from Germany; though the
expeditions, made by the several Saxon adventurers, have escaped the
records of history. The language spoken in those countries, which is
purely Saxon, is a stronger proof of this event than can be opposed by
the imperfect, or rather fabulous annals, which are obtruded on us by
the Scottish historians.

     [* Chron. Sax. p. 19.]

     [** W. Malms, p. 19.]

     [*** Alured, Beverl. p. 78].




THE HEPTARCHY

Thus was established, after a violent contest of near a hundred and
fifty years, the Heptarchy, or seven Saxon kingdoms, in Britain; and
the whole southern part of the island, except Wales and Cornwall,
had totally changed its inhabitants, language, customs, and political
institutions. The Britons, under the Roman dominion, had made
such advances towards arts and civil manners, that they had built
twenty-eight considerable cities within their province, besides a great
number of villages and country seats; [*] but the fierce conquerors,
by whom they were now subdued, threw every thing back into ancient
barbarity; and those few natives, who were not either massacred or
expelled their habitations, were reduced to the most abject slavery.

     [* Gildas, Sede, lib, i.]

None of the other northern conquerors, the Franks, Goths, Vandals, or
Burgundians, though they overran the southern provinces of the
empire like a mighty torrent, made such devastations in the conquered
territories, or were inflamed into so violent an animosity against the
ancient inhabitants. As the Saxons came over at intervals in separate
bodies, the Britons, however at first unwarlike, were tempted to make
resistance; and hostilities, being thereby prolonged, proved more
destructive to both parties, especially to the vanquished. The first
invaders from Germany, instead of excluding other adventurers, who must
share with them the spoils of the ancient inhabitants, were obliged to
solicit fresh supplies from their own country; and a total extermination
of the Britons became the sole expedient for providing a settlement and
subsistence to the new planters. Hence there have been found in history
few conquests more ruinous than that of the Saxons, and few revolutions
more violent than that which they introduced.


So long as the contest was maintained with the natives, the several
Saxon princes preserved a union of counsels and interests; but after the
Britons were shut up in the barren countries of Cornwall and Wales, and
gave no further disturbance to the conquerors, the band of alliance was
in a great measure dissolved among the princes of the Heptarchy. Though
one prince seems still to have been allowed, or to have assumed, an
ascendant over the whole, his authority, if it ought ever to be deemed
regular or legal, was extremely limited; and each state acted as if it
had been independent, and wholly separate from the rest Wars, therefore,
and revolutions and dissensions, were unavoidable among a turbulent and
military people; and these events, however intricate or confused, ought
now to become the objects of our attention But, added to the difficulty
of carrying on at once the history of seven independent kingdoms, there
is great discouragement to a writer, arising from the uncertainty, at
least barrenness, of the accounts transmitted to us. The monks, who were
the only annalists during those ages, lived remote from public
affairs, considered the civil transactions as entirely subordinate the
ecclesiastical, and, besides partaking of the ignorance and barbarity
which were then universal, were strongly infected with credulity, with
the love of wonder, and with a propensity to imposture; vices almost
inseparable from their profession and manner of life. The history of
that period abounds in names, but is extremely barren of events; or the
events are related so much without circumstances and causes, that the
most profound or most eloquent writer must despair of rendering them
either instructive or entertaining to the reader. Even the great
learning and vigorous imagination of Milton sunk under the weight; and
this author scruples not to declare, that the skirmishes of kites
or crows as much merited a particular narrative, as the confused
transactions and battles of the Saxon Heptarchy.[*] In order, however,
to connect the events in some tolerable measure, we shall give a
succinct account of the successions of kings, and of the more remarkable
revolutions in each particular kingdom; beginning with that of Kent,
which was the first established.

     [* Milton in Kennet, p. 50]




THE KINGDOM OF KENT

Escus succeeded his father, Hengist, in the kingdom of Kent; but seems
not to have possessed the military genius of that conqueror, who first
made way for the entrance of the Saxon arms into Britain. All the
Saxons, who sought either the fame of valor, or new establishments by
arms, flocked to the standard of Ælla, king of Sussex, who was carrying
on successful war against the Britons, and laying the foundations of a
new kingdom. Escus was content to possess in tranquillity the kingdom
of Kent, which he left in 512 to his son Octet, in whose time the East
Saxons established their monarchy, and dismembered the provinces of
Essex and Middlesex from that of Kent. His death, after a reign of
twenty two years, made room for his son Hermenric in 534, who performed
nothing memorable during a reign of thirty-two years; excepting
associating with him his son Ethelbert in the government, that he might
secure the succession hi his family, and prevent such revolutions as are
incident to a turbulent and barbarous monarchy.

Ethelbert revived the reputation of his family, which had languished for
some generations. The inactivity of his predecessors, and the situation
of his country, secured from all hostility with the Britons, seem
to have much enfeebled the warlike genius of the Kentish Saxons;
and Ethelbert, in his first attempt to aggrandize his country, and
distinguish his own name, was unsuccessful.[*] He was twice discomfited
in battle by Ceaulin, king of Wessex, and obliged to yield the
superiority in the Heptarchy to that ambitious monarch, who preserved
no moderation in his victory, and by reducing the kingdom of Sussex to
subjection, excited jealousy in all the other princes. An association
was formed against him; and Ethelbeit, intrusted with the command of the
allies, gave him battle, and obtained a decisive victory.[**] Ceaulin
died soon after; and Ethelbert succeeded as well to his ascendant among
the Saxon states, as to his other ambitious projects. He reduced all the
princes, except the king of Northumberland, to a strict dependence upon
him; and even established himself by force on the throne of Mercia,
the most extensive of the Saxon kingdoms. Apprehensive, however, of a
dangerous league against him, like that by which he himself had been
enabled to overthrow Ceaulin, he had the prudence to resign the kingdom
of Mercia to Webba, the rightful heir, the son of Crida, who had first
founded that monarchy. But governed still by ambition more than by
justice, he gave Webba possession of the crown on such conditions, as
rendered him little better than a tributary prince under his artful
benefactor.

But the most memorable event which distinguished the reign of this great
prince, was the introduction of the Christian religion among the English
Saxons. The superstition of the Germans, particularly that of the
Saxons, was of the grossest and most barbarous kind; and being founded
on traditional tales, received from their ancestors, not reduced to
any system, not supported by political institutions, like that of the
druids, it seems to have made little impression on its votaries, and to
have easily resigned its place to the new doctrine promulgated to them.
Woden, whom they deemed the ancestor of all their princes, was regarded
as the god of war, and, by a natural consequence, became their supreme
deity, and the chief object of their religious worship. They believed
that, if they obtained the favor of this divinity by their valor, (for
they made less account of the other virtues,) they should be admitted
after their death into his hall; and reposing on couches, should satiate
themselves with ale from the skulls of their enemies, whom they had
slain in battle. Incited by this idea of paradise, which gratified
at once the passion of revenge and that of intemperance, the ruling
inclinations of barbarians, they despised the dangers of war, and
increased their native ferocity against the vanquished by their
religious prejudices.

     [* Chron. Sax. p. 21.]

     [** H. Hunting, lib ii.]

We know little of the other theological tenets of the Saxons; we only
learn that they were polytheists; that they worshipped the sun and moon;
that they adored the god of thunder, under the name of Thor; that they
had images in their temples; that they practised sacrifices; believed
firmly in spells and enchantments; and admitted in general a system
of doctrines which they held as sacred, but which, like all other
superstition must carry the air of the wildest extravagance, if
propounded to those who are not familiarized to it from their earliest
infancy.

The constant hostilities which the Saxons maintained against the
Britons, would naturally indispose them for receiving the Christian
faith, when preached to them by such inveterate enemies; and perhaps the
Britons, as is objected to them by Gildas and Bede, were not over-fond
of communicating to their cruel invaders the doctrine of eternal life
and salvation. But as a civilized people, however subdued by arms, still
maintain a sensible superiority over barbarous and ignorant nations,
all the other northern conquerors of Europe had been already induced to
embrace the Christian faith, which they found established in the empire;
and it was impossible but the Saxons, informed of this event, must have
regarded with some degree of veneration a doctrine which had acquired
the ascendant over all their brethren. However limited in their news,
they could not but have perceived a degree of cultivation in the
southern countries beyond what they themselves possessed; and it was
natural for them to yield to that superior knowledge, as well as zeal,
by which the inhabitants of the Christian kingdoms were even at that
time distinguished.

But these causes might long have failed of producing any considerable
effect, had not a favorable incident prepared the means of introducing
Christianity into Kent. Ethelbert, in his father’s lifetime, had married
Bertha, the only daughter of Cariben, king of Paris,[*] one of the
descendants of Clovis, the conqueror of Gaul.

     [* Greg, of Tours, lib, ix. cap. 26. H. Hunting,
     lib. ii.]

But before he was admitted to this alliance, he was obliged to
stipulate, that the princess should enjoy the free exercise of her
religion; a concession not difficult to be obtained from the idolatrous
Saxons.[*] Bertha brought over a French bishop to the court of
Canterbury; and being zealous for the propagation of her religion, she
had been very assiduous in her devotional exercises, had supported the
credit of her faith by an irreproachable conduct, and had employed every
an of insinuation and address to reconcile her husband to her religious
principles. Her popularity in the court, and her influence over
Ethelbert, had so well paved the way for the reception of the Christian
doctrine, that Gregory, surnamed the Great, then Roman pontiff, began
to entertain hopes of effecting a project which lie himself, before he
mounted the papal throne, had once embraced, of converting the British
Saxons.

It happened that this prelate, at that time in a private station, had
observed in the market place of Rome some Saxon youth exposed to sale,
whom the Roman merchants, in their trading voyages to Britain, had
bought of their mercenary parents. Struck with the beauty of their fair
complexions and blooming countenances, Gregory asked to what country
they belonged; and being told they were “Angles,” he replied that they
ought more properly to be denominated “angels.” it were a pity that the
prince of darkness should enjoy so fair a prey, and that so beautiful
a frontispiece should cover a mind destitute of internal grace and
righteousness. Inquiring further concerning the name of their province,
he was Informed, that it was “Deïri,” a district of Northumberland.
“Deïri!” replied he, “that is good! They are called to the mercy of God
from his anger--_de ira_. But what is the name of the king of that
province?” He was told it was “Ælla,” or “Alia.” “Alleluiah;” cried he,
“we must endeavor that the praises of God be sung in their country.”
 Moved by these allusions, which appeared to him so happy, he deter mined
to undertake himself a mission into Britain; and having obtained the
pope’s approbation, he prepared for that perilous journey; but his
popularity at home was so great, that the Romans, unwilling to expose
him to such dangers, opposed his design, and he was obliged for the
present to lay aside all further thoughts of executing that pious
purpose.[**]

     [* Bede, lib. i. cap. 25. Brompton, p. 729.]

     [** Bede, lib. ii. cap. 1. Spell. Concil. p. 91.]

The controversy between the pagans and the Christians was not entirely
cooled in that age; and no pontiff before Gregory had ever carried to
greater excess an intemperate zeal against the former religion. He had
waged war with all the precious monuments of the ancients, and even with
their writings, which, as appears from the strain of his own wit, as
well as from the style of his compositions, he had not taste or genius
sufficient to comprehend. Ambitious to distinguish his pontificate by
the conversion of the British Saxons, he pitched on Augustine, a Roman
monk, and sent him with forty associates to preach the gospel in this
island. These missionaries, terrified with the dangers which might
attend their proposing a new doctrine to so fierce a people, of whose
language they were ignorant, stopped some time in France, and sent back
Augustine to lay the hazards and difficulties before the pope, and crave
his permission to desist from the undertaking. But Gregory exorted them
to persevere in their purpose, advised them to choose some interpreters
from among the Franks, who still spoke the same language with the
Saxons,[*] and recommended them to the good offices of Queen Brunehaut,
who had at this time usurped the sovereign power in France. This
princess, though stained with every vice of treachery and cruelty,
either possessed or pretended great zeal for the cause; and Gregory
acknowledged, that to her friendly assistance was, in a great measure,
owing the success of that undertaking.[**]

Augustine, on his arrival in Kent in the year 597,[***] found the danger
much less than he had apprehended. Ethelbert, already well disposed
towards the Christian faith, assigned him a habitation in the Isle
of Thanet, and soon after admitted him to a conference. Apprehensive,
however, lest spells or enchantments might be employed against him by
priests, who brought an unknown worship from a distant country, he had
the precaution to receive them in the open air, where, he believed,
the force of their magic would be more easily dissipated,[****] Here
Augustine, by means of his interpreters, delivered to him the tenets of
the Christian faith, and promised him eternal joys above, and a kingdom
in heaven without end, if he would be persuaded to receive that salutary
doctrine.

     [* Bede, lib. i. cap. 23.]

     [** Greg. Epist. lib. ix. epist. 56. Spell. Concil.
     p. 82.]

     [*** Higden Polychron. lib. v. Chron. Sax. p. 23.]

     [**** Bede, lib. i. cap. 25. H. Hunting, lib. iii.
     Brompton, p. 729 Parker, Antiq. Brit. Eccel. p 61.]

“Our words and promises,”[*] replied Ethelbert, “are fair; but because
they are new and uncertain, I cannot entirely yield to them, and
relinquish the principles which I and my ancestors have so long
maintained. You are welcome, however, to remain here in peace; and as
you have undertaken so long a journey, solely, as it appears, for
what you believe to be for our advantage, I will supply you with
all necessaries, and permit you to deliver your doctrine to my
subjects.”[**]

Augustine, encouraged by this favorable reception, and seeing now a
prospect of success, proceeded with redoubled zeal to preach the gospel
to the Kentish Saxons. He attracted their attention by the austerity of
his manners, by the severe penances to which he subjected himself, by
the abstinence find self-denial which he practised; and having excited
then wonder by a course of life which appeared so contrary to nature, he
procured more easily their belief of miracles, which, it was pretended,
he wrought for their conversion. Influenced by these motives, and
by the declared favor of the court, numbers of the Kentish men were
baptized; and the king himself was persuaded to submit to that rite of
Christianity. His example had great influence with his subjects; but
he employed no force to bring them over to the new doctrine. Augustine
thought proper, in the commencement of his mission, to assume the
appearance of the greatest lenity; he told Ethelbert, that the service
of Christ must be entirely voluntary, and that no violence ought ever to
be used in propagating so salutary a doctrine.[****]

The intelligence received of these spiritual conquests afforded great
joy to the Romans, who now exulted as much in those peaceful trophies as
their ancestors had ever done in their most sanguinary triumphs and most
splendid victories. Gregory wrote a letter to Ethelbert, in which, after
informing him that the end of the world was approaching, he exhorted him
to display his zeal in the conversion of his subjects, to exert rigor
against the worship of idols, and to build up the good work of
holiness by every expedient of exhortation, terror, blandishment, or
correction;[*****] a doctrine more suitable to that age, and to the
usual papal maxims, than the tolerating principles which Augustine had
thought it prudent to inculcate.

     [* Bede, lib. i. cap. 25. Chron. W. Thorn, p.
     1759.]

     [** Bede, lib. i. cap. 25. H. Hunting, lib. iii.
     Brompton, p. 729]

     [*** Bede, lib. i. cap. 26.]

     [**** Bede, cap 26. H. Hunting, lib. iii.]

     [***** Bede, lib. i. cap. 32. Brompton, p. 732 Spell.
     Concil, 785]

The pontiff also answered some questions, which the missionary had
put concerning the government of the new church of Kent. Besides other
queries, which it is not material here to relate, Augustine asked,
“Whether cousins-german might be allowed to marry.” Gregory answered,
that that liberty had indeed been formerly granted by the Roman law;
but that experience had shown that no issue could ever come from such
marriages; and he therefore prohibited them. Augustine asked, “Whether
a woman pregnant might be baptized.” Gregory answered, that he saw no
objection. “How soon after the birth the child might receive baptism.”
 It was answered, immediately, if necessary. “How soon a husband might
have commerce with his wife after her delivery.” Not till she had given
suck to her child; a practice to which Gregory exhorts all women. “How;
soon a man might enter the church, or receive the sacrament, after
having had commerce with his wife.” It was replied, that, unless he had
approached her without desire, merely for the sake of propagating his
species, he was not without sin; but in all cases it was requisite for
him, before he entered the church, or communicated, to purge himself
by prayer and ablution; and he ought not, even after using these
precautions, to participate immediately of the sacred duties.[*] There
are some other questions and replies still more indecent and more
ridiculous.[**] And on the whole it appears that Gregory and his
missionary, if sympathy of manners have any influence, were better
calculated than men of more refined understandings, for making a
progress with the ignorant and barbarous Saxons.

The more to facilitate the reception of Christianity, Gregory enjoined
Augustine to remove the idols from the heathen altars, but not to
destroy the altars themselves; because the people, he said, would be
allured to frequent the Christian worship, when they found it celebrated
in a place which they were accustomed to revere.

     [* Bede, lib. i. cap. 27. Spell. Concil. p. 97,
     98, 99, &c.]

     [** Augustine asks, “Si mulier menstrua
     consuetudine tenetur, an ecclesiam intrare et licet, aut
     sacræ communionis sacramenta percipere?” Gregory answers,
     “Santæ communionis mysterium in eisdem diebus percipere non
     debet prohiberi. Si autem ex veneratione magna percipere non
     præsumitur, laudanda est.” Augustine asks, “Si post
     illusionem, quae par somnum solet accidere, vel corpus
     Domini quilibet accipere valeat; vel, si sacerdos sit, sacra
     mysteria celebrare?” Gregory answers this learned question
     by many learned distinctions.]

And as the pagans practised sacrifices, and feasted with the priests on
their offerings, he also exhorted the missionary to persuade them, on
Christian festivals, to kill their cattle in the neighborhood of the
church, and to indulge themselves in those cheerful entertainments to
which they had been habituated.[*] These political compliances
show that, notwithstanding his ignorance and prejudices, he was
not unacquainted with the arts of governing mankind. Augustine was
consecrated archbishop of Canterbury, was endowed by Gregory with
authority over all the British churches, and received the pall, a badge
of ecclesiastical honor, from Rome.[**] Gregory also advised him not
to be too much elated with his gift of working miracles;[***] and as
Augustine, proud of the success of his mission, seemed to think himself
entitled to extend his authority over the bishops of Gaul, the
pope informed him that they lay entirely without the bounds of his
jurisdiction.[****]

The marriage of Ethelbert with Bertha, and, much more his embracing
Christianity, begat a connection of his subjects with the French,
Italians, and other nations on the continent, and tended to reclaim them
from that gross ignorance and barbarity, in which all the Saxon tribes
had been hitherto involved.[*****] Ethelbert also enacted,[******] with
the consent of the states of his kingdom, a body of laws, the first
written laws promulgated by any of the northern conquerors; and his
reign was in every respect glorious to himself and beneficial to his
people. He governed the kingdom of Kent fifty years; and dying in 616,
left the succession to his son, Eadbald. This prince, seduced by a
passion for his mother-in-law, deserted, for some time, the Christian
faith, which permitted not these incestuous marriages: his whole people
immediately returned with him to idolatry. Laurentius, the successor of
Augustine found the Christian worship wholly abandoned, and was prepared
to return to France, in order to escape the mortification of preaching
the gospel without fruit to the infidels.

     [* Bede lib. i. cap. 30. Spell. Concil. p. 89.
     Greg. Epist. lib. ix. epist. 71.]

     [** Chron. Sax. p. 23,24.]

     [*** H. Hunting, lib. iii. Spell. Concil. p. 83.
     Bede, lib. i. Greg Epist. lib. ix. epist. 60.]

     [**** Bede, lib. i. cap. 27.]

     [***** W. Malms, p. 10.]

     [****** Wilkins, Leges Sax. p. 13.]

Mellitus and Justus, who had been consecrated bishops of London and
Rochester, had already departed the kingdom,[*] when Laurentius, before
he should entirely abandon his dignity, made one effort to reclaim the
king. He appeared before that prince, and, throwing off his vestments,
showed his body all torn with bruises and stripes which he had received.
Eadbald, wondering that any man should have dared to treat in that
manner a person of his rank, was told by Laurentius, that he had
received this chastisement from St. Peter, the prince of the apostles,
who had appeared to him in a vision, and severely reproving him for his
intention to desert his charge, had inflicted on him these visible marks
of his displeasure.[**] Whether Eadbald was struck with the miracle,
or influenced by some other motive, he divorced himself from his
mother-in-law, and returned to the profession of Christianity:[***]
his whole people returned with him. Eadbald reached not the fame or
authority of his father, and died in 640, after a reign of twenty-five
years, leaving two sons, Erminfrid and Ercombert.

     [* Bede, lib. ii. cap 5.]

     [** Bede, lib. ii cap. 2. Chron. Sax. p. 26.
     Higden, lib. v]

     [*** Brompton, p 739.]

Ercombert, though the younger son, by Emma, a French princess,
found means to mount the throne. He is celebrated by Bede for two
exploits--for establishing the fast of Lent in his kingdom, and for
utterly extirpating idolatry, which, notwithstanding the prevalence of
Christianity, had hitherto been tolerated by the two preceding monarchs.
He reigned twenty-four years, and left the crown to Egbert, his son,
who reigned nine years. This prince is renowned for his encouragement of
learning; but infamous for putting to death his two cousins-german, sons
of Erminfrid, his uncle. The ecclesiastical writers praise him for his
bestowing on his sister, Domnona, some lands in the Isle of Thanet,
where she founded a monastery.


The bloody precaution of Egbert could not fix the crown on the head of
his son Edric. Lothaire, brother of the deceased prince, took possession
of the kingdom; and in order to secure the power in his family, he
associated with him Richard, his son, in the administration of the
government. Edric, the dispossessed prince, had recourse to Edilwach,
king of Sussex, for assistance; and being supported by that prince,
fought a battle with his uncle, who was defeated and slain. Richard fled
into Germany, and afterwards died in Lucca, a city of Tuscany. William
of Malmsbury ascribes Lothaire’s bad fortune to two crimes--his
concurrence in the murder of his cousins, and his contempt for
relics.[*]

Lothaire reigned eleven years; Edric, his successor, only two. Upon the
death of the latter, which happened in 686 Widred, his brother, obtained
possession of the crown. But as the succession had been of late so much
disjointed by revolutions and usurpations, faction began to prevail
among the nobility; which invited Cedwalla, king of Wessex, with his
brother Mollo, to attack the kingdom. These invaders committed great
devastations in Kent; but the death of Mollo, who was slain in a
skirmish,[**] gave a short breathing time to that kingdom. Widred
restored the affairs of Kent, and, after a reign of thirty-two
years,[***] left the crown to his posterity. Eadbert, Ethelbert, and
Alric, his descendants, successively mounted the throne. After the
death of the last, which happened in 794, the royal family of Kent was
extinguished; and every factious leader, who could entertain hopes of
ascending the throne, threw the state into confusion.[****] Egbert, who
first succeeded, reigned but two years; Cuthred, brother to the king of
Mercia, six years; Baldred, an illegitimate branch of the royal family,
eighteen; and after a troublesome and precarious reign, he was, in the
year 823, expelled by Egbert, king of Wessex, who dissolved the Saxon
Heptarchy, and united the several kingdoms under his dominion.

     [* W. Malms, p. 11.]

     [** Higden, lib. v.]

     [*** Chron. Sax. p. 52.]

     [**** W. Malms, lib. i. cap. 1, p.11.]




THE KINGDOM OF NORTHUMBERLAND

Adelfrid, king of Bernicia, having married Acca, the daughter of Ælla,
king of Deïri, and expelled her infant brother, Edwin, had united all
the counties north of Humber into one monarchy, and acquired a great
ascendant in the Heptarchy. He also spread the terror of the Saxon
arms to the neighboring people; and by his victories over the Scots
and Picts, as well as Welsh, extended on all sides the bounds of his
dominions. Having laid siege to Chester, the Britons marched out with
all their forces to engage him; and they were attended by a body of
twelve hundred and fifty monks from the monastery of Bangor, who stood
at a small distance from the field of battle, in order to encourage the
combatants by their presence and exhortations. Adelfrid, inquiring into
the purpose of this unusual appearance, was told that these priests had
come to pray against him: “Then are they as much our enemies,” said he,
“as those who intend to fight against us;”[*] and he immediately sent a
detachment, who fell upon them, and did such execution, that only fifty
escaped with their lives.[**] The Britons, astonished at this event,
received a total defeat: Chester was obliged to surrender; and Adelfrid,
pursuing his victory, made himself master of Bangor, and entirely
demolished the monastery, a building so extensive, that there was a
mile’s distance from one gate of it to another; and it contained two
thousand one hundred monks, who are said to have been there maintained
by their own labor.[***] Notwithstanding Adelfrid’s success in war,
he lived in inquietude on account of young Edwin, whom he had unjustly
dispossessed of the crown of Deïri. This prince, now grown to man’s
estate, wandered from place to place, in continual danger from the
attempts of Adelfrid; and received at last protection in the court
of Redwald, king of the East Angles; where his engaging and gallant
deportment procured him general esteem and affection. Redwald, however,
was strongly solicited, by the king of Northumberland, to kill or
deliver up his guest: rich presents were promised him if he would
comply, and war denounced against him in case of his refusal. After
rejecting several messages of this kind, his generosity began to yield
to the motives of interest; and he retained the last ambassador, till
he should come to a resolution in a case of such importance. Edwin,
informed of his friend’s perplexity, was yet determined at all hazards
to remain in East Anglia; and thought, that if the protection of that
court failed him, it were better to die than prolong a life so much
exposed to the persecutions of his powerful rival. This confidence in
Redwald’s honor and friendship, with his other accomplishments, engaged
the queen on his side; and she effectually represented to her husband
the infamy of delivering up to certain destruction their royal guest,
who had fled to them for protection against his cruel and jealous
enemies.[****] Redwald, embracing more generous resolutions, thought
it safest to prevent Adelfrid, before that prince was aware of his
intention, and to attack him while he was yet unprepared for defence.

     [* Brompton, p. 779.]

     [** Trivet, apud Spell. Concil. p. 111.]

     [*** Bede, lib. ii. cap. 2. W. Malms, lib. i. cap.
     3.]

     [**** W. Malms, lib. i. cap. 3. H. Hunting, lib.
     iii. Bede.]


He marched suddenly with an army into the kingdom of Northumberland, and
fought a battle with Adelfrid; in which that monarch was defeated
and killed, after revenging himself by the death of Regner, son of
Redwald.[*] His own sons, Eanfrid. Oswald, and Oswy, yet infants, were
carried into Scotland; and Edwin obtained possession of the crown of
Northumberland.

Edwin was the greatest prince of the Heptarchy in that age,
and distinguished himself, both by his influence over the other
kingdoms,[**] and by the strict execution of justice in his own
dominions. He reclaimed his subjects from the licentious life to which
they had been accustomed; and it was a common saying, that during his
reign a woman or child might openly carry every where a purse of
gold, without any danger of violence or robbery. There is a remarkable
instance, transmitted to us, of the affection borne him by his servants.
Cuichelme, king of Wessex, was his enemy; but finding himself unable
to maintain open war against so gallant and powerful a prince, he
determined to use treachery against him, and he employed one Eumer for
that criminal purpose, The assassin, having obtained admittance, by
pretending to deliver a message from Cuichelme, drew his dagger, and
rushed upon the king. Lilla, an officer of his army, seeing his master’s
danger, and having no other means of defence, interposed with his own
body between the king and Burner’s dagger, which was pushed with such
violence, that, after piercing Lilla, it even wounded Edwin; but before
the assassin could renew his blow, he was despatched by the king’s
attendants.


The East Angles conspired against Redwald, their king; and having put
him to death, they offered their crown to Edwin, of whose valor and
capacity they had had experience, while he resided among them. But
Edwin, from a sense o£ gratitude towards his benefactor, obliged them
to submit to Earpwold, the son of Redwald; and that prince preserved his
authority, though on a precarious footing, under the protection of the
Northumbrian monarch.[***]

     [* Bede, lib. ii. cap. 12. Bromton, p. 781.]

     [** Chron. Sax. p. 27.]

     [*** W. Malms, lib. i. cap. 3]

Edwin, after his accession to the crown, married Ethelburga, the
daughter of Ethelbert, king of Kent. This princess, emulating the glory
of her mother, Bertha, who had been the instrument for converting her
husband and his people to Christianity, carried Paullinus, a learned
bishop, along with her;[*] and besides stipulating a toleration for the
exercise of her own religion, which was readily granted her, she used
every reason to persuade the king to embrace it. Edwin, like a
prudent prince, hesitated on the proposal, but promised to examine
the foundations of that doctrine, and declared that, if he found them
satisfactory, he was willing to be converted.[**] Accordingly he held
several conferences with Paullinus; canvassed the arguments propounded
with the wisest of his counsellors; retired frequently from company, in
order to revolve alone that important question; and, after a serious
and long inquiry, declared in favor of the Christian religion;[***]
the people soon after imitated his example. Besides the authority and
influence of the king, they were moved by another striking example.
Coifi, the high priest, being converted after a public conference with
Paullinus, led the way in destroying the images, which he had so long
worshipped, and was forward in making this atonement for his past
idolatry.[****]

This able prince perished with his son Osfrid, in a great battle which
he fought against Penda, king of Mercia, and Caedwalla, king of the
Britons.[*****] That event, which happened in the forty-eighth year of
Edwin’s age and seventeenth of his reign,[******] divided the monarchy
of Northumberland, which that prince had united in his person. Eanfrid,
the son of Adelfrid, returned with his brothers, Oswald and Oswy, from
Scotland, and took possession of Bernicia, his paternal kingdom; Osric,
Edwin’s cousin-german, established himself in Deïri, the inheritance
of his family, but to which the sons of Edwin had a preferable title.
Eanfrid, the elder surviving son, fled to Penda, by whom he was
treacherously slain. The younger son, Vuscfraea, with Yffi, the
grandson of Edwin, by Osfrid, sought protection in Kent, and not finding
themselves in safety there, retired into France to King Dagobert, where
they died.[*******]

     [* H. Hunting, lib. iii.]

     [** Bede, lib. ii. cap. 9.]

     [*** Bede, lib. ii. cap. 9. W. Malms, lib. i. cap.
     3.]

     [**** Bede, lib. ii. cap. 13. Brompton, Higden,
     lib. v.]

     [***** M. West. p. 114. Chron. Sax. p. 29.]

     [****** W. Malms, lib. i. cap. 3.]

     [******* Bede, lib. ii, cap. 29.]

Osric, king of Deïri and Eanfrid of Bernicia, returned to paganism; and
the whole people seem to have returned with them; since Paullinus, who
was the first archbishop of York; and who had converted them, thought
proper to retire with Ethelburga, the queen dowager, into Kent. Both
these Northumbrian kings perished soon after, the first in battle
against Caedwalla, the Briton; the second by the treachery of that
prince. Oswald, the brother of Eanfrid, of the race of Bernicia, united
again the kingdom of Northumberland in the year 634, and restored
the Christian religion in his dominions. He gained a bloody and
well-disputed battle against Caedwalla; the last vigorous effort which
the Britons made against the Saxons. Oswald is much celebrated for his
sanctity and charity by the monkish historians; and they pretend that
his relics wrought miracles, particularly the curing of a sick horse,
which had approached the place of his interment.[*]

     [* Bede, lib. iii. cap. 9.]

He died in battle against Penda, king of Mercia, and was succeeded by
his brother Oswy, who established himself in the government of the whole
Northumbrian kingdom, by putting to death Oswin, the son of Osric,
the last king of the race of Deïri. His son Egfrid succeeded him; who
perishing in battle against the Picts, without leaving any children,
because Adelthrid, his wife, refused to violate her vow of chastity,
Alfred, his natural brother, acquired possession of the kingdom, which
he governed for nineteen years; and he left it to Osred, his son, a boy
of eight years of age. This prince, after a reign of eleven years, was
murdered by Kenred, his kinsman, who, after enjoying the crown only a
year, perished by a like fate. Osric, and after him Celwulph, the son
of Kenred, next mounted the throne, which the latter relinquished in
the year 738, in favor of Eadbert, his cousin-german, who, imitating
his predecessor, abdicated the crown, and retired into a monastery.
Oswolf, son of Eadbert, was slain in a sedition, a year after his
accession to the crown; and Mollo, who was not of the royal family,
seized the crown. He perished by the treachery of Ailred, a prince of
the blood; and Ailred, having succeeded in his design upon the throne,
was soon after expelled by his subjects. Ethelred, his successor, the
son of Mollo, underwent a like fate. Celwold, the next king, the brother
of Ailred, was deposed and slain by the people; and his place was filled
by Osred, his nephew, who, after a short reign of a year, made way for
Ethelbert, another son of Mollo whose death was equally tragical
with that of almost all his predecessors. After Ethelbert’s death, a
universal anarchy prevailed in Northumberland; and the people having, by
so many fatal revolutions, lost all attachment to their government and
princes, were well prepared for subjection to a foreign yoke; which
Egbert, king of Wessex, finally imposed upon them.




THE KINGDOM OF EAST ANGLIA

The history of this kingdom contains nothing memorable except the
conversion of Earpwold, the fourth king, and great-grandson of Una, the
founder of the monarchy. The authority of Edwin, king of Northumberland,
on whom that prince entirety depended, engaged him to take this step;
but soon after, his wife, who was an idolatress, brought him back to her
religion; and he was found unable to resist those allurements which have
seduced the wisest of mankind. After his death, which was violent,
like that of most of the Saxon princes that did not early retire into
monasteries, Sigebert, his successor and half-brother, who had been
educated in France, restored Christianity, and introduced learning
among the East Angles. Some pretend that he founded the university
of Cambridge, or rather some schools in that place. It is almost
impossible, and quite needless, to be more particular in relating the
transactions of the East Angles. What instruction or entertainment can
it give the reader, to hear a long bead-roll of barbarous names,
Egric, Annas, Ethelbert, Ethelwald, Aldulf, Elfwald, Beorne, Ethelred,
Ethelbert, who successively murdered, expelled, or inherited from each
other, and obscurely filled the throne of that kingdom? Ethelbert,
the last of these princes, was treacherously murdered by Offa, king of
Mercia, in the year 792, and his state was thenceforth [*mited] with
that of Offa, as we shall relate presently.




THE KINGDOM OF MERCIA

Mercia, the largest, if not the most powerful, kingdom of the Heptarchy,
comprehended all the middle counties of England; and as its frontiers
extended to those of all the other kingdoms, as well as to Wales,
it received its name from that circumstance. Wibba, the son of Crida,
founder of the monarchy, being placed on the throne by Ethelbert, king
of Kent, governed his paternal dominions by a precarious authority;
and after his death, Ceorl, his kinsman, was, by the influence of the
Kentish monarch, preferred to his son Penda, whose turbulent character
appeared dangerous to that prince. Penda was thus fifty years of age
before he mounted the throne; and his temerity and restless disposition
were found nowise abated by time, experience, or reflection. He engaged
in continual hostilities against all the neighboring states; and, by
his injustice and violence, rendered himself equally odious to his own
subjects and to strangers. Sigebert, Egric, and Annas, three kings of
East Anglia, perished successively in battle against him; as did
also Edwin and Oswald, the two greatest princes that had reigned over
Northumberland. At last Oswy, brother to Oswald, having defeated and
slain him in a decisive battle, freed the world from this sanguinary
tyrant. Peada, his son, mounted the throne of Mercia in 655, and lived
under the protection of Oswy, whose daughter he had espoused. This
princess was educated in the Christian faith, and she employed her
influence, with success, in converting her husband and his subjects to
that religion. Thus the fair sex have had the merit of introducing the
Christian doctrine into all the most considerable kingdoms of the Saxon
Heptarchy. Peada died a violent death.[*] His son Wolfhere succeeded to
the government; and, after having reduced to dependence the kingdoms of
Essex and East Anglia, he left the crown to his brother Ethelred,
who, though a lover of peace, showed himself not unfit for military
enterprises. Besides making a successful expedition into Kent, he
repulsed Egfrid, king of Northumberland, who had invaded his dominions;
and he slew in battle Elswin, the brother of that prince. Desirous,
however, of composing all animosities with Egfrid, he paid him a sum of
money as a compensation for the loss of his brother. After a prosperous
reign of thirty years, he resigned the crown to Kendred, son of
Wolfhere, and retired into the monastery of Bardney.[**]

     [* Hugo Candidas (p. 4) says, that he was
     treacherously murdered by his queen, by whose persuasion he
     had embraced Christianity; but this account of the matter is
     found in that historian alone.]

     [** Bede, lib. v.]
Kendred returned the present of the crown to Ceolred, the son of
Ethelred; and making a pilgrimage to Rome, passed his life there in
penance and devotion. The place of Ceolred was supplied by Ethelbald,
great-grand-nephew to Penda, by Alwy, his brother; and this prince,
being slain in a mutiny, was succeeded by Offa, who was a degree more
remote from Penda, by Eawa, another brother.

This prince, who mounted the throne in 755,[*] had some great qualities,
and was successful in his warlike enterprises against Lothaire, king of
Kent, and Kenwulph, king of Wessex, He defeated the former in a bloody
battle, at Otford upon the Darent, and reduced his kingdom to a state
of dependence; he gained a victory over the latter at Bensington, in
Oxfordshire; and conquering that county, together with that of
Glocester, annexed both to his dominions. But all these successes were
stained by his treacherous murder of Ethelbert, king of the East Angles,
and his violent seizing of that kingdom. This young prince, who is said
to have possessed great merit, had paid his addresses to Elfrida, the
daughter of Offa, and was invited with all his retinue to Hereford, in
order to solemnize the nuptials: amidst the joy and festivity of these
entertainments, he was seized by Offa, and secretly beheaded; and though
Elfrida, who abhorred her father’s treachery, had time to give warning
to the East Anglian nobility, who escaped into their own country,
Offa, having extinguished the royal family, succeeded in his design
of subduing that kingdom.[**] The perfidious prince, desirous of
reestablishing his character in the world, and perhaps of appeasing
the remorses of his own conscience, paid great court to the clergy, and
practised all the monkish devotion so much esteemed in that ignorant and
superstitious age. He gave the tenth of his goods to the church;[***]
bestowed rich donations on the cathedral of Hereford, and even made a
pilgrimage to Rome, where his great power and riches could not fail of
procuring him the papal absolution. The better to ingratiate himself
with the sovereign pontiff, he engaged to pay him a yearly donation for
the support of an English college at Rome,[****] and in order to raise
the sum, he imposed a tax of a penny on each house possessed of thirty
pence a year. This imposition, being afterwards levied on all England,
was commonly denominated _Peter’s pence_;[*****] and though
conferred at first as a gift, was afterwards claimed as a tribute by the
Roman pontiff.

     [* Chron. Sax. p. 59.]

     [** Brompton, p. 750, 751, 752.]

     [*** Spell. Concil. p 308. Brompton, p. 776.]

     [**** Spell. Concil. p. 230, 310, 312.]

     [***** Higden, lib. v.]

Carrying his hypocrisy still further, Offa, feigning to be directed by
a vision from heaven, discovered at Verulam the relics of St Alban, the
martyr, and endowed a magnificent monastery in that place.[*] Moved by
al these acts of piety, Malmsbury, one of the best of the old English
historians, declares himself at a loss to determine[**] whether the
merits or crimes of this prince preponderated. Offa died, after a reign
of thirty-nine years, in 794.[***]

This prince was become so considerable in the Heptarchy, that the
emperor Charlemagne entered into an alliance and friendship with him;
a circumstance which did honor to Offa; as distant princes at that time
had usually little communication with each other. That emperor being a
great lover of learning and learned men, in an age very barren of that
ornament, Offa, at his desire, sent him over Alcuin, a clergyman
much celebrated for his knowledge, who received great honors from
Charlemagne, and even became his preceptor in the sciences. The chief
reason why he had at first desired the company of Alcuin, was that he
might oppose his learning to the heresy of Felix, bishop of Urgel, in
Catalonia; who maintained that Jesus Christ, considered in his human
nature, could more properly be denominated the adoptive than the natural
son of God.[****] This heresy was condemned in the council of Francfort,
held in 794, and consisting of three hundred bishops. Such were the
questions which were agitated in that age, and which employed the
attention not only of cloistered scholars, but of the wisest and
greatest princes.[*****]

Egfrith succeeded to his father Offa, but survived him only five
months;[******] when he made way for Kenulph, a descendant of the royal
family. This prince waged war against Kent, and taking Egbert, the king,
prisoner, he cut off his hands, and put out his eyes; leaving Cuthred,
his own brother, in possession of the crown of that kingdom. Kenulph
was killed in an insurrection of the East Anglians, whose crown his
predecessor, Offa, had usurped. He left his son Kenelm, a minor; who was
murdered the same year by his sister Quendrade, who had entertained the
ambitious views of assuming the government.[*******]

     [* Ingulph. p. 5. W. Malms, lib. i. cap. 4.]

     [** Lib. i. cap. 4.]

     [*** Chron. Sax. p. 65.]

     [**** Dupin, cent. viii. chap. 4].

     [***** Offa, in order to protect his country from
     Wales, drew a rampart or ditch of a hundred miles in length,
     from Basinwerke in Flintshire to the south sea near Bristol.
     See Speed’s Description of Wales.]

     [****** Ingulph. p. 6]

     [******* Ingulph, p. 7. Brompton, p. 776.]

But she was supplanted by her uncle Ceolulf; who, two years after, was
dethroned by Beornulf The reign of this usurper, who was not of the
royal family, was short and unfortunate; he was defeated by the West
Saxons, and killed by his own subjects, the East Angles.[*] Ludican, his
successor, underwent the same fate;[**] and Wiglaff, who mounted this
unstable throne, and found everything in the utmost confusion, could not
withstand the fortune of Egbert, who united all the Saxon kingdoms into
one great monarchy.

     [* Ingulph. p. 7.]

     [** Alured. Beverl. p. 87.]




THE KINGDOM OF ESSEX.

This kingdom made no great figure in the Heptarchy; and the history
of it is very imperfect. Sleda succeeded to his father, Erkinwin, the
founder of the monarchy; and made way for his son Sebert, who, being
nephew to Ethelbert, king of Kent, was persuaded by that prince to
embrace the Christian faith.[***] His sons and conjunct successors,
Sexted and Seward, relapsed into idolatry, and were soon after slain in
a battle against the West Saxons. To show the rude manner of living
in that age, Bede tells us,[****] that these two kings expressed great
desire to eat the white bread, distributed by Mellitus, the bishop, at
the communion.[*****] But on his refusing them, unless they would submit
to be baptized, they expelled him their dominions. The names of the
other princes, who reigned successively in Essex, are Sigebert the
little, Sigebert the good, who restored Christianity, Swithelm, Sigheri,
Offa. This last prince, having made a vow of chastity, notwithstanding
his marriage with Keneswitha, a Mercian princess, daughter to Penda,
went in pilgrimage to Rome, and shut himself up during the rest of his
life in a cloister. Selred, his successor, reigned thirty-eight years;
and was the last of the royal line; the failure of which threw the
kingdom into great confusion, and reduced it to dependence under
Mercia.[******] Switherd first acquired the crown, by the concession of
the Mercian princes; and his death made way for Sigeric, who ended his
life in a pilgrimage to Rome. His successor. Sigered, unable to defend
his kingdom, submitted to the victorious arms of Egbert.

     [*** Chron. Sax. p. 24].

     [**** Lib. ii. cap. 5.]

     [***** H. Hunting, lib. iii. Brompton, p. 738,
     743. Bede.]

     [****** W Malms, lib. i. cap. 6.]




THE KINGDOM OF SUSSEX.

The history of this kingdom, the smallest in the Heptarchy, is still more
imperfect than that of Essex. Ælla, the founder of the monarchy, left
the crown to his son Cissa, who is chiefly remarkable for his long reign
of seventy-six years. During his time, the South Saxons fell almost into
a total dependence on the kingdom of Wessex; and we scarcely know the
names of the princes who were possessed of this titular sovereignty.
Adelwalch, the last of them, was subdued in battle by Ceadwalla, king
of Wessex, and was slain in the action; leaving two infant sons, who,
falling into the hand of the conqueror, were murdered by him. The abbot
of Bedford opposed the order for this execution; but could only prevail
on Ceadwalla to suspend it till they should be baptized. Bercthun and
Audhum, two noblemen of character, resisted some time the violence
of the West Saxons; but their opposition served only to prolong the
miseries of their country; and the subduing of this kingdom was the
first step which the West Saxons made towards acquiring the sole
monarchy of England.[*]

     [* Brompton, p. 800.]




THE KINGDOM OF WESSEX.

The kingdom of Wessex, which finally swallowed up all the other Saxon
states, met with great resistance on its first establishment; and
the Britons, who were now inured to arms, yielded not tamely their
possessions to those invaders. Cerdic, the founder of the monarchy, and
his son Kenric, fought many successful, and some unsuccessful battles,
against the natives; and the martial spirit, common to all the Saxons,
was, by means of these hostilities, carried to the greatest height among
this tribe. Ceaulin, who was the son and successor of Kenric, and who
began his reign in 560, was still, more ambitious and enterprising than
his predecessors; and by waging continual war against the Britons, he
added a great part of the counties of Devon and Somerset to his other
dominions. Carried along by the tide of success, he invaded the other
Saxon states in his neighborhood, and becoming terrible to all, he
provoked a general confederacy against him. This alliance proved
successful under the conduct of Ethelbert, king of Kent; and Ceaulin,
who had lost the affections of his own subjects by his violent
disposition, and had now fallen into contempt from his misfortunes, was
expelled the throne,[**]and died in exile and misery. Cuichelme, and
Cuthwin, his sons, governed jointly the kingdom, till the expulsion
of the latter in 591, and the death of the former in 593, made way
for Cealric, to whom succeeded Ceobaîd in 593, by whose death, which
happened in 611, Kynegils inherited the crown.

     [** Chron. Sax. p. 22.]

This prince embraced Christianity,[*] through the persuasion of Oswald,
king of Northumberland, who had married his daughter, and who had
Attained a great ascendant in the Heptarchy. Kenwalch next succeeded to
the monarchy, and dying in 672, left the succession so much disputed,
that Sexburga, his widow, a woman of spirit,[**] kept possession of the
government till her death, which happened two years after. Escwin then
peaceably acquired the crown; and, after a short reign of two years,
made way for Kentwin, who governed nine years. Ceodwalla, his successor,
mounted not the throne without opposition; but proved a great prince,
according to the ideas of those times; that is, he was enterprising,
warlike, and successful. He entirely subdued the kingdom of Sussex, and
annexed it to his own dominions He made inroads into Kent; but met with
resistance from Widred, the king, who proved successful against Mollo,
brother to Ceodwalla, and slew him in a skirmish. Ceodwalla at last,
tired with wars and bloodshed, was seized with a fit of devotion;
bestowed several endowments on the church; and made a pilgrimage to
Rome, where he received baptism, and died in 689. Ina, his successor,
inherited the military virtues of Ceodwalla, and added to them the more
valuable ones of justice, policy, and prudence. He made war upon the
Britons in Somerset; and, having finally subdued that province, he
treated the vanquished with a humanity hitherto unknown to the Saxon
conquerors. He allowed the proprietors to retain possession of their
lands, encouraged marriages and alliances between them and his ancient
subjects, and gave them the privilege of being governed by the same
laws. These laws he augmented and ascertained; and though he was
disturbed by some insurrections at home, his long reign of thirty-seven
years may be regarded as one of the most glorious and most prosperous of
the Heptarchy. In the decline of his age he made a pilgrimage to Rome;
and after his return, shut himself up in a cloister, where he died.

     [* Higden, lib. v. Chron. Sax. p. 15. Alured
     Beverl p. 94.]

     [** Bede, lib. iv. cap., 12. Chron. Sax. p. 41.]

Though the kings of Wessex had always been princes of the blood,
descended from Cerdic, the founder of the monarchy, the order of
succession had been far from exact; and a more remote prince had often
found means to mount the throne, in preference to one descended from a
nearer branch of the royal family. Ina, therefore, having no children
of his own and lying much under the influence of Ethelburga, his queen,
left by will the succession to Adelard, her brother, who was his
remote kinsman; but this destination did not take place without some
difficulty. Oswald, a prince more nearly allied to the crown, took arms
against Adelard; but he being suppressed, and dying soon after, the
title of Adelard was not any further disputed; and in the year 741,
he was succeeded by his cousin Cudred. The reign of this prince was
distinguished by a great victory, which he obtained by means of Edelhun,
his general, over Ethelbald, king of Mercia. His death made way for
Sigebert, his kinsman, who governed so ill, that his people rose in
an insurrection, and dethroned him, crowning Cenulph in his stead. The
exiled prince found a refuge with Duke Cumbran, governor of Hampshire;
who, that he might add new obligations to Sigebert, gave him many
salutary counsels for his future conduct, accompanied with some
reprehensions for the past. But these were so much resented by the
ungrateful prince, that he conspired against the life of his protector,
and treacherously murdered him. After this infamous action, he was
forsaken by all the world; and skulking about in the wilds and forests,
was at last discovered by a servant of Cumbran’s, who instantly took
revenge upon him for the murder of his master.[*]


Cenulph, who had obtained the crown on the expulsion of Sigebert, was
fortunate in many expeditions against the Britons of Cornwall; but
afterwards lost some reputation by his ill success against Offa, king
of Mercia.[**] Kynehard also, brother to the deposed Sigebert, gave
him disturbance; and though expelled the kingdom, he hovered on the
frontiers, and watched an opportunity for attacking his rival. The king
had an intrigue with a young woman, who lived at Merton, in Surrey,
whither having secretly retired, he was on a sudden environed, in the
night time, by Kynehard and his followers, and after making a vigorous
resistance, was murdered, with all his attendants. The nobility and
people of the neighborhood, rising next day in arms, took revenge on
Kynehard for the slaughter of their king, and put every one to the sword
who had been engaged in that criminal enterprise. This event happened in
784.

     [* Higden, lib. v. W. Malms, lib. i. cap. 2.]

     [** W. Malms, lib. i. cap. 2.]

Brthric next obtained possession of the government, though remotely
descended from the royal family; but he enjoyed not that dignity without
inquietude. Eoppa, nephew to King Ina, by his brother Ingild, who died
before that prince, had begot Eata, father to Alchmond, from whom sprung
Egbert,[*] a young man of the most promising hopes, who gave great
jealousy to Brithric, the reigning prince, both because he seemed by his
birth better entitled to the crown, and because he had acquired, to an
eminent degree, the affections of the people. Egbert, sensible of
his danger from the suspicions of Brithric, secretly withdrew into
France;[**] where he was well received by Charlemagne. By living in the
court, and serving in the armies of that prince, the most able and most
generous that had appeared in Europe during several ages, he acquired
those accomplishments which afterwards enabled him to make such a
shining figure on the throne. And familiarizing himself to the manners
of the French, who, as Malmsbury observes,[***] were eminent both for
valor and civility above all the western nations, he learned to polish
the rudeness and barbarity of the Saxon character: his early misfortunes
thus proved of singular advantage to him.


It was not long ere Egbert had opportunities of displaying his natural
and acquired talents. Brithric, king of Wessex, had married Eadburga,
natural daughter of Offa, king of Mercia, a profligate woman, equally
infamous for cruelty and for incontinence. Having great influence over
her husband, she often instigated him to destroy such of the nobility as
were obnoxious to her; and where this expedient failed, she scrupled not
being herself active in traitorous attempts against them. She had mixed
a cup of poison for a young nobleman, who had acquired her husband’s
friendship, and had on that account become the object of her jealousy;
but unfortunately the king drank of the fatal cup along with his
favorite, and soon after expired.[****] This tragical incident, joined
to her other crimes, rendered Eadburga so odious, that she was obliged
to fly into France; whence Egbert was at the same time recalled by the
nobility, in order to ascend the throne of his ancestors.[*****] He
attained that dignity in the last year of the eighth century.

     [* Chron. Sax. p. 16.]

     [** H. Hunting. lib. iv.]

     [*** Lib. ii. cap. 11.]

     [**** Higden, lib. v. M West. p. 152. Asser. in
     vita Alfiredi, p, 3. ex edit, Camdeni.]

     [***** Chron. Sax. A.D. 800. Brompton, p. 801]

In the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, an exact rule of succession was either
unknown or not strictly observed; and thence the reigning prince was
continually agitated with jealousy against all the princes of the blood,
whom he still considered as rivals, and whose death alone could give him
entire security in his possession of the throne. From this fatal cause,
together with the admiration of the monastic life, and the opinion of
merit attending the preservation of chastity even in a married state,
the royal families had been entirely extinguished in all the kingdoms
except that of Wessex; and the emulations, suspicions, and conspiracies,
which had formerly been confined to the princes of the blood alone, were
now diffused among all the nobility in the several Saxon states. Egbert
was the sole descendant of those first conquerors who subdued Britain,
and who enhanced their authority by claiming a pedigree from Woden, the
supreme divinity of their ancestors. But that prince, though invited by
this favorable circumstance to make attempts on the neighboring Saxons,
gave them for some time no disturbance, and rather chose to turn his
arms against the Britons in Cornwall, whom he defeated in several
battles.[*] He was recalled from the conquest of that country by an
invasion made upon his dominions by Bernulf, king of Mercia.

The Mercians, before the accession of Egbert, had very nearly attained
the absolute sovereignty in the Heptarchy: they had reduced the East
Angles under subjection, and established tributary princes in the
kingdoms of Kent and Essex. Northumberland was involved in anarchy; and
no state of any consequence remained but that of Wessex, which,
much inferior in extent to Mercia, was supported solely by the great
qualities of its sovereign. Egbert led his army against the invaders;
and encountering them at Ellandun, in Wiltshire, obtained a complete
victory, and by the great slaughter which he made of them in their
flight, gave a mortal blow to the power of the Mercians. Whilst he
himself, In prosecution of his victory, entered their country on the
side of Oxfordshire, and threatened the heart of their dominions, he
sent an army into Kent, commanded by Ethelwolph, his eldest son,[**]
and, expelling Baldred. The tributary king, soon made himself master of
that county.

     [* Chron. Sax. p. 69.]

     [** Ethelwerd, lib iii. cap. 2.]

The kingdom of Essex was conquered with equal facility; and the East
Angles, from their hatred to the Mercian gov ernment, which had been
established over them by treachery and violence, and probably exercised
with tyranny, immediately rose in arms, and craved the protection of
Egbert.[*] Bernulf, the Mercian king, who marched against them, was
feated and siain; and two years after, Ludican, his successor, met
with the same fate. These insurrections and calamities facilitated
the enterprises of Egbert, who advanced into the centre of the Mercian
territories, and made easy conquests over a dispirited and divided
people. In order to engage them more easily to submission, he allowed
Wiglef, their countryman, to retain the title of king, whilst he
himself exercised the real powers of sovereignty.[**] The anarchy which
prevailed in Northumberland tempted him to carry still farther his
victorious arms; and the inhabitants, unable to resist his power,
and desirous of possessing some established form of government, were
forward, on his first appearance, to send deputies, who submitted to
his authority, and swore allegiance to him as their sovereign. Egbert,
however, still allowed to Northumberland, as he had done to Mercia, and
East Anglia, the power of electing a king, who paid him tribute, and was
dependent on him.

Thus were united all the kingdoms of the Heptarchy in one great state,
near four hundred years after the first arrival of the Saxons in
Britain; and the fortunate arms and prudent policy of Egbert at
last effected what had been so often attempted in vain by so many
princes.[***] Kent, Northumberland, and Mercia, which had successively
aspired to general dominion, were now incorporated in his empire; and
the other subordinate kingdoms seemed willingly to share the same fate.
His territories were nearly of the same extent with what is now
properly called England; and a favorable prospect was afforded to
the Anglo-Saxons of establishing a civilized monarchy, possessed of
tranquillity within itself, and secure against foreign invasion. This
great event happened in the year 827.[****]

     [* Ethelwerd, lib. iii. cap. 2.]

     [** Ingulph. p. 7, 8, 19.]

     [*** Chron. Sax. p. 71.]

     [**** Chron. Sax. p. 71.]

The Saxons, though they had been so long settled in the island, seem not
as yet to have been much improved beyond their German ancestors, either
hi arts, civility, knowledge, humanity, justice, or obedience to the
laws. Even Christianity, though it opened the way to connections between
their and the more polished states of Europe, had not hitherto been very
effectual in banishing their ignorance, or softening their barbarous
manners. As they received that doctrine through the corrupted channels
of Rome, it carried along with it a great mixture of credulity and
superstition, equally destructive to the understanding and to morals.
The reverence towards saints and relics seems to have almost supplanted
the idoration of the Supreme Being; monastic observances were esteemed
more meritorious than the active virtues; the knowledge of natural
causes was neglected, from the universal belief of miraculous
interpositions and judgments; bounty to the church atoned for every
violence against society; and the remorses for cruelty, murder,
treachery, assassination, and the more robust vices, were appeased, not
by amendment of life, but by penances, servility to the monks, and an
abject and illiberal devotion.[*] The reverence for the clergy had
been carried to such a height, that, wherever a person appeared in a
sacerdotal habit, though on the highway, the people flocked around him,
and, showing him all marks of profound respect, received every word he
uttered as the most sacred oracle.[**] Even the military virtues,
so inherent in all the Saxon tribes, began to be neglected; and the
nobility, preferring the security and sloth of the cloister to the
tumults and glory of war, valued themselves chiefly on endowing
monasteries, of which they assumed the government.[***] The several
kings too, being extremely impoverished by continual benefactions to the
church, to which the states of their kingdoms had weakly assented, could
bestow no rewards on valor or military services, and retained not even
sufficient influence to support their government.[****]

     [* These abuses were common to all the European
     churches; but the priests in Italy, Spain, and Gaul, made
     some atonement for them by other advantages which they
     rendered society. For several ages, they were almost all
     Romans, or, in other words, the ancient natives; and they
     preserved the Roman language and laws, with some remains of
     the former civility. But the priests in the Heptarchy, after
     the first missionaries, were wholly Saxons, and almost as
     ignorant and Barbarous as the laity. They contributed,
     therefore, little to no improvement of society in knowledge
     or the arts.]

     [** Bede, lib. iii. cap. 26.]

     [*** Bede, lib. v. cap. 23. Bedae Epist. ad
     Egbert.]

     [**** Bedse Epist. ad Egbert.]

Another inconvenience which attended this corrupt species of
Christianity, was the superstitious attachment to Rome, and the gradual
subjection of the kingdom to a foreign jurisdiction. The Britons, having
never acknowledged any subordination to the Roman pontiff, had conducted
all ecclesiastical government by their domestic synods and councils;[*]
but the Saxons, receiving their religion from Roman monks, were taught
at the same time a profound reverence for that see, and were naturally
led to regard it as the capital of their religion. Pilgrimages to Rome
were represented as the most meritorious acts of devotion. Not only
noblemen and ladies of rank undertook this tedious journey,[**] but
kings themselves, abdicating their crowns, sought for a secure passport
to heaven at the feet of the Roman pontiff. New relics, perpetually sent
from that endless mint of superstition, and magnified by lying miracles,
invented in convents, operated on the astonished minds of the multitude.
And every prince has attained the eulogies of the monks, the only
historians of those ages, not in proportion to his civil and military
virtues, but to his devoted attachment towards their order, and his
superstitious reverence for Rome.

The sovereign pontiff, encouraged by this blindness and submissive
disposition of the people, advanced every day in his encroachments
on the independence of the English churches. Wilfrid, bishop of
Lindisferne, the sole prelate of the Northumbrian kingdom, increased
this subjection in the eighth century, by his making an appeal to
Rome against the decisions of an English synod, which had abridged his
diocese by the erection of some new bishoprics.[***] Agatho, the pope,
readily embraced this precedent of an appeal to his court; and Wilfrid,
though the haughtiest and most luxurious prelate of his age,[****]
having obtained with the people the character of sanctity, was thus able
to lay the foundation of this papal pretension.

     [* Append, to Bede, numb. 10, ex edit. 1722.
     Spehn. Concil p.108, 109.]

     [** Bede. lib. v. cap. 7.]

     [*** See Appendix to Bede, numb. 19. Higden, lib.
     v.]

     [**** Eddius, vita Vilfr. sect. 24, 60]

The great topic by which Wilfrid confounded the imaginations of men,
was, that St. Peter, to whos custody the keys of heaven were intrusted,
would certainly refuse admittance to every one who should be wanting
in respect to his successor, This conceit, well suited to vulgar
conceptions, made great impression on the people during several
ages, and has act even at present lost all influence in the Catholic
countries. Had this abject superstition produced general peace and
tranquillity, it had made some atonement for the ills attending it;
but besides the usual avidity of men for power and riches, frivolous
controversies in theology were engendered by it, which were so much
the more fatal, as they admitted not, like the others, of any final
determination from established possession. The disputes, excited in
Britain, were of the most ridiculous kind, and entirely worthy of those
ignorant and barbarous ages. There were some intricacies, observed by
all the Christian churches, in adjusting the day of keeping Easter;
which depended on a complicated consideration of the course of the sun
and moon; and it happened that the missionaries, who had converted the
Scots and Britons, had followed a different calendar from that which was
observed at Rome, in the age when Augustine converted the Saxons. The
priests also of all the Christian churches were accustomed to shave part
of their head; but the form given to this tonsure was different in the
former from what was practised in the latter. The Scots and Britons
pleaded the antiquity of _their_ usages; the Romans and their
disciples, the Saxons, insisted on the universality of _theirs_.
That Easter must necessarily be kept by a rule, which comprehended both
the day of the year and age of the moon, was agreed by all; that the
tonsure of a priest could not be omitted without the utmost impiety, was
a point undisputed; but the Romans and Saxons called their antagonists
schismatics, because they celebrated Easter on the very day of the full
moon in March, if that day fell on a Sunday, instead of waiting till the
Sunday following; and because they shaved the fore part of their head
from ear to ear, instead of making that tonsure on the crown of the
head, and in a circular form. In order to render their antagonists
odious, they affirmed that, once in seven years, they concurred with the
Jews in the time of celebrating that festival;[*] and that they might
recommend their own form of tonsure, they maintained, that it imitated
symbolically the crown of thorns worn by Christ in his passion; whereas
the other form was invented by Simon Magus, without any regard to that
representation.[**]

     [* Bede, lib. ii. cap. 19.]

     [** Bede, lib. v. cap. 21. Eddius, sect. 24]

These controversies had, from the beginning, excited such animosity
between the British and Romish priests that, instead of concurring
in their endeavors to convert the idolatrous Saxons, they refused all
communion together, and each regarded his opponent as no better than
a pagan.[*] The dispute lasted more than a century; and was at last
finished, not by men’s discovering the folly of it, which would have
been too great an effort for human reason to accomplish, but by the
entire prevalence of the Romish ritual over the Scotch and British.[**]
Wilfrid, bishop of Lindisferne, acquired great merit, both with the
court of Rome and with all the southern Saxons, by expelling the
quartodeciman schism, as it was called, from the Northumbrian kingdom,
into which the neighborhood of the Scots had formerly introduced
it.[***]

Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, called, in the year 680, a synod
at Hatfield, consisting of all the bishops in Britain,[****] where was
accepted and ratified the decree of the Lateran council, summoned by
Martin, against the heresy of the Monothelites. The council and synod
maintained, in opposition to these heretics, that, though the divine
and human nature in Christ made but one person, yet had they different
inclinations, wills, acts, and sentiments, and that the unity of the
person implied not any unity in the consciousness.[*****] This opinion
it seems somewhat difficult to comprehend; and no one, unacquainted with
the ecclesiastical history of those ages, could imagine the height of
zeal and violence with which it was then inculcated. The decree of
the Lateran council calls the Monothelites impious, execrable, wicked,
abominable, and even diabolical; and curses and anathematizes them to
all eternity.[******]

     [* Bede, lib. ii. cap. 2, 4, 20. Eddius, sect.
     12.]

     [** Bede, lib. v. cap. 16, 22.]

     [*** Bede, lib. iii. cap. 25. Eddius, sect. 12.]

     [**** Spell. Concil. vol. i. p. 168.]

     [***** Spell. Concil. vol. i. p. 171.]

     [****** Spell. Concil. vol. i. p. 172, 173, 174.]





CHAPTER II.

The Saxons, from the first introduction of Christianity among them, had
admitted the use of images; and perhaps that religion, without some of
those exterior ornaments, had not made so quick a progress with these
idolaters; but they had not paid any species of worship or address
to images; and this abuse never prevailed among Christians, till it
received the sanction of the second council of Nice.




EGBERT.

[Sidenote: 827.] The kingdoms of the Heptarchy, though united by a
recent conquest, seemed to be firmly cemented into one state under
Egbert; and the inhabitants of the several provinces had lost all desire
of revolting from that monarch, or of restoring their former independent
governments. Their language was every where nearly the same, their
customs, laws, institutions, civil and religious; and as the race of
the ancient kings was totally extinct in all the subjected states, the
people readily transferred their allegiance to a prince who seemed
to merit it by the splendor of his victories, the vigor of hia
administration, and the superior nobility of his birth. A union also in
government opened to them the agreeable prospect of future tranquillity;
and it appeared more probable that they would thenceforth become
formidable to their neighbors, than be exposed to their inroads and
devastations. But these flattering views were soon overcast by
the appearance of the Danes, who, during some centuries, kept the
Anglo-Saxons in perpetual inquietude, committed the most barbarous
ravages upon them, and at last reduced them to grievous servitude.

The emperor Charlemagne, though naturally generous and humane, had been
induced by bigotry to exercise great severities upon the pagan Saxons in
Germany, whom he subdued; and besides often ravaging their country with
fire and sword, he had, in cool blood, decimated all the inhabitants
for their revolts, and had obliged them, by the most rigorous edicts,
to make a seeming compliance with the Christian doctrine. That religion,
which had easily made its way among the British Saxons by insinuation
and address, appeared shocking to their German brethren, when imposed on
them by the violence of Charlemagne; and the more generous and warlike
of these pagans had fled northward into Jutland, in order to escape
the fury of his persecutions. Meeting there with a people of similar
manners, they were readily received among them; and they soon stimulated
the natives to concur in enterprises which both promised revenge on
the haughty conqueror, and afforded subsistence to those numerous
inhabitants with which the northern countries were now overburdened.[*]
They invaded the provinces of France, which were exposed by the
degeneracy and dissensions of Charlemagne’s posterity; and being there
known under the general name of Normans, which they received from their
northern situation, they became the terror of all the maritime and even
of the inland countries. They were also tempted to visit England in
their frequent excursions; and being able, by sudden inroads, to make
great progress over a people who were not defended by any naval force,
who had relaxed their military institutions, and who were sunk into a
superstition which had become odious to the Danes and ancient Saxons,
they made no distinction in their hostilities between the French and
English kingdoms. Their first appearance in this island was in the year
787,[**] when Brithric reigned in Wessex. A small body of them landed in
that kingdom, with a view of learning the state of the country; and when
the magistrate of the place questioned them concerning their enterprise,
and summoned them to appear before the king, and account for their
intentions, they killed him, and, flying to, their ships, escaped into
their own country. The next alarm was given to Northumberland in the
year 794,[***] when a body of these pirates pillaged a monastery; but
their ships being much damaged by a storm, and their leader slain in
a skirmish, they were at last defeated by the inhabitants, and the
remainder of them put to the sword. [Sidenote: 832] Five years after
Egbert had established his monarchy over England, the Danes landed in
the Isle of Shepey, and having pillaged it, escaped with impunity.[****]
They were not so fortunate in their next year’s enterprise, when they
disembarked from thirty-five ships, and were encountered by Egbert, at
Charmouth, in Dorsetshire. The battle was bloody; but though the Danes
lost great numbers, they maintained the post which they had taken, and
thence made good their retreat to their ships.[*****]

     [* Ypod. Neust. p. 414.]

     [** Chron. Sax. p. 64.]

     [*** Chron. Sax. p. 66. Alured. Beveri. p. 108.]

     [**** Chron. Sax. p. 72]

     [***** Chiron. Sax. p. 72. Ethelwerd,lib. iii.
     cap. 2.]

Having learned, by experience, that they must expect a vigorous
resistance from this warlike prince, they entered into an alliance with
the Britons of Cornwall; and, landing two years after in that country,
made an inroad with their confederates into the county of Devon, but
were met at Hengesdown by Egbert, and totally defeated.[*] While England
remained in this state of anxiety, and defended itself more by temporary
expedients than by any regular plan of administration, Egbert, who alone
was able to provide effectually against this new evil, unfortunately
died, and left the government to his son Ethelwolf.

     [* Chron. Sax. p. 72.]




ETHELWOLF.

This prince had neither the abilities nor the vigor of his father, and
was better qualified for governing a convent than a kingdom.[*] He began
his reign with making a partition of his dominions, and delivering over
to his eldest son, Athelstan, the new-conquered provinces of Essex,
Kent, and Sussex. But no inconveniences seem to have arisen from this
partition as the continual terror of the Danish invasions prevented
all domestic dissension. A fleet of these ravagers, consisting of
thirty-three sail, appeared at Southampton, but were repulsed with loss
by Wolfhere, governor of the neighboring country.[**] The same year,
Æthelhelm, governor of Dorsetshire, routed another band, which had
disembarked at Portsmouth; but he obtained the victory after a furious
engagement, and he bought it with the loss of his life.[***]

     [* W. Malms, lib. ii. cap 2.]

     [** Chron. Sax. p. 73. Ethelwerd, lib. iii. cap.
     3.]

     [*** Chron. Sax. p. 73. H. Hunting, lib. v.]

Next year, the Danes made several inroads into England, and fought
battles, or rather skirmishes, in East Anglia and Lindesey and Kent;
where, though they were sometimes repulsed and defeated, they always
obtained their end, of committing spoil upon the country, and carrying
off their booty. They avoided coming to a general engagement, which was
not suited to their plan of operations. Their vessels were small, and
ran easily up the creeks and rivers, where they drew them ashore, and,
having formed an intrenchment round them, which they guarded with part
of their number, the remainder scattered themselves every where, and
carrying off the inhabitants, and cattle, and goods, they hastened
to their ships, and quickly disappeared. If the military force of the
county were assembled, (for there was no time for troops to march from
a distance,) the Danes either were able to repulse them, and to continue
their ravages with impunity, or they betook themselves to their vessels,
and, setting sail, suddenly invaded some distant quarter, which was not
prepared for their reception.

Every part of England was held in continual alarm; and the inhabitants
of one county durst not give assistance to those of another, lest their
own families and property should in the mean time be exposed by their
absence to the fury of these barbarous ravagers.[*]

[* Alured. Beverl. p. 108.]

All orders of men were involved in this calamity; and the priests and
monks, who had been commonly spared in the domestic quarrels of
the Heptarchy, were the chief objects on which the Danish idolaters
exercised their rage and animosity. Every season of the year was
dangerous, and the absence of the enemy was no reason why any man could
esteem himself a moment in safety.

These incursions had now become almost annual; when the Danes,
encouraged by their successes against France as well as England, (for
both kingdoms were alike exposed to this dreadful calamity,) invaded
the last in so numerous a body as seemed to threaten it with universal
subjection. But the English, more military than the Britons, whom a few
centuries before they had treated with like violence, roused themselves
with a vigor proportioned to the exigency. Ceorle, governor of
Devonshire, fought a battle with one body of the Danes at Wiganburgh,[*]
and put them to rout with great slaughter.

     [* H. Hunting, lib. v. Ethelwerd, lib. iii. cap 3.
     Sim. Dunelm. p. 120.]

King Athelstan attacked another at sea, near Sandwich, sunk nine of
their ships, and put the rest to flight.[*]

     [* Chron. Sax. p. 74. Asser. p. 2.]

A body of them, however, ventured, for the first time, to take up winter
quarters in England; and receiving in the spring a strong reënforcement
of their countrymen, in three hundred and fifty vessels, they advanced
from the Isle of Thanet, where they had stationed themselves, burnt the
cities of London and Canterbury, and having put to flight Brichtric, who
now governed Mercia under the title of king, they marched into the heart
of Surrey, and laid every place waste around them. Ethelwolf, impelled
by the urgency of the danger, marched against them at the head of the
West Saxons; and, carrying with him his second son, Ethelbald, gave them
battle at Okely, and gained a bloody victory over them. This advantage
procured but a short respite to the English. The Danes still maintained
their settlement in the Isle of Thanet; and, being attacked by Ealher
and Huda, governors of Kent and Surrey, though defeated in the beginning
of the action, they finally repulsed the assailants, and killed both
the governors, removed thence to the Isle of Shepey, where they took up
their winter quarters, that they might farther extend their devastation
and ravages.


This unsettled state of England hindered not Ethelwolf from making a
pilgrimage to Rome, whither he carried his fourth and favorite son,
Alfred, then only six years of age.[*] He passed there a twelvemonth
in exercises of devotion; and failed not in that most essential part of
devotion, liberality to the church of Rome. Besides giving presents to
the more distinguished ecclesiastics, he made a perpetual grant of three
hundred mancuses[**] a year to that see; one third to support the
lamps of St. Peter’s, another those of St. Paul’s, a third to the pope
himself.[***] In his return home, he married Judith, daughter of the
emperor Charles the Bald; but, on his landing in England, he met with an
opposition which he little looked for.


His eldest son, Athelstan, being dead, Ethelbald, his second, who had
assumed the government, formed, in concert with many of the nobles, the
project of excluding his father from a throne which his weakness and
superstition seem to have rendered him so ill qualified to fill. The
people were divided between the two princes, and a bloody civil war,
joined to all the other calamities under which the English labored,
appeared inevitable, when Ethelwolf had the facility to yield to the
greater part of his son’s pretensions. He made with him a partition of
the kingdom; and, taking to himself the eastern part, which was always,
at that time, esteemed the least considerable, as well as the most
exposed,[****] he delivered over to Ethelbald the sovereignty of the
western. Immediately after, he summoned the states of the whole kingdom,
and with the same facility conferred a perpetual and important donation
on the church.

     [* Asser. p. 2. Chron. Sax. 76. H. Hunting, lib.
     v.]

     [** A mancus was about the weight of our present
     half crown. See Spelman’s Glossary, in verbo Mancus.]

     [*** W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 2.]

     [**** Asser. p. 3. W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 2. M.
     West. p. 7, 8.]

The ecclesiastics, in those days of ignorance, made rapid advances in
the acquisition of power and grandeur; and, inculcating the most absurd
and most interested doctrines, though they sometimes met, from the
contrary interests of the laity, with an opposition which it required
time and address to overcome, they found no obstacle in their reason or
understanding. Not content with the donations of land made them by the
Saxon princes and nobles, and with temporary oblations from the devotion
of the people, they had cast a wishful eye on a vast revenue, which they
claimed as belonging to them by a sacred and indefeasible title. However
little versed in the Scriptures, they had been able to discover that,
under the Jewish law, a tenth of all the produce of land was conferred
on the priesthood; and, forgetting what they themselves taught, that the
moral part only of that law was obligatory on Christians, they insisted
that this donation conveyed a perpetual property, inherent by divine
right in those who officiated at the altar. During some centuries, the
whole scope of sermons and homilies was directed to this purpose; and
one would have imagined, from the general tenor of these discourses,
that all the practical parts of Christianity were comprised in the exact
and faithful payment of tithes to the clergy.[*] Encouraged by their
success in inculcating these doctrines, they ventured farther than they
were warranted even by the Levitical law, and pretended to draw the
tenth of all industry, merchandise, wages of laborers, and pay of
soldiers;[**] nay, some canonists went so far as to affirm that the
clergy were entitled to the tithe of the profits made by courtesans
in the exercise of their profession.[***] Though parishes had been
instituted in England by Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, near two
centuries before,[****] the ecclesiastics had never yet been able to get
possession of the tithes; they therefore seized the present favorable
opportunity of making that acquisition; when a weak, superstitious
prince filled the throne, and when the people, discouraged by their
losses from the Danes, and terrified with the fear of future invasions,
were susceptible of any impression which bore the appearance of
religion.[*****] So meritorious was this concession deemed by the
English, that, trusting entirely to supernatural assistance, they
neglected the ordinary means of safety; and agreed, even in the present
desperate extremity, that the revenues of the church should be
exempted from all burdens, though imposed for national defence and
security.[******]

     [* Padre Paolo, sopra beneficii ecclesiastici, p.
     51, 52, edit. Colon. 1675.]

     [** Spell. Concil. vol. i. p. 268.]

     [*** Padre Paolo, p. 132.]

     [**** Parker, p. 77.]

     [***** Ingulph. p. 862. Selden’s Hist. of Tithes,
     c. 8.]

     [****** Asser. p. 2. Chron. Sax. p. 76. W. Malms,
     lib. ii. cap. 2. Ethelwerd, lib. iii. cap. 3. M. West. p.
     158. Ingulph. p. 17. Alured. Beverl. p. 95.]




ETHELBALD AND ETHELBERT.

Ethelwolf lived only two years after making this grant; and by his will
he shared England between his two eldest sons, Ethelbald and Ethelbert;
the west being assigned to the former, the east to the latter. Ethelbald
was a profligate prince; and marrying Judith, his mother-in-law, gave
great offence to the people; but moved by the remonstrances of Swithun,
bishop of Winchester, he was at last prevailed on to divorce her.
His reign was short; and Ethelbert, his brother, succeeding to the
government, behaved himself, during a reign of five years, in a manner
more worthy of his birth and station. The kingdom, however, was still
infested by the Danes, who made an inroad and sacked Winchester, but
were there defeated. A body also of these pirates, who were quartered
in the Isle of Thanet, having deceived the English by a treaty,
unexpectedly broke into Kent, and committed great outrages.




ETHERED

Ethelbert was succeeded by his brother Ethered, who, though he defended
himself with bravery, enjoyed, during his whole reign, no tranquillity
from those Danish irruptions. His younger brother, Alfred, seconded him
in all his enterprises, and generously sacrificed to the public good all
resentment, which he might entertain on account of his being excluded by
Ethered from a large patrimony which had been left him by his father.

The first landing of the Danes, in the reign of Ethered, was among the
East Angles, who, more anxious for their present safety than for the
common interest, entered into a separate treaty with the enemy, and
furnished them with horses, which enabled them to make an irruption by
land into the kingdom of Northumberland. They there seized the city
of York, and defended it against Osbricht and Ælia, two Northumbrian
princes, who perished in the assault.[*] Encouraged by these successes,
and by the superiority which they had acquired in arms, they now
ventured, under the command of Hinguar and Hubba, to leave the
sea-coast, and penetrating into Mercia, they took up their winter
quarters at Nottingham, where they threatened the kingdom with a final
subjection.

     [* Asser, p. 6. Chron. Sax. p. 79.]

The Mercians, in this extremity, applied to Ethered for succor; and that
prince, with his brother Alfred, conducting a great army to Nottingham,
obliged the enemy to dislodge, and to retreat into Northumberland.
{870.} Their restless disposition, and their avidity for plunder,
allowed them not to remain long in those quarters; they broke into East
Anglia, defeated and took prisoner Edmund, the king of that country,
whom they afterwards murdered in cool blood; and, committing the most
barbarous ravages on the people, particularly on the monasteries, they
gave the East Angles cause to regret the temporary relief which they had
obtained, by assisting the common enemy.

The next station of the Danes was at Reading; whence they infested
the neighboring country by their incursions. The Mercians, desirous of
shaking off their dependence on Ethered, refused to join him with
their forces; and that prince, attended by Alfred, was obliged to march
against the enemy with the West Saxons alone, his hereditary subjects.
The Danes, being defeated in an action, shut themselves up in their
garrison; but quickly making thence an irruption, they routed the West
Saxons, and obliged them to raise the siege. An action soon after ensued
at Aston, in Berkshire, where the English, in the beginning of the day,
were in danger of a total defeat. Alfred, advancing with one division
of the army, was surrounded by the enemy in disadvantageous ground;
and Ethered, who was at that time hearing mass, refused to march to his
assistance till prayers should be finished;[*] but, as he afterwards
obtained the victory, this success, not the danger of Alfred, was
ascribed by the monks to the piety of that monarch.

     [* Asser. p. 7. W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 3 Sim.
     Dunelm. p. 125. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 205.]

[Illustration: 035.jpg ALFRED BEFORE THE DANISH GENERAL]




ALFRED.

This battle of Aston did not terminate the war; another battle was a
little after fought at Basing, where the Danes were more successful; and
being reënforced by a new army from their own country, they became every
day more terrible to the English. Amidst these confusions, Ethered died
of a wound which he had received in an action with the Danes; and
left the inheritance of his cares and misfortunes, rather than of his
grandeur, to his brother Alfred, who was now twenty-two years of age.

This prince gave very early marks of those great virtues and shining
talents, by which, during the most difficult times, he saved his country
from utter ruin and subversion. Ethelwolf, his father, the year after
his return with Alfred from Rome, had again sent the young prince
thither with a numerous retinue; and a report being spread of the king’s
death, the Pope, Leo III., gave Alfred the royal unction;[*] whether
prognosticating his future greatness from the appearances of his
pregnant genius, or willing to pretend, even in that age, to the right
of conferring kingdoms. Alfred, on his return home, became every day
more the object of his father’s affections; but being indulged in all
youthful pleasures, he was much neglected in his education; and he had
already reached his twelfth year, when he was yet totally ignorant of
the lowest elements of literature. His genius was first roused by
the recital of Saxon poems, in which the queen took delight; and this
species of erudition, which is sometimes able to make a considerable
progress even among barbarians, expanded those noble and elevated
sentiments which he had received from nature.[**] Encouraged by the
queen, and stimulated by his own ardent inclination, he soon learned to
read those compositions; and proceeded thence to acquire the knowledge
of the Latin tongue, in which he met with authors that better prompted
his heroic spirit, and directed his generous views. Absorbed in these
elegant pursuits, he regarded his accession to royalty rather as an
object of regret than of triumph;[***] but being called to the throne,
in preference to his brother’s children, as well by the will of
his father,--a circumstance which had great authority with the
Anglo-Saxons[****]--as by the vows of the whole nation, and the urgency
of public affairs, he shook off his literary indolence, and exerted
himself in the defence of his people. He had scarcely buried his
brother, when he was obliged to take the field, in order to oppose the
Danes, who had seized Wilton, and were exercising their usual ravages on
the countries around.

     [* Asser. p. 2. W. Malms, lib. ii. chap. 2.
     Ingulph. p. 869. Sim. Dunelm. p. 120, 139.]

     [** Asser. p. 5. M. West, p. 167.]

     [*** Asser. p. 7.]

     [**** Asser. p. 22. Sim. Dunelm. p. 121.]

He marched against them with the few troops which he could assemble on
a sudden, and, giving them battle, gained at first an advantage;
but, by his pursuing the victory too far, the superiority of the enemy’s
numbers prevailed, and recovered them the day. Their loss, however,
in the action, was so considerable, that, fearing Alfred would receive
daily reënforcements from his subjects, they were content to stipulate
for a safe retreat, and promised to depart the kingdom. For that
purpose, they were conducted to London, and allowed to take up winter
quarters there; but, careless of their engagements, they immediately
set themselves to the committing of spoil on the neighboring country.
Burrhed, king of Mercia, in whose territories London was situated, made
a new stipulation with them, and engaged them, by presents of money, to
remove to Lindesey, in Lincolnshire, a country which they had already
reduced to ruin and desolation. Finding, therefore, no object in that
place, either for their rapine or violence, they suddenly turned
back upon Mercia, in a quarter where they expected to find it without
defence; and fixing their station at Repton, in Derbyshire, they laid
the whole country desolate with fire and sword. Burrhed, despairing of
success against an enemy whom no force could resist, and no treaties
bind, abandoned his kingdom, and, flying to Rome, took shelter in a
cloister.[*] He was brother-in-law to Alfred, and the last who bore the
title of king in Mercia.

The West Saxons were now the only remaining power in England; and though
supported by the vigor and abilities of Alfred, they were unable to
sustain the efforts of those ravagers, who from all quarters invaded
them. A new swarm of Danes came over this year under three princes,
Guthrum, Oscitel, and Amund; and having first joined their countrymen at
Repton, they soon found the necessity of separating, in order to provide
for their subsistence. Part of them, under the command of Haldene,
their chieftain,[**] marched into Northumberland, where they fixed
their residence; part of them took quarters at Cambridge, whence they
dislodged in the ensuing summer and seized Wereham, in the county of
Dorset, the very centre of Alfred’s dominions. That prince so straitened
them in these quarters, that they were content to come to a treaty with
him, and stipulated to depart his country. Alfred, well acquainted with
their usual perfidy, obliged them to swear upon the holy relics to the
observance of the treaty;[***] not that he expected they would pay any
veneration to the relics; but he hoped that, if they now violated this
oath, their impiety would infallibly draw down upon them the vengeance
of Heaven.

     [* Asser. p. 8. Chron. Sax. p. 82. Ethelwerd, lib.
     iv. cap. 4.]

     [** Chron. Sax. p. 83.]

     [*** Asser. p 8.]

But the Danes, little apprehensive of the danger suddenly, without
seeking any pretence, fell upon Alfred’s army; and having put it to
rout, marched westward, and took possession of Exeter. The prince
collected new forces, and exerted such vigor, that he fought in one
year eight battles with the enemy,[*] and reduced them to the utmost
extremity. He hearkened, however, to new proposals of peace, and was
satisfied to stipulate with them, that they would settle somewhere in
England,[**] and would not permit the entrance of more ravagers into the
kingdom. But while he was expecting the execution of this treaty, which
it seemed the interest of the Danes themselves to fulfil, he heard that
another body had landed, and, having collected all the scattered troops
of their country men, had surprised Chippenham, then a considerable
town, and were exercising their usual ravages all around them.


This last incident quite broke the spirit of the Saxons, and reduced
them to despair. Finding that, after all the miserable havoc which they
had undergone in their persons and in their property, after all the
vigorous actions which they had exerted in their own defence, a new
band, equally greedy of spoil and slaughter, had disembarked among
them, they believed themselves abandoned by Heaven to destruction, and
delivered over to those swarms of robbers which the fertile north thus
incessantly poured forth against them. Some left their country and
retired into Wales, or fled beyond sea; others submitted to
the conquerors, in hopes of appeasing their fury by a servile
obedience.[***] And every man’s attention being now engrossed in concern
for his own preservation, no one would hearken to the exhortations of
the king, who summoned them to make, under his conduct, one effort more
in defence of their prince, their country, and their liberties. Alfred
himself was obliged to relinquish the ensigns of his dignity, to dismiss
his servants, and to seek shelter in the meanest disguises from the
pursuit and fury of his enemies. He concealed himself under a peasant’s
habit, and lived some time in the house of a neat-herd, who had been
intrusted with the care of some of his cows.[****]

     [* Asser. p. 8. The Saxon Chronicle, p. 82, says
     nine battles.]

     [** Asser. p. 9. Alured. Beverl. p. 104.]

     [*** Chron. Sax. p. 84. Alured. Beverl. p. 105.]

     [**** Asser. p. 9.]

There passed here an incident, which has been recorded by all the
historians, and was long preserved by popular tradition, though
it contains nothing memorable in itself, except so far as every
circumstance is interesting which attends so much virtue and dignity
reduced to such distress. The wife of the neat-herd was ignorant of the
condition of her royal guest; and observing him one day busy, by the
fireside, in trimming his bow and arrows, she desired him to take care
of some cakes which were toasting, while she was employed elsewhere
in other domestic affairs. But Alfred, whose thoughts were otherwise
engaged, neglected this injunction; and the good woman, on her return,
finding her cakes all burnt, rated the king very severely, and upbraided
him, that he always seemed very well pleased to eat her warm cakes
though he was thus negligent in toasting them.[*]


By degrees, Alfred, as he found the search of the enemy become more
remiss, collected some of his retainers, and retired into the centre
of a bog, formed by the stagnating waters of the Thone and Parret, in
Somersetshire. He here found two acres of firm ground; and building a
habitation on them, rendered himself secure by its fortifications, and
still more by the unknown and inaccessible roads which led to it, and
by the forests and morasses with which it was every way environed. This
place he called Æthelingay, or the Isle of Nobles;[**] and it now bears
the name of Athelney. He thence made frequent and unexpected sallies
upon the Danes, who often felt the vigor of his arm, but knew not from
what quarter the blow came. He subsisted himself and his followers by
the plunder which he acquired; he procured them consolation by
revenge; and from small successes, he opened their minds to hope that,
notwithstanding his present low condition, more important victories
might at length attend his valor.

    [* Asser. p. 9. M. West. p. 170.]

    [** Chron. Sax. p. 85. W Malms, lib. ii. cap. 4. Ethelwerd,
     lib iv. cap. 4. Ingulph. p. 26.]

Alfred lay here concealed, but not inactive, during a twelvemonth; when
the news of a prosperous event reached his ears, and called him to the
field. Hubba the Dane, having spread devastation, fire, and slaughter
over Wales, had landed in Devonshire from twenty-three vessels, and laid
siege to the castle of Kinwith, a place situated near the mouth of the
small river Tau. Oddune, earl of Devonshire, with his followers, had
taken shelter there; and being ill supplied with provisions, and
even with water, he determined, by some vigorous blow, to prevent the
necessity of submitting to the barbarous enemy. He made a sudden sally
on the Danes before sun-rising; and taking them unprepared, he put them
to rout, pursued them with great slaughter, killed Hubba himself, and
got possession of the famous Reafen, or enchanted standard, in which the
Danes put great confidence.[*] It contained the figure of a raven, which
had been inwoven by the three sisters of Hinguar and Hubba, with
many magical incantations, and which, by its different movements,
prognosticated, as the Danes believed, the good or bad success of any
enterprise.[**]


When Alfred observed this symptom of successful resistance in his
subjects, he left his retreat; but before he would assemble them in
arms, or urge them to any attempt, which, if unfortunate, might, in
their present despondency, prove fatal, he resolved to inspect himself
the situation of the enemy, and to judge of the probability of success.
For this purpose he entered their camp under the disguise of a harper,
and passed unsuspected through every quarter. He so entertained
them with his music and facetious humors, that he met with a welcome
reception, and was even introduced to the tent of Guthrum, their prince,
where he remained some days.[***] He remarked the supine security of the
Danes, their contempt of the English, their negligence in foraging and
plundering, and their dissolute wasting of what they gained by rapine
and violence. Encouraged by these favorable appearances, he secretly
sent emissaries to the most considerable of his subjects, and summoned
them to a rendezvous, attended by their warlike followers, at Brixton,
on the borders of Selwood Forest.[****] The English, who had hoped to
put an end to their calamities by servile submission, now found the
insolence and rapine of the conqueror more intolerable than all past
fatigues and dangers; and at the appointed day, they joyfully resorted
to their prince. On his appearance, they received him with shouts of
applause,[*****] and could not satiate their eyes with the sight of this
beloved monarch, whom they had long regarded as dead, and who now, with
voice and looks expressing his confidence of success, called them to
liberty and to vengeance.

    [* Asser. p. 10. Chron. Sax. p. 84. Abbas Rieval. p. 395.
     Alured. Beverl. p. 105.]

    [** Asser. p. 10.]

    [*** W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 4.]

    [**** Chron Sax. p. 85.]

    [***** Asser. p. 10. Chron. Sax. p. 85. Sim. Dunelm. p. 128.
     Alured. Beverl. p. 105. Abbas Rieval. p. 354.]

He instantly conducted them to Eddington, where the Danes were encamped;
and taking advantage of his previous knowledge of the place, he directed
his attack against the most unguarded quarter of the enemy. The Danes,
surprised to see an army of English, whom they considered as totally
subdued, and still more astonished to hear that Alfred was at their
head, made but a faint resistance, notwithstanding their superiority of
number, and were soon put to flight with great slaughter. The remainder
of the routed army, with their prince, was besieged by Alfred in a
fortified camp to which they fled; but being reduced to extremity by
want and hunger, they had recourse to the clemency of the victor, and
offered to submit on any conditions. The king, no less generous than
brave, gave them their lives, and even formed a scheme for converting
them from mortal enemies into faithful subjects and confederates. He
knew that the kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumberland were totally
desolated by the frequent inroads of the Danes, and he now proposed to
repeople them, by settling there Guthrum and his followers. He hoped
that the new planters would at last betake themselves to industry, when,
by reason of his resistance, and the exhausted condition of the country,
they could no longer subsist by plunder; and that they might serve him
as a rampart against any future incursions of their countrymen. But
before he ratified these mild conditions with the Danes, he required
that they should give him one pledge of their submission, and of
their inclination to incorporate with the English, by declaring their
conversion to Christianity.[*] Guthrum and his army had no aversion to
the proposal; and, without much instruction, or argument, or conference,
they were all admitted to baptism. The king answered for Guthrum at the
font, gave him the name of Athelstan, and received him as his adopted
son.[**]

    [* Chron. Sax. p. 85.]

    [** Asser. p. 10. Chron. Sax. p. 90.]

The success of this expedient seemed to correspond to Alfred’s hopes:
the greater part of the Danes settled peaceably in their new quarters:
some smaller bodies of the same nation, which were dispersed in Mercia,
were distributed into the five cities of Derby, Leicester, Stamford,
Lincoln, and Nottingham, and were thence called the Fif or Five-burgers.
The more turbulent and unquiet made an expedition into France, under the
command of Hastings;[*] and except by a short incursion of Danes, who
sailed up the Thames, and landed at Fulham, but suddenly retreated to
their ships, on finding the country in a posture of defence, Alfred was
not for some years infested by the inroads of those barbarians.[**]

    [* W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 4. Ingulph. p. 26.]

    [** Asser. p. 11.]

The king employed this interval of tranquillity in restoring order to
the state, which had been shaken by so many violent convulsions; in
establishing civil and military institutions; in composing the minds of
men to industry and justice; and in providing against the return of like
calamities. He was, more properly than his grandfather Egbert, the sole
monarch of the English, (for so the Saxons were now universally called,)
because the kingdom of Mercia was at last incorporated in his state,
and was governed by Ethelbert, his brother-in-law, who bore the title of
earl; and though the Danes, who peopled East Anglia and Northumberland,
were for some time ruled immediately by their own princes, they all
acknowledged a subordination to Alfred, and submitted to his superior
authority. As equality among subjects is the great source of concord,
Alfred gave the same laws to the Danes and English, and put them
entirely on a like footing in the administration both of civil and
criminal justice. The fine for the murder of a Dane was the same with
that for the murder of an Englishman; the great symbol of equality in
those ages.

The king, after rebuilding the ruined cities, particularly London,[*]
which had been destroyed by the Danes in the reign of Ethelwolf,
established a regular militia for the defence of the kingdom. He
ordained that all his people should be armed and registered; he assigned
them a regular rotation of duty; he distributed part into the castles
and fortresses, which he built at proper places;[**] he required another
part to take the field on any alarm, and to assemble at stated places of
rendezvous; and he left a sufficient number at home, who were employed
in the cultivation of the land, and who afterwards took their turn in
military service.[***]

    [* Asser. p. 15. Chron. Sax. p. 88. M. West. p. 171. Sim.
     Dunelm. p. 131. Brompton, p. 812. Alured. Beverl. ex edit.
     Hearns, p. 106.]

    [** Asser. p 18. Ingulph. p. 27.]

    [*** Chron. Sax. p. 92, 93.]

The whole kingdom was like one great garrison; and the Danes could no
sooner appear in one place, than a sufficient number was assembled
to oppose them, without leaving the other quarters defenceless or
disarmed.[*]

    [* Spelman’s Life of Alfred, p. 147, edit. 1709.]

But Alfred, sensible that the proper method of opposing an enemy who
made incursions by sea, was to meet them on their own element, took care
to provide himself with a naval force,[*] which, though the most
natural defence of an island, had hitherto been totally neglected by
the English. He increased the shipping of his kingdom both in number and
strength, and trained his subjects in the practice as well of sailing
as of naval action. He distributed his armed vessels in proper stations
around the island, and was sure to meet the Danish ships, either before
or after they had landed their troops, and to pursue them in all their
incursions. Though the Danes might suddenly, by surprise, disembark
on the coast, which was generally become desolate by their frequent
ravages, they were encountered by the English fleet in their retreat;
and escaped not, as formerly, by abandoning their booty, but paid, by
their total destruction, the penalty of the disorders which they had
committed.

    [* Asser. p. 9. M. West. p. 179.]

In this manner Alfred repelled several inroads of these piratical
Danes, and maintained his kingdom, during some years, in safety and
tranquillity. A fleet of a hundred and twenty ships of war was stationed
upon the coast; and being provided with warlike engines, as well as
with expert seamen, both Frisians and English, (for Alfred supplied the
defects of his own subjects by engaging able foreigners in his service,)
maintained a superiority over those smaller bands, with which England
had so often been infested.[*]

    [* Asser. p. 11. Chiron Sax p. 86, 87. M. West. p. 176.]

But at last Hastings, the famous Danish chief, having ravaged all the
provinces of France, both along the sea-coast and the Loire and Seine,
and being obliged to quit that country, more by the desolation which
he himself had occasioned, than by the resistance of the inhabitants,
appeared off the coast of Kent with a fleet of three hundred and thirty
sail. The greater part of the enemy disembarked in the Rother and seized
the fort of Apuldore. Hastings himself, commanding a fleet of eighty
sail, entered the Thames, and fortifying Milton, in Kent, began to
spread his forces over the country, and to commit the most destructive
ravages. But Alfred, on the first alarm of this descent, flew to the
defence of his people, at the head of a select band of soldiers, whom he
always kept about his person,[*] and, gathering to him the armed militia
from all quarters, appeared in the field with a force superior to the
enemy. All straggling parties, whom necessity, or love of plunder, had
drawn to a distance from their chief encampment, were cut off by the
English;[**] and these pirates, instead of increasing their spoil, found
themselves cooped up in their fortifications, and obliged to subsist by
the plunder which they had brought from France. Tired of this situation,
which must in the end prove ruinous to them, the Danes at Apuldore rose
suddenly from their encampment, with an intention of marching towards
the Thames, and passing over into Essex: but they escaped not the
vigilance of Alfred, who encountered them at Farnham, put them to
rout,[***] seized all their horses and baggage, and chased the runaways
on board their ships, which carried them up the Colne to Mersey, in
Essex, where they intrenched themselves. Hastings, at the same time, and
probably by concert, made a like movement; and deserting Milton,
took possession of Bamflete, near the Isle of Canvey, in the same
county,[****] where he hastily threw up fortifications for his defence
against the power of Alfred.

    [* Asser. p. 19.]

    [** Chron. Sax. p. 92.]

    [*** Chron. Sax. p. 93. Flor. Wigorn. p. 595.]

    [**** Chron. Sax. p. 93.]

Unfortunately for the English, Guthrum, prince of the East Anglian
Danes, was now dead; as was also Guthred, whom the king had appointed
governor of the Northumbrians; and those restless tribes, being
no longer restrained by the authority of their princes, and being
encouraged by the appearance of so great a body of their countrymen,
broke into rebellion, shook off the authority of Alfred, and yielding to
their inveterate habits of war and depredation,[*] embarked on board two
hundred and forty vessels, and appeared before Exeter, in the west of
England. Alfred lost not a moment in opposing this new enemy. Having
left some forces at London to make head against Hastings and the other
Danes, he marched suddenly to the west,[**] and, falling on the
rebels before they were aware, pursued them to their ships with great
slaughter.

    [* Chron. Sax. p. 92.]

    [** Chron. Sax. p. 93.]

These ravagers, sailing next to Sussex, began to plunder the country
near Chichester; but the order which Alfred had everywhere established,
sufficed here, without his presence, for the defence of the place,
and the rebels, meeting with a new repulse, in which many of them were
killed, and some of their ships taken,[*] were obliged to put again to
sea, and were discouraged from attempting any other enterprise.

    [* Chron. Sax p. 96. Flor. Wigorn. p. 596.]

Meanwhile the Danish invaders in Essex, having united their force under
the command of Hastings, advanced into the inland country, and made
spoil of all around them; but soon had reason to repent of their
temerity. The English army left in London, assisted by a body of the
citizens, attacked the enemy’s intrenchments at Bamflete, overpowered
the garrison, and having done great execution upon them, carried off
the wife and two sons of Hastings.[*] Alfred generously spared these
captives, and even restored them to Hastings,[**] on condition that he
should depart the kingdom.

    [* Chron. Sax. p. 94. M. West. w 178.]

    [** M. West, p. 179.]

But though the king had thus honorably rid himself of this dangerous
enemy, he had not entirely subdued or expelled the invaders. The
piratical Danes willingly followed in an excursion any prosperous
leader who gave them hopes of booty, but were not so easily induced to
relinquish their enterprise, or submit to return, baffled and without
plunder, into their native country. Great numbers of them, after the
departure of Hastings, seized and fortified Shobury, at the mouth of the
Thames; and having left a garrison there, they marched along the river,
till they came to Boddington, in the county of Glocester; where, being
reënforced by some Welsh, they threw up intrenchments, and prepared for
their defence. The king here surrounded them with the whole force of
his dominions; [*] and as he had now a certain prospect of victory, he
resolved to trust nothing to chance, but rather to master his enemies by
famine than assault. They were reduced to such extremities, that
having eaten their own horses, and having many of them perished with
hunger,[**] they made a desperate sally upon the English; and though
the greater number fell in the action, a considerable body made their
escape.[***]

     [* Chron. Sax. p. 94.]

     [** Chron. Sax. p. 94. M. West. p. 179. Flor.
     Wigorn. p. 596.]

     [*** Chron. Sax p. 96.]

These roved about for some time in England, still pursued by the
vigilance of Alfred; they attacked Leicester with success, defended
themselves in Hartford, and then fled to Quatford, where they were
finally broken and subdued. The small remains of them either dispersed
themselves among their countrymen in Northumberland and East Anglia,[*]
or had recourse again to the sea, where they exercised piracy, under the
command of Sigefert, a Northumbrian.

    [* Chron. Sax. p. 97.]

This freebooter, well acquainted with Alfred’s naval preparations, had
framed vessels of a new construction, higher, and longer, and swifter
than those of the English; but the king soon discovered his superior
skill, by building vessels still higher, and longer, and swifter than
those of the Northumbrians; and falling upon them, while they were
exercising their ravages in the west, he took twenty of their ships; and
having tried all the prisoners at Winchester, he hanged them as pirates,
the common enemies of mankind.


The well-timed severity of this execution, together with the excellent
posture of defence established every where, restored full tranquillity
in England, and provided for the future security of the government. The
East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes, on the first appearance of Alfred
upon their frontiers, made anew the most humble submissions to him;
and he thought it prudent to take them under his immediate government,
without establishing over them a viceroy of their own nation.[*] The
Welsh also acknowledged his authority

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