History of the Anglo-Saxons, from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest
by Thomas Miller · English · Gutenberg #45366 · 933,908 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: History of the Anglo-Saxons, from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest
Author: Thomas Miller
Illustrator: William Harvey
Release date: April 12, 2014 [eBook #45366]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
There are several "Parts" in this book. Only the last
one is listed in the Table of Contents. The titles of
the parts are enclosed by equal signs (example: =The
Saxon Invasion.=).
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[Illustration: _Conversion of Ethelbert._]
HISTORY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS:
From the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest.
by
THOMAS MILLER,
Author of "Royston Gower," "Lady Jane Grey,"
"Pictures of Country Life," etc.
SECOND EDITION.
London:
David Bogue, Fleet Street.
MDCCCL.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE DAWN OF HISTORY.
Obscurity of early history--Our ancient monuments a mystery--
The Welsh Triads--Language of the first inhabitants of Britain
unknown--Wonders of the ancient world p. 5
CHAPTER II.
THE ANCIENT BRITONS.
The Celtic Tribes--Britain known to the Phoenicians and Greeks--
The ancient Cymry--Different classes of the early Britons--
Their personal appearance--Description of their forest-towns--
A British hunter--Interior of an ancient hut--Costume of the
old Cymry--Ancient armour and weapons--British war-chariots
--The fearful havoc they made in battle p. 12
CHAPTER III.
THE DRUIDS.
Interior of an old British forest--Druidical sacrifice--Their
treasures--Their mysterious rites and ceremonies--The power
they possessed--Their belief in a future state--Their wild
superstitions--An arch-Druid described--Their veneration for
the mistletoe--Description of the Druids offering up sacrifice
--The gloomy grandeur of their ancient groves--Contrast
between the idols of the Druids and the heathen gods of the
Romans p. 17
CHAPTER IV.
LANDING OF JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cæsar's reasons for invading Britain--Despatches Volusenus from
Gaul to reconnoitre the island--Is intimidated by the force he
finds arranged along the cliffs of Dover--Lands near Sandwich
--Courage of the Roman Standard-bearer--Combat between the
Britons and Romans--Defeat and submission of the Britons--
Wreck of the Roman galleys--Perilous position of the invaders
--Roman soldiers attacked in a corn-field, rescued by the
arrival of their general--Britons attack the Roman encampment,
are again defeated, and pursued by the Roman cavalry--Cæsar's
hasty departure from Britain--Return of the Romans at spring
--Description of their armed galleys--Determination of Cæsar
to conquer Britain--Picturesque description of the night
march of the Roman legions into Kent--Battle beside a river
--Difficulties the Romans encounter in their marches through
the ancient British forests--Cæsar's hasty retreat to his
encampment--The Roman galleys again wrecked--Cessation of
hostilities--Cassivellaunus assumes the command of the Britons
--His skill as a general--Obtains an advantage over the
Romans with his war-chariots--Attacks the Roman encampment by
night and slays the outer guard--Defeats the two cohorts that
advance to their rescue, and slays a Roman tribune--Renewal of
the battle on the following day--Cæsar compelled to call in
the foragers to strengthen his army--Splendid charge of the
Roman cavalry--Overthrow and retreat of the Britons--Cæsar
marches through Kent and Surrey in pursuit of the British army
--Crosses the Thames near Chertsey--Retreat of the British
general--Cuts off the supplies of the Romans, and harasses the
army with his war-chariots--Stratagems adopted by the Britons
--Cassivellaunus betrayed by his countrymen--His fortress
attacked in the forest--Contemplates the destruction of the
Roman fleet--Attack of the Kentish men on the encampment of the
invaders--The Romans again victorious--Cassivellaunus sues
for peace--Final departure of Cæsar from Britain p. 30
CHAPTER V.
CARACTACUS, BOADICEA, AND AGRICOLA.
State of Britain after the departure of Cæsar--Landing of
Plautius--His skirmishes with the Britons in the marshes beside
the Thames--Arrival of the Roman emperor Claudius--Ostorius
conquers and disarms the Britons--Rise of Caractacus--British
encampment in Wales--Caractacus defeated, betrayed by his
step-mother, and carried captive to Rome--Death of the Roman
general Ostorius--Retreat of the Druids to the Isle of Anglesey
--Suetonius attacks the island--Consternation of the Roman
soldiers on landing--Massacre of the Druids, and destruction of
their groves and altars--Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, assumes
the command of the Britons--Her sufferings--She prepares for
battle, attacks the Roman colony of Camaladonum--Her terrible
vengeance--Her march into London, and destruction of the
Romans--Picturesque description of Boadicea and her daughters
in her ancient British war-chariot--Harangues her soldiers
--Is defeated by Suetonius, and destroys herself--Agricola
lands in Britain--His mild measures--Instructs the islanders
in agriculture and architecture--Leads the Roman legions
into Caledonia, and attacks the men of the woods--Bravery of
Galgacus, the Caledonian chief--Agricola sails round the coast
of Scotland--Erects a Roman rampart to prevent the Caledonians
from invading Britain p. 40
CHAPTER VI.
DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS.
Adrian strengthens and extends the Roman fortifications--
Description of these ancient barriers, and the combats that took
place before them--Wall erected by the emperor Severus--He
marches into Caledonia, reaches the Frith of Moray--Great
mortality amongst the Roman legions--Severus dies at York--
Picturesque description of the Roman sentinels guarding the
ancient fortresses--Attack of the northern barbarians--Peace
of Britain under the government of Caracalla--Arrival of the
Saxon and Scandinavian pirates--The British Channel protected
by the naval commander, Carausius--His assassination at York
--Constantine the Great--Theodosius conquers the Saxons--
Rebellion of the Roman soldiers; they elect their own general
--Alaric, the Goth, overruns the Roman territories--British
soldiers sent abroad to strengthen the Roman ranks--Decline
of the Roman power in Britain--Ravages of the Picts, Scots,
and Saxons--The Britons apply in vain for assistance from Rome
--Miserable condition in which they are left on the departure
of the Romans--War between the Britons and the remnant of the
invaders--Vortigern, king of the Britons--A league with the
Saxons p. 50
CHAPTER VII.
BRITAIN AFTER THE ROMAN PERIOD.
Great change produced in Britain by the Romans--Its ancient
features contrasted with its appearance after their departure--
Picturesque description of Britain--First dawn of Christianity
--Progress of the Britons in civilization--Old British
fortifications--Change in the costume of the Britons--Decline
in their martial deportment--Their ancient mode of burial--
Description of early British barrows--Ascendancy of rank p. 56
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ANCIENT SAXONS.
Origin of the early Saxons--Description of their habits and arms
--Their religion--The halls of Valhalla--Their belief in
rewards and punishments after death--Their ancient mythology
described--Superstitions of the early Saxons--Their ancient
temples and forms of worship--Their picturesque processions
--Dreadful punishments inflicted upon those who robbed their
temples--Different orders of society--Their divisions
of the seasons--Their bravery as pirates, and skill in
navigation p. 64
CHAPTER IX.
HENGIST, HORSA, ROWENA, AND VORTIGERN.
Landing of Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon chiefs--Their treaty
with Vortigern and the British chiefs--The British king allots
them the Isle of Thanet as a residence, on condition that they
drive out the Picts and Scots--Success of the Saxons--Arrival
of more ships--Landing of the Princess Rowena--Marriage of
Vortigern and Rowena--Quarrel between the Britons and Saxons
--Description of their first battle by the old Welsh bards--
The Britons led on by the sons of Vortigern--Death of Horsa,
the Saxon chief--Rowena's revenge--Pretended reconciliation
of the Saxons, and description of the feast where the British
chiefs were massacred--Terrible death of Vortigern and the fair
Rowena p. 72
CHAPTER X.
ELLA, CERDRIC, AND KING ARTHUR.
Arrival of Ella and his three sons--Combat between the Saxons
and Britons beside the ancient forest of Andredswold--Defeat
of the Britons, and desolate appearance of the old forest town
of Andred-Ceaster after the battle--Revengeful feelings of
the Britons--Establishment of the Saxon kingdom of Sussex--
Landing of Cerdric and his followers--Battle of Churdfrid,
and death of the British king Natanleod--Arrival of Cerdric's
kinsmen--The Britons again defeated--Arthur, the British
king, arms in defence of his country--His adventures described
--Numbers of battles in which he fought--Death of king Arthur
in the field of Camlan--Discovery of his remains in the abbey
of Glastonbury p. 83
CHAPTER XI.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SAXON OCTARCHY.
Landing of Erkenwin--The establishment of the kingdom of Wessex
--Description of London--Arrival of Ida and his twelve sons
--The British chiefs make a bold stand against Ida--Bravery
of Urien--Description of the battle of the pleasant valley,
by Taliesin, the British bard--Llywarch's elegy on the death
of Urien--Beautiful description of the battle of Cattraeth by
Anenrin, the Welsh bard--Establishment of the kingdom of Mercia
--Description of the divisions of England which formed the Saxon
Octarchy--Amalgamation of the British and Saxon population--
Retirement of the unconquered remnant of the ancient Cymry into
Wales p. 90
CHAPTER XII.
CONVERSION OF ETHELBERT.
Commencement of the civil war amongst the Saxons--Struggle
between Ethelbert, king of Kent, and Ceawlin, king of Wessex, for
the title of Bretwalda--Description of the slave-market of Rome
--Monk Gregory's admiration of the British captives--Gregory
becomes pontiff, and despatches Augustin with fifty monks to
convert the inhabitants of Britain--Picturesque description of
the landing of the Christian missionaries in the Isle of Thanet
--Intercession of Bertha--Ethelbert's interview with Augustin
and his followers--The missionaries take up their residence
in Canterbury--Conversion of Ethelbert--Augustin is made
Archbishop, by Pope Gregory--The rich presents sent to Britain
by the Pope--Character of the Roman pontiff--His wise policy
in not abolishing at once all outward forms of heathen worship
--Eadbald ascends the throne of Kent--Marries his stepmother,
and is denounced by the priests--He renounces the Christian
faith--The monks are driven out of Essex--Eadbald again
acknowledges the true faith, and the persecuted priests find
shelter in the kingdom of Kent p. 99
CHAPTER XIII.
EDWIN, KING OF THE DEIRI AND BERNICIA.
Adventures of Edwin, king of the Deiri--His residence in Wales
with Cadvan, one of the ancient British kings--Ethelfrith
having deprived him of his kingdom, seeks his life--Edwin flies
from Wales, and seeks the protection of Redwald, king of East
Anglia--Edwin's dream--The queen of East Anglia intercedes in
behalf of Edwin--Redwald prepares to wage war with Ethelfrith
--Religion of the king of East Anglia--Description of the
battle fought between Redwald and Ethelfrith on the banks of the
river Idel--Death of Ethelfrith, and accession of Edwin to
the throne of Northumbria--Edwin's marriage with Edilburga,
daughter of Ethelbert--Journey of the Saxon princess from Kent
to Northumbria--Attempted assassination of Edwin--Paulinus
endeavours in vain to convert Edwin to the Christian faith--
The king assembles his pagan priests and nobles to discuss the
new religion--Speech of Coifi, the heathen priest--Beautiful
and poetical address of a Saxon chief to the assembly--Coifi
desecrates the temple of Woden--Peaceful state of Northumbria
under the reign of Edwin--Death of Edwin at the battle of
Hatfield-chase in Yorkshire--Victories of Cadwallon, the
British king--Triumph of the Saxons under Oswald, and death of
Cadwallon at the battle called Heaven-field p. 111
CHAPTER XIV.
PENDA, THE PAGAN MONARCH OF MERCIA.
Description of the kingdom of Mercia--Character of Penda, the
pagan king--Charity of Oswald--Barbarous cruelty of Penda--
His desolating march through Northumbria--Attacks the castle
of Bamborough--His march into Wessex--His invasion of East
Anglia--Sigebert, the monk-king, leads on the East Anglians
--Is defeated by Penda, who ravages East Anglia--The pagan
king again enters Northumbria--Oswy offers all his treasures
to purchase peace--Is treated with contempt by Penda--Oswy
prepares for battle--Penda's forces driven into the river--
Death of the pagan king--Great changes effected by his death
--Courage of Saxburga, the widowed queen of Wessex--Perilous
state of the Saxon Octarchy p. 119
CHAPTER XV.
DECLINE OF THE SAXON OCTARCHY.
Alfred, the learned king of Northumbria--His patronage of the
celebrated scholar Aldhelm--Ceowulf, the patron of Bede--
Mollo, brother of the king of Wessex, burnt alive in Kent--King
Ina and his celebrated laws--Strange device of Ina's queen to
induce him to resign his crown, and make a pilgrimage to Rome
--Mysterious death of Ostrida, queen of the Mercians--Her
husband, Ethelred, abandons his crown and becomes a monk after
her violent death--Ethelbald ascends the throne of Mercia--
Adventures of his early life--His residence with Guthlac,
the hermit, in the island of Croyland--First founder of the
monastery of Croyland--Ethelbald joins Cuthred, king of Wessex,
and obtains a victory over the Welsh--Proclaims war against
Cuthred--Description of the battle, and defeat of Ethelbald--
Independence of the kingdom of Wessex--Abdication of Sigebyhrt,
king of Wessex--His death in the forest of Andredswold--Rapid
accession and dethronement of the kings of Northumbria--Summary
of their brief reigns p. 129
CHAPTER XVI.
OFFA, SURNAMED THE TERRIBLE.
Offa ascends the throne of Mercia--Drida's introduction and
marriage with the Mercian king--Character of queen Drida and
her daughter Edburga--Offa's invasion of Northumbria--He
marches into Kent--Is victorious--Defeats the king of Wessex
--His victory over the Welsh--Description of Offa's dyke--
Offa's friendly correspondence with Charlemagne--Adventures of
Egbert--Murder of Cynewulf, at Merton, in Surrey--Brihtric
obtains the crown of Wessex, and marries the daughter of Offa--
Ethelbert, king of East Anglia, visits the Mercian court--Queen
Drida plots his destruction--Description of a Saxon feast--
Dreadful death of Ethelbert--Offa's daughter, Alfleda, seeks
shelter in the monastery of Croyland--Murder of Queen Drida
--Edburga poisons her husband, Brihtric, king of Wessex--She
flies to France--Her reception at the court of Charlemagne--
She dies a beggar in the streets of Pavia p. 139
CHAPTER XVII.
EGBERT, KING OF ALL THE SAXONS.
Character of Egbert--His watchful policy--Death of Kenwulf, and
decline of the kingdom of Mercia--Egbert annexes the kingdom
of Kent to Wessex--Compels Wiglaf, king of Mercia, to pay him
tribute--He conquers the kingdom of Northumbria, and subjects
the whole of the Saxon kingdoms to his sway--Northumbria
invaded by the Danes--They sack the abbey of Lindisfarne, and
slay the monks--The Danes again land in Dorsetshire--Egbert
presides over a council in London, to devise measures to prevent
the ravages of the Danes--The remnant of the ancient Britons
who have been driven into Wales, form a league with the Danes,
and are defeated--Death of Egbert p. 145
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ANCIENT SEA-KINGS.
Origin of the Danish invaders--Habits of the early Vikings--
Their warlike education--Picturesque description of their wild
life--Their hatred of the Saxons--Description of their ships
and warlike weapons--Arrangement of their plans to plunder--
Their vows on the golden bracelet--Power of their leader only
acknowledged in battle--Their rude festivities p. 150
CHAPTER XIX.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF THE DANES IN NORTHUMBRIA.
Ethelwulph, king of Kent--His unfitness to govern--The brave
bishop of Sherbourne--The two characters contrasted--Boldness
of the Danes--They occupy the Isle of Thanet--Battle of the
field of Oaks--Character of Osberga, mother of Alfred the Great
--Ethelwulph visits Rome in company with his son Alfred--The
king of Kent marries Judith, daughter of Charles of France--
His presents to the Pope--Returns to England with his youthful
wife--Rebellion of his son Ethelbald--Death of Ethelwulph
--Ethelbald marries his stepmother Judith--She elopes from a
monastery with Baldwin, the grand forester--Death of Ethelbald
--Brief reign of Ethelbert--Alfred begins to distinguish
himself--The celebrated sea-king, Ragnar Lodbrog--His bravery
--Builds a large ship--Is wrecked on the coast of Northumbria
--Made prisoner by Ella, and dies in a dungeon--His celebrated
death-song--The sons of Ragnar Lodbrog prepare to revenge
their father's death--England invaded by their mighty fleet--
Their march towards Northumbria--Ravage York--Horrible death
of Ella, king of Northumbria--The Danes occupy the kingdoms
of the Deiri and Bernicia--Nottingham taken by the Danes--
Alfred accompanies his brother Ethelred, and the king of Mercia,
in their attack upon the Danes--They enter into a treaty
with the invaders--Alfred's marriage and attainments at this
period p. 159
CHAPTER XX.
RAVAGES OF THE DANES, AND DEATH OF ETHELRED.
Ravages of the Danes in Lincolnshire--Destruction of the
monastery of Bardney--Gallant resistance of the Mercians--
Battle near Croyland Abbey--Destruction of Croyland Abbey, and
murder of the monks--Sidroc, one of the sea-kings, saves a boy
from the massacre--The abbey of Peterborough destroyed by the
Danes--Description of the country through which the invaders
passed--Their march into East Anglia--The Danes enter Wessex
--Battle of Ash-tree hill, and victory of the Saxons--Death of
Ethelred p. 169
CHAPTER XXI.
ACCESSION AND ABDICATION OF ALFRED THE GREAT.
Miserable state of England when Alfred ascended the throne of
Wessex--He is disheartened by the rapid arrival of the Danes
--Enters into a treaty with them, and they abandon Essex--The
Danes occupy London--Burrhed, king of Mercia, retires to Rome
--The Danes now masters of all England, excepting Wessex--
Alfred destroys their ships--Again enters into treaty with them
--He encounters them at sea--Treaty at Exeter--His strange
conduct at Chippenham--Vindication of the character of Alfred
--His conduct during retirement--Alfred the Great in the
cowherd's hut--Discovery of his retreat--His skirmishes with
the Danes--Odin, the earl of Devonshire, captures the magical
banner of Hubba, the sea-king--Alfred and his followers fortify
their island retreat--Poverty of the great Saxon king p. 179
CHAPTER XXII.
ALFRED THE GREAT.
Alfred in disguise visits the Danish camp near Westbury in
Wiltshire--His interview with Godrun, the sea-king--Alfred
musters the Saxon forces at Selwood forest--The arrival of his
followers described--His preparation for battle--Description
of the combat--Defeat of the Danes--Alfred besieges the
Danish encampment--Surrender of Godrun--Policy and generosity
of Alfred the Great--Peaceful appearance of England--Landing
of Hastings, the famous sea-king--Alfred increases his navy--
Character of Hastings, the sea-king, the most skilful of all the
Danish invaders--Alfred marches his army between the Danish
forces--His masterly generalship--Hastings offers to quit the
kingdom--His treachery--Is again conquered by Alfred--The
Danes of East Anglia and Northumbria rise up against Alfred--
The wife and children of Hastings are taken prisoners by Alfred,
and discharged with presents--After many struggles the Danes
are at last defeated--Hastings quits England--Death of Alfred
the Great p. 192
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHARACTER OF ALFRED THE GREAT.
His boyhood--Early love of poetry--Self-cultivation--Wisdom
displayed in his conduct with the Danes--Difficulties under
which he pursued his labour--His patronage of literary men
--Method of study--Summary of his works--He reforms the
Saxon nobles--Divides his time--Various purposes to which he
appropriates his revenue--His invention for marking the hours
--Cultivates an acquaintance with foreign countries--His
severity in the administration of justice--Establishment of a
rigid system of police--His laws--Intellectual character of
Alfred the Great p. 199
CHAPTER XXIV.
EDWARD THE ELDER.
Ethelwold lays claim to the throne of Wessex--Is backed by the
Danes, and crowned at York--Battle of Axeholme and defeat of
Ethelwold--Edward ravages Northumbria--The Danes attack
Mercia--They enter the Severn--Battle of Wodensfield, and
defeat of the Danes--Edward strengthens his frontier with
fortresses--Their situation described--Bravery of his sister
Ethelfleda--The Danes enter North Wales--Edward again
victorious--Submission of the Welsh princes and the Danes of
Northumbria--Death of Edward the Elder p. 202
CHAPTER XXV.
THE REIGN OF ATHELSTAN.
Athelstan, the favourite grandchild of Alfred the Great--While
but a boy his grandfather invests him with the honours of
knighthood--He is educated by Alfred's daughter, Ethelfleda--
Athelstan's sister married Sigtryg, a descendant of the famous
sea-kings--The Dane repudiates his wife, and renounces his new
religion--Athelstan invades his dominions--Death of Sigtryg,
and flight of his sons--Preparation for the invasion of England
--The force arrayed against Athelstan--Measures adopted by the
Saxon king--Preparations for battle--Picturesque description
of the battle of Brunanburg--Anglo-Saxon song on Athelstan's
victory--High position attained by Athelstan--Otho the Great
marries Athelstan's sister--The Saxon monarch forms an alliance
with the emperor of Germany and the king of Norway--Harold of
Norway suppresses piracy--Sends his son Haco to be educated
at the Saxon court--Presents a beautiful ship to Athelstan--
Death of Harold, king of Norway--List of the kings who were
established on their thrones by Athelstan--His presents to the
monasteries--His charity and laws for the relief of the poor--
Cruelty to his brother Edwin--Death of Athelstan p. 212
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE REIGNS OF EDMUND AND EDRED.
Accession of Edmund the Elder--Anlaf, the Dane, invades Mercia,
and defeats the Saxons--Edmund treats with Anlaf, and divides
England with the Danes--Perilous state of the Saxon succession
prevented by the death of Anlaf--Change in Edmund's character
--His brilliant victories--Cruelty to the British princes--
Edmund assassinated while celebrating the feast of St. Augustin,
by Leof, the robber--Mystery that surrounds the murder of
Edmund the Elder--Edred ascends the Saxon throne--Eric, the
sea-king--His daring deeds on the ocean--Description of
his wild life--Edred invades Northumbria--Eric attacks his
own subjects--Edred's victory over the Danes--Scandinavian
war-song on the death of Eric--Death of Edred p. 218
CHAPTER XXVII.
EDWIN AND ELGIVA.
Edwin's marriage with Elgiva--Odo, the Danish archbishop--
St. Dunstan--His early life--He becomes delirious--His
intellectual attainments--His persecution--He falls in love
--Is dissuaded from marriage by the bishop, Ælfheag--He is
again attacked with sickness--Recovers, and becomes a monk--
Lives in a narrow cell--Absurdity of his rumoured interviews
with the Evil One--His high connexions--Analysis of his
character--Dunstan's rude attack upon King Edwin, after the
banquet--Dunstan again driven from court--Remarks on his
conduct--Elgiva is cruelly tortured, and savagely murdered
by the command of Odo, the archbishop of Canterbury--Dunstan
recalled from his banishment--Supposed murder of Edwin p. 227
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE REIGN OF EDGAR.
Power of Dunstan--He is made Archbishop of Canterbury--He
appoints his own friends counsellors to the young king--His
encouragement of the fine arts--Enforces the Benedictine
rules upon the monks--Speech of Edgar in favour of Dunstan's
reformation in the monasteries--Romantic adventure of Elfrida,
daughter of the Earl of Devonshire--Death of Athelwold--
Personal courage of Edgar--His love of pomp, and generosity--
His encouragement of foreign artificers--His tribute of wolves'
heads--England infested with wolves long after the commencement
of the Saxon period--Many of the Saxon names derived from the
wolf--Death of Edgar--Elfric's sketch of his character--
Changes wrought by Edgar p. 233
CHAPTER XXIX.
EDWARD THE MARTYR.
Dunstan still triumphant--Is opposed by the dowager-queen Elfrida
--Her attempts to place her son, Ethelred, upon the throne,
frustrated by Dunstan--Contest between the monks and the
secular clergy--The Benedictine monks driven out of Mercia--
The Synod of Winchester--Dunstan's pretended miracle doubted--
The council of Calne--William of Malmesbury's description of
the assembly--Dunstan's threat--Falling in of that portion
of the floor on which Dunstan's opponents stood--Reasons
for supposing that the floor was undermined by the command of
Dunstan--Death of his enemies, and triumph of the archbishop
--Edward's visit to Corfe Castle--He is stabbed in the back
while pledging his stepmother, Elfrida, at the gate--His
dreadful death--Character of Elfrida p. 238
CHAPTER XXX.
ETHELRED THE UNREADY.
Elfrida still opposed by Dunstan--Ethelred crowned by the
archbishop of Canterbury--His malediction at the coronation
--Dislike of the Saxons to Ethelred--Dunstan's power on the
wane--Insurrection of the Danes--The Danish pirates again
ravage England--Courageous reply of the Saxon governor of Essex
--Single combat between the Saxon governor, and one of the
sea-kings--Cowardly conduct of Ethelred--He pays tribute,
and makes peace with the Danes--Alfric the Mercian governor,
turns traitor, and joins the Danes with his Saxon ships--The
Saxon army again commanded by the Danes, and defeated--Olaf,
the Norwegian, and Swein, king of Denmark, invade and take formal
possession of England--Ethelred again exhausts his exchequer,
to purchase peace--Swein's second invasion of England--Cruel
massacre of the Danes by the Saxons--Murder of Gunhilda, the
sister of Swein, king of Denmark--Swein prepares to revenge
the death of his countrymen--Description of his soldiers
--Splendour of his ships--His magical banner described--
His landing in England--Alfric again betrays the Saxons--
Destruction of Norwich--Ethelred once more purchases peace of
the Danes---Ælfeg, archbishop of Canterbury, made prisoner by the
sea-kings--He refuses to pay a ransom--Is summoned to appear
before the sea-kings while they are feasting, and beaten to death
by the bones of the oxen the pirates had feasted upon--Ethelred
lays an oppressive tax upon the land--He raises a large fleet
--Is again betrayed by his commanders--Sixteen counties are
given up to the Danes--Ethelred deserted by his subjects--
Escapes to the Isle of Wight, and from thence to Normandy--
Swein, king of Denmark, becomes the monarch of England--Death
of Swein--His son Canute claims the crown--Is opposed by
Edmund Ironside--Canute's cruelty to the Saxon hostages--
Miserable state of England at this period, as described by a
Saxon bishop p. 249
CHAPTER XXXI.
EDMUND, SURNAMED IRONSIDE.
Courageous character of Edmund Ironside--His gallant defence of
London--His prowess at the battle of Scearston--Obstinacy of
the combat which is only terminated by the approach of night--
Renewal of the battle in the morning--Narrow escape of Canute,
the Dane, from the two-handed sword of Edmund Ironside--
Conduct of the traitor Edric--Retreat of the Danes--Battles
fought by Edmund the Saxon--Ulfr, a Danish chief, lost in a
wood--Meets with Godwin the cowherd, and is conducted to the
Danish camp--Treaty between Canute the Dane and Edmund Ironside
--The kingdom divided between the Danes and Saxons--Suspicious
circumstances attending the death of Edmund--Despondency of the
Saxons p. 254
CHAPTER XXXII.
CANUTE THE DANE.
Coronation of Canute the Dane--His treaty with the Saxon nobles
--He banishes the relations of Ethelred, and the children of
Edmund--Fate of Edmund's children--Canute's marriage with
Emma, the dowager-queen of the Saxons--Death of the traitor,
Edric--Canute visits Denmark--Death of Ulfr, the patron of
Godwin the cowherd--Canute invades Norway--Habits of the
Norwegian pirates--Canute erects a monument to Ælfeg, the
murdered archbishop of Canterbury--Carries off the dead body
of the bishop from London--Night scene on the Thames--Kills
one of his soldiers--His penance--Establishes the tax of
Peter's-pence--Picturesque description of Canute rebuking his
courtiers--His theatrical display, and vanity--His pilgrimage
to Rome--Canute's letter--His death p. 264
CHAPTER XXXIII.
REIGNS OF HAROLD HAREFOOT AND HARDICANUTE.
Sketch of Canute's reputed sons--The succession disputed--
Rise of earl Godwin--Refusal of the archbishop to crown
Harold Harefoot--Harold crowns himself, and bids defiance
to the church--Conduct of Emma of Normandy--Her letter to
her son Alfred--He lands in England, with a train of Norman
followers--His reception by earl Godwin--Massacre of the
Normans at Guildford--Death of Alfred, the son of Ethelred
--Emma banished from England--Her residence at Bruges--
Hardicanute prepares to invade England--Death of Harold
Harefoot--Accession of Hardicanute--Disinters the body of
Harold--Summons earl Godwin to answer for the death of Alfred
--Godwin's defence--Penalty paid by earl Godwin--Character
of Hardicanute--His Huscarls--The inhabitants of Worcester
refuse to pay the tax, called Dane-geld--They abandon the
city--Reckless conduct of Hardicanute--He invites Edward,
the son of Ethelred, to England--Hardicanute, the last of the
sea-kings, dies drunk at a marriage-feast in Lambeth p. 272
CHAPTER XXXIV.
ACCESSION OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
Edward established on the throne of England by the power of
earl Godwin--Edward marries Editha, the earl's daughter--
Description of the Lady Editha, by Ingulphus--Godwin's jealousy
of the Norman favourites, who surrounded Edward--Friendless
state of Edward the Confessor, when he arrived in England--
Changes produced by the arrival of the Normans in the Saxon
court--Independence of Godwin and his sons--Emma banished
by her son Edward--Threatened invasion of Magnus, king of
Norway--The Saxons and Danes alike jealous of the Norman
favourites--Eustace, count of Boulogne, visits king Edward--
His conduct at Dover--Several of the count's followers are
slain--Earl Godwin refuses to punish the inhabitants of Dover
for their attack on Count Eustace--The Normans endeavour to
overthrow Earl Godwin--He refuses to attend the council at
Gloucester--Earl Godwin and his sons have recourse to arms--
The Danes refuse to attack the Saxons in king Edwin's quarrel--
Banishment of the Saxon earl and his sons--Sufferings of queen
Editha p. 282
CHAPTER XXXV.
EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
Description of the English court, after the banishment of Earl
Godwin--William, the Norman, surnamed the Bastard, and the
Conqueror, arrives in England--William's parentage--Sketch of
his father, surnamed Robert the Devil--His pilgrimage to Rome,
and death--Bold and daring character of William the Norman--
His cruel conduct to the prisoners of Alençon--His delight on
visiting England--Circumstances in his favour for obtaining
the crown of England--Return, and triumph of Earl Godwin--
England again on the verge of a civil war--Departure of the
Norman favourites--Sketch of the English court after the return
of the Saxon earl--Death of Godwin--Siward the Strong--
Rise of Harold, the son of earl Godwin--Imbecility of Edward
the Confessor--Harold's victory over the Welsh--Conduct of
Tostig, the brother of Harold--Coldness of the church of Rome
towards England--struggle of Benedict and Stigand for the
pallium--Mediation of Lanfranc--William the Norman becomes a
favourite with the Roman pontiff--Suspicious death of Edward,
the son of Edmund Ironside--Edward the Confessor suspects the
designs of William the Conqueror--Harold, the son of Godwin,
obtains permission to visit Normandy p. 296
CHAPTER XXXVI.
EARL HAROLD'S VISIT TO NORMANDY.
Harold shipwrecked upon the coast of France--Is made captive,
and carried to the fortress of Beaurain--Is released by the
intervention of William of Normandy--Harold's interview with
Duke William at Rouen--Affected kindness of the Norman duke--
William cautiously unfolds his designs on the crown of England--
His proposition to Harold--Offers Harold his daughter, Adeliza,
in marriage--Duke William's stratagem--Harold's oath on the
relics of the saints--Description of William the Norman's
courtship--Character of Matilda of Flanders--Harold's return
to England--The English people alarmed by signs and omens--
Appearance of a comet in England--Description of the death of
Edward the Confessor p. 304
CHAPTER XXXVII.
ACCESSION OF HAROLD, THE SON OF GODWIN.
Harold elected king of England by the Saxon witenagemot--
Becomes a great favourite with his subjects--Restores the
Saxon customs--Conduct of William the Norman on hearing that
Harold had ascended the throne of England--Tostig, Harold's
brother, forms a league with Harold Hardrada, the last of the
sea-kings--Character of Harold Hardrada--His adventures in
the east--He prepares to land in England--Tostig awaits
his arrival in Northumbria--The duke of Normandy's message
to Harold king of the Saxons--Harold's answer--He marries
the sister of Morkar of Northumbria--Duke William makes
preparations for the invasion of England--Arrival of Harold
Hardrada with his Norwegian fleet--Superstitious feeling of
the Norwegian soldiers--He joins Tostig, the son of Godwin--
They burn Scarborough, and enter the Humber--Harold, by a rapid
march, reaches the north--He prevents the surrender of York
--Preparation for the battle--Harold surprises the enemy--
Description of the combat--Harold offers peace to his brother
--The offer rejected--Description of the battle--Deaths of
Harold Hardrada and Tostig--Harold's victory p. 314
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
ENGLAND INVADED BY THE NORMANS.
Preparations in Normandy for the invasion of England--Description
of duke William's soldiers--He obtains the sanction of the pope
to seize the crown of England, and receives a consecrated banner
from Rome--Meeting of the barons and citizens of Normandy--
Policy of William Fitz-Osbern--Measures adopted by the Norman
duke--His promises to all who embarked in the expedition--
Vows of the Norman knights--Protest of Conan, king of Brittany
--Death of Conan--The Norman fleet arrives at Dive--Conduct
of duke William while wind-bound in the roadsteads of St. Valery
--Consternation amongst his troops--Method pursued by the
Norman duke to appease the murmurs of his soldiers--The Norman
fleet crosses the Channel, and arrives at Pevensey-bay--Fall
of the astrologer--Landing of the Norman soldiers--William's
stumbling considered an ill omen--He marches towards Hastings
--Alarm of the inhabitants along the coast--Tidings carried to
Harold of the landing of the Normans p. 325
CHAPTER XXXIX.
BATTLE OF HASTINGS.
Harold, king of the Saxons, marches from York--Despatches a fleet
to intercept the flight of the Normans--Disaffection amongst
his troops--He arrives in London--His hasty departure from
the metropolis--Cause of Harold's disasters--Description of
the Norman and Saxon encampments--William's message to Harold
--Occupation of the rival armies the night before the battle--
Gurth advises Harold to quit the field--Morning of the battle
--The Saxon and Norman leaders--William the Norman's address
to his soldiers--Inferiority of the Saxons in numbers--Strong
position taken up by Harold--Commencement of the combat--
Courage of the Saxons--The Normans driven back from the English
intrenchments--Skill of the Norman archers--Cavalry of the
invaders driven into a deep ravine--The battle hitherto in
favour of the Saxons--Rumour that William the Norman was slain
--The effect of his sudden appearance amongst his retreating
forces--Unflinching valour of the Saxons--Stratagem adopted
by the Norman duke--Its consequence--William again attempts
a feigned flight, and the Saxons quit their intrenchments--
Dreadful slaughter of the English--Death of Harold, the last
Saxon king--Capture of the Saxon banner--Victory of the
Normans--Retreat and pursuit of the remnant of the Saxon army
--The field of Hastings the morning after the battle--The dead
body of Harold discovered by Edith the Swan-necked p. 338
THE ANGLO-SAXONS.
Their religion--Government and laws--Literature of Anglo-Saxons
--Architecture, Arts, &c.--Costume, Manners, Customs, and
Everyday life p. 357
THE
HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Under the Anglo-Saxons.
CHAPTER I.
THE DAWN OF HISTORY.
"This fortress, built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,--
This earth of majesty--this little world--
This precious stone set in the silver sea--
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious surge
Of watery Neptune."
SHAKSPERE.
Almost every historian has set out by regretting how little is known of
the early inhabitants of Great Britain--a fact which only the lovers of
hoar antiquity deplore, since from all we can with certainty glean from
the pages of contemporary history, we should find but little more to
interest us than if we possessed written records of the remotest origin
of the Red Indians; for both would alike but be the history of an
unlettered and uncivilized race. The same dim obscurity, with scarcely
an exception, hangs over the primeval inhabitants of every other
country; and if we lift up the mysterious curtain which has so long
fallen over and concealed the past, we only obtain glimpses of obscure
hieroglyphics; and from the unmeaning fables of monsters and giants, to
which the rudest nations trace their origin, we but glance backward and
backward, to find that civilized Rome and classic Greece can produce no
better authorities than old undated traditions, teeming with fabulous
accounts of heathen gods and goddesses. What we can see of the remote
past through the half-darkened twilight of time, is as of a great and
unknown sea, on which some solitary ship is afloat, whose course we
cannot trace through the shadows which everywhere deepen around her,
nor tell what strange land lies beyond the dim horizon to which she
seems bound. The dark night of mystery has for ever settled down upon
the early history of our island, and the first dawning which throws the
shadow of man upon the scene, reveals a rude hunter, clad in the skins
of beasts of the chase, whose path is disputed by the maned and shaggy
bison, whose rude hut in the forest fastnesses is pitched beside the
lair of the hungry wolf, and whose first conquest is the extirpation
of these formidable animals. And so, in as few words, might the early
history of many another country be written. The shores of Time are
thickly strown with the remains of extinct animals, which, when living,
the eye of man never looked upon, as if from the deep sea of Eternity
had heaved up one wave, which washed over and blotted out for ever all
that was coëval with her silent and ancient reign, leaving a monument
upon the confines of this old and obliterated world, for man in a
far and future day to read, on which stands ever engraven the solemn
sentence, "_Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further!_"--beyond this
boundary all is Mine! Neither does this mystery end here, for around
the monuments which were reared by the earliest inhabitants of Great
Britain, there still reigns a deep darkness; we know not what hand
piled together the rude remains of Stonehenge; we have but few records
of the manners, the customs, or the religion of the early Britons; here
and there a colossal barrow heaves up above the dead; we look within,
and find a few bones, a few rude weapons, either used in the war or
the chase, and these are all; and we linger in wonderment around such
remains. Who those ancient voyagers were that first called England the
Country of Sea Cliffs we know not; and while we sit and brood over the
rude fragments of the Welsh Triads, we become so entangled in doubt
and mystery as to look upon the son of Aedd the Great, and the Island
of Honey to which he sailed, and wherein he found no man alive, as the
pleasing dream of some old and forgotten poet; and we set out again,
with no more success, to discover who were the earliest inhabitants of
England, leaving the ancient Cymri and the country of Summer behind,
and the tall, silent cliffs, to stand as they had done for ages,
looking over a wide and mastless sea. We then look among the ancient
names of the headlands, and harbours, and mountains, and hills, and
valleys, and endeavour to trace a resemblance to the language spoken by
some neighbouring nation, and we only glean up a few scattered words,
which leave us still in doubt, like a confusion of echoes, one breaking
in upon the other, a minglement of Celtic, Pictish, Gaulish, and Saxon
sounds, where if for a moment but one is audible and distinct, it is
drowned by other successive clamours which come panting up with a still
louder claim, and in very despair we are compelled to step back again
into the old primeval silence. There we find Geology looking daringly
into the formation of the early world, and boldly proclaiming, that
there was a period of time when our island heaved up bare and desolate
amid the silence of the surrounding ocean,--when on its ancient
promontories and grey granite peaks not a green branch waved, nor a
blade of grass grew, and no living thing, saving the tiny corals, as
they piled dome upon dome above the naked foundations of this early
world, stirred in the "deep profound" which reigned over those sleeping
seas. Onward they go, boldly discoursing of undated centuries that have
passed away, during which they tell us the ocean swarmed with huge,
monstrous forms; and that all those countless ages have left to record
their flight are but the remains of a few extinct reptiles and fishes,
whose living likenesses never again appeared in the world. To another
measureless period are we fearlessly carried--so long as to be only
numbered in the account of Time which Eternity keeps--and other forms,
we are told, moved over the floors of dried-up oceans--vast animals
which no human eye ever looked upon alive; these, they say, also were
swept away, and their ponderous remains had long mingled with and
enriched the earth; but man had not as yet appeared; nor in any corner
of the whole wide world do they discover in the deep-buried layers
of the earth a single vestige of the remains of the human race. What
historian, then, while such proofs as these are before his eyes, will
not hesitate ere he ventures to assert who were the first inhabitants
of any country, whence they came, or at what period that country was
first peopled? As well might he attempt a description of the scenery
over which the mornings of the early world first broke,--of summit and
peak which, they say, ages ago, have been hurled down, and ground and
powdered into atoms. What matters it about the date when such things
once were, or at what time or place they first appeared? We can gaze
upon the gigantic remains of the mastodon or mammoth, or on the grey,
silent ruins of Stonehenge, but at what period of time the one roamed
over our island, or in what year the other was first reared, will for
ever remain a mystery. The earth beneath our feet is lettered over with
proofs that there was an age in which these extinct monsters existed,
and that period is unmarked by any proof of the existence of man in
our island. And during those not improbable periods when oceans were
emptied and dried up, amid the heaving up and burying of rocks and
mountains,--when volcanoes reddened the dark midnights of the world,
when "the earth was without form, and void,"--what mind can picture
aught but His Spirit "moving upon the face of the waters,"--what mortal
eye could have looked upon the rocking and reeling of those chaotic
ruins when their rude forms first heaved up into the light? Is not
such a world stamped with the imprint of the Omnipotent,--from when He
first paved its foundation with enduring granite, and roofed it over
with the soft blue of heaven, and lighted it by day with the glorious
sun, and hung out the moon and stars to gladden the night; until at
last He fashioned a world beautiful enough for the abode of His "own
image" to dwell in, before He created man? And what matters it whether
or not we believe in all these mighty epochs? Surely it is enough for
us to discover throughout every change of time the loving-kindness of
God for mankind; we see how fitting this globe was at last for his
dwelling-place; that before the Great Architect had put this last
finish to His mighty work, instead of leaving us to starve amid the
Silurian sterility, He prepared the world for man, and in place of the
naked granite, spread out a rich carpet of verdure for him to tread
upon, then flung upon it a profusion of the sweetest flowers. Let us
not, then, daringly stand by, and say thus it was fashioned, and so it
was formed, but by our silence acknowledge that it never yet entered
into the heart of man to conceive how the Almighty Creator laid the
foundation of the world.
To His great works must we ever come with reverential knee, and before
them lowly bow; for the grey rocks, and the high mountain summits, and
the wide-spreading plains, and the ever-sounding seas, are stamped with
the image of Eternity,--a mighty shadow ever hangs over them. The grey
and weather-beaten headlands still look over the sea, and the solemn
mountains still slumber under their old midnight shadows; but what
human ear first heard the murmur of the waves upon the beaten beach, or
what human foot first climbed up those high-piled summits, we can never
know.
What would it benefit us could we discover the date when our island
was buried beneath the ocean; when what was dry land in one age became
the sea in another; when volcanoes glowed angrily under the dark skies
of the early world, and huge extinct monsters bellowed, and roamed,
and swam, through the old forests and the ancient rivers which have
perhaps ages ago been swept away? What could we find more to interest
us were we in possession of the names, the ages, and the numbers, of
the first adventurers who were perchance driven by some storm upon our
sea-beaten coast, than what is said in the ancient Triad before alluded
to? "there were no more men alive, nor anything but bears, wolves,
beavers, and the oxen with the high prominence," when Aedd landed upon
the shores of England. What few traces we have of the religious rites
of the early inhabitants of Great Britain vary but little from such
as have been brought to light by modern travellers who have landed in
newly-discovered countries in our own age. They worshipped idols, and
had no knowledge of the true God, and saving in those lands where the
early patriarchs dwelt, the same Egyptian darkness settled over the
whole world. The ancient Greeks and Romans considered all nations,
excepting themselves, barbarians; nor do the Chinese of the present
day look upon us in a more favourable light; while we, acknowledging
their antiquity as a nation, scarcely number them amongst such as
are civilized. We have yet to learn by what hands the round towers
of Ireland were reared, and by what race the few ancient British
monuments that still remain were piled together, ere we can enter those
mysterious gates which open upon the History of the Past. We find the
footprint of man there, but who he was, or whence he came, we know
not; he lived and died, and whether or not posterity would ever think
of the rude monuments he left behind concerned him not; whether the
stones would mark the temple in which he worshipped, or tumble down and
cover his grave, concerned not his creed; with his hatchet of stone,
and spear-head of flint, he hewed his way from the cradle to the tomb,
and under the steep barrow he knew that he should sleep his last sleep,
and, with his arms folded upon his breast, he left "the dead past to
bury its dead." He lived not for us.
CHAPTER II.
THE ANCIENT BRITONS.
"Where the maned bison and the wolf did roam,
The ancient Briton reared his wattled home,
Paddled his coracle across the mere,
In the dim forest chased the antlered deer;
Pastured his herds within the open glade,
Played with his 'young barbarians' in the shade;
And when the new moon o'er the high hills broke,
Worshipped his heathen gods beneath the sacred oak."
THE OLD FOREST.
Although the origin of the early inhabitants of Great Britain is still
open to many doubts, we have good evidence that at a very remote period
the descendants of the ancient Cimmerii, or Cymry, dwelt within our
island, and that from the same great family sprang the Celtic tribe;
a portion of which at that early period inhabited the opposite coast
of France. At what time the Cymry and Celts first peopled England we
have not any written record, though there is no lack of proof that
they were known to the early Phoenician voyagers many centuries before
the Roman invasion, and that the ancient Greeks were acquainted with
the British Islands by the name of the Cassiterides, or the Islands of
Tin. Thus both the Greeks and Romans indirectly traded with the very
race, whose ancestors had shaken the imperial city with their arms, and
rolled the tide of battle to those classic shores where "bald, blind
Homer" sung. They were the undoubted offspring of the dark Cimmerii of
antiquity, those dreaded indwellers of caves and forests, those brave
barbarians whose formidable helmets were surmounted by the figures
of gaping and hideous monsters; who wore high nodding crests to make
them look taller and more terrible in battle, considering death on the
hard-fought field as the crowning triumph of all earthly glory. From
this race sprang those ancient British tribes who presented so bold a
front to Julius Cæsar, when his Roman galleys first ploughed the waves
that washed their storm-beaten shores. Beyond this contemporary history
carries us not; and the Welch traditions go no further back than to
state that when the son of Aedd first sailed over the hazy ocean, the
island was uninhabited, which we may suppose to mean that portion on
which he and his followers landed, and where they saw no man alive,
for we cannot think that it would long remain unpeopled, visible as it
is on a clear day from the opposite coast of Gaul, and beyond which
great nations had then for centuries flourished. What few records we
possess of the ancient Britons, reveal a wild and hardy race; yet not
so much dissimilar to the social position of England in the present
day, as may at a first glance appear. They had their chiefs and rulers
who wore armour, and ornaments of gold and silver; and these held in
subjection the poorer races who lived upon the produce of the chase,
the wild fruits and roots which the forest and the field produced, and
wore skins, and dwelt in caverns, which they hewed out of the old grey
rocks. They were priest-ridden by the ancient druids, who cursed and
excommunicated without the aid of either bell, book, or candle; burned
and slaughtered all unbelievers just as well as Mahomet himself, or the
bigoted fanatics, who in a later day did the same deeds under the mask
of the Romish religion. For centuries after, mankind had not undergone
so great a change as they at the first appear to have done; there was
the same love of power, the same shedding of blood, and those who had
not courage to take the field openly, and seize upon what they could
boldly, burnt, and slew, and sacrificed their fellow-men under the plea
that such offerings were acceptable to the gods.
By the aid of the few hints which are scattered over the works of the
Greek and Roman writers, the existence of a few remaining monuments,
and the discoveries which have many a time been made through numberless
excavations, we can just make out, in the hazy evening of the past,
enough of the dim forms of the ancient Britons to see their mode of
life, their habits in peace and war, as they move about in the twilight
shadows which have settled down over two thousand years. That they were
a tall, large-limbed, and muscular race, we have the authority of the
Roman writers to prove; who, however, add but little in praise of the
symmetry of their figures, though they were near half a foot higher
than their distant kindred the Gauls. They wore their hair long and
thrown back from the forehead, which must have given them a wild look
in the excitement of battle, when their long curling locks would heave
and fall with every blow they struck; the upper lip was unshaven, and
the long tufts drooped over the mouth, thus adding greatly to their
grim and warlike appearance. Added to this, they cast aside their upper
garments when they fought, as the brave Highlanders were wont to do a
century or two ago, and on their naked bodies were punctured all kinds
of monsters, such as no human eye had ever beheld. Claudian mentions
the "fading figures on the dying Pict;" the dim deathly blue that they
would fade into, as the life-blood of the rude warrior ebbed out, upon
the field of battle.
How different must have been the landscape which the fading rays of
the evening sunset gilded in that rude and primitive age. Instead
of the tall towers and walled cities, whose glittering windows now
flash back the golden light, the sinking rays gilded a barrier of
felled trees in the centre of the forest which surrounded the wattled
and thatched huts of those ancient herdsmen, throwing its crimson
rays upon the clear space behind, in which his herds and flocks were
pastured for the night; while all around heaved up the grand and gloomy
old forest, with its shadowy thickets, and dark dingles, and woody
vallies untrodden by the foot of man. There was then the dreaded wolf
to guard against, the unexpected rush of the wild boar, the growl of
the grizzly bear, and the bellowing of the maned bison to startle him
from his slumber. Nor less to be feared the midnight marauder from
some neighbouring tribe, whom neither the dreaded fires of the heathen
druids, nor the awful sentence which held accursed all who communicated
with him after the doom was uttered, could keep from plunder, whenever
an opportunity presented itself. The subterraneous chambers in which
their corn was stored might be emptied before morning; the wicker
basket which contained their salt (brought far over the distant sea by
the Phoenicians or some adventurous voyager) might be carried away;
and no trace of the robber could be found through the pathless forest,
and the reedy morass by which he would escape, while he startled the
badger with his tread, and drove the beaver into his ancient home; for
beside the druids there were those who sowed no grain, who drank up
the beverage their neighbours brewed from their own barley, and ate up
the curds which they had made from the milk of their own herds. These
were such as dug up the "pig-nuts," still eaten by the children in the
northern counties at the present day; who struck down the deer, the
boar, and the bison in the wild unenclosed forest--kindled a fire with
the dried leaves and dead branches, then threw themselves down at the
foot of the nearest oak, when their rude repast was over, and with
their war-hatchet, or hunting-spear, firmly grasped, even in sleep,
awaited the first beam of morning, unless awoke before by the howl of
the wolf, or the thundering of the boar through the thicket. They left
the fish in their vast rivers untouched, as if they preferred only that
food which could be won by danger; from the timid hare they turned
away, to give chase to the antlered monarch of the forest; they let
the wild goose float upon the lonely mere, and the plumed duck swim
about the broad lake undisturbed. There was a wild independence in
their forest life--they had but few wants, and where nature no longer
supplied these from her own uncultivated stores, they looked abroad and
harassed the more civilized and industrious tribes.
Although there is but little doubt that the British chiefs, and those
who dwelt on the sea-coast, and opened a trade with the Gaulish
merchants, lived in a state of comparative luxury, when contrasted
with the wilder tribes who inhabited the interior of the island, still
there is something simple and primitive in all that we can collect of
their domestic habits. Their seats consisted of three-legged stools,
no doubt sawn crossways from the stem of the tree, and three holes
made to hold the legs, like the seats which are called "crickets,"
that may be seen in the huts of the English peasantry in the present
day. Their beds consisted of dried grass, leaves, or rushes spread
upon the floor--their covering, the dark blue cloak or sagum which
they wore out of doors; or the dried skins of the cattle they slew,
either from their own herds or in the chase. They ate and drank from
off wooden trenchers, and out of bowls rudely hollowed: they were not
without a rough kind of red earthenware, badly baked, and roughly
formed. They kept their provisions in baskets of wicker-work, and
made their boats of the same material, over which they stretched
skins to keep out the water. They kindled fires on the floors of
their thatched huts, and appear to have been acquainted with the use
of coal as fuel, though there is little doubt that they only dug
up such as lay near the surface of the earth; but it was from the
great forests which half covered their island that they principally
procured their fuel. They had also boats, not unlike the canoes still
in use amongst the Indians, which were formed out of the hollow
trunk of a tree; and some of which have been found upwards of thirty
feet in length; and in these, no doubt, they ventured over to the
opposite coast of France, and even Ireland, when the weather was calm.
Diodorus says, that amongst the Celtic tribes there was a simplicity
of manners very different to that craft and wickedness which mankind
then exhibited--that they were satisfied with frugal sustenance, and
avoided the luxuries of wealth. The boundaries of their pastures
consisted of such primitive marks as upright stones, reminding us of
the patriarchal age and the scriptural anathema of "cursed is he who
removeth his neighbour's land-mark." Their costume was similar to that
worn by their kindred the Gauls, consisting of loose lower garments, a
kind of waistcoat with wide sleeves, and over this a cloak, or sagum,
made of cloth or skin; and when of the former, dyed blue or black, for
they were acquainted with the art of dyeing; and some of them wore a
cloth, chequered with various colours. The chiefs wore rings of gold,
silver, or bronze, on their forefingers; they had also ornaments, such
as bracelets and armlets of the same metal, and a decoration called the
torque, which was either a collar or a belt formed of gold, silver,
or bronze, and which fastened behind by a strong hook. Several of
these ornaments have been discovered, and amongst them, one of gold,
which weighed twenty-five ounces. It seems to have been something like
the mailed gorget of a later day, worn above the cuirass or coat of
mail, to protect the neck and throat in battle; their shoes appear
to have been only a sole of wood or leather, fastened to the foot by
thongs cut from off the raw hides of oxen they had slaughtered. The
war weapons of the wilder tribes in the earlier times, were hatchets
of stone, and arrows headed with flint, and long spears pointed with
sharpened bone; but long before the Roman invasion, the more civilized
were in possession of battle-axes, swords, spears, javelins, and other
formidable instruments of war, made of a mixture of copper and tin.
Many of these instruments have been discovered in the ancient barrows
where they buried their dead; and were, no doubt, at first procured
from the merchants with whom they traded--ignorant, perhaps, for a
long period, that they were produced from the very material they were
giving for them in exchange. In battle they also bore a circular
shield, coated with the same metal; this they held in the hand by the
centre bar that went across the hollow inner space from which the boss
projected.
But the war-chariots which they brought into battle were of all
things the most dreaded by the Romans. From the axles projected those
sharp-hooked formidable scythes, which appalled even the bravest
legions, and made such gaps in their well-trained ranks, as struck
their boldest generals aghast. These were drawn by such horses as, by
their fire and speed, won the admiration of the invaders; for fleet on
foot as deer, and with their dark manes streaming out like banners,
they rushed headlong, with thundering tramp, into the armed ranks of
the enemy; the sharp scythes cutting down every obstacle they came in
contact with. With fixed eyes the fearless warrior hurled his pointed
javelins in every direction as he rushed thundering on--sometimes
making a thrust with his spear or sword, as he swept by with
lightning-speed, or dragged with him for a few yards the affrighted
foeman he had grasped while passing, and whose limbs those formidable
weapons mangled at every turn until the dreaded Briton released his
hold. Now stepping upon the pole, he aimed a blow at the opponent who
attempted to check his speed--then he stopped his quick-footed coursers
in a moment, as if a bolt from heaven had alighted, and struck them
dead, while some warrior who was watching their onward course fell
dead beneath so unexpected a blow; and ere the sword of his companion
was uplifted to revenge his death, the Briton and his chariot were far
away, hewing a new path through the centre of veteran ranks, which the
stormy tide of battle had never before broken. The form of the tall
warrior, leaning over his chariot with glaring eye and clenched teeth,
would, by his valour and martial deportment, have done honour to the
plains of Troy, and won an immortal line from Homer himself, had he
but witnessed those deeds achieved by the British heroes in a later
day. What fear of death had they before their eyes who believed that
their souls passed at once into the body of some brave warrior, or that
they but quitted the battle-field to be admitted into the abodes of
the gods? They sprang from a race whose mothers and wives had many a
time hemmed in the back of battle, and with their own hands struck down
the first of their tribe who fled,--sparing neither father, husband,
brother, nor son, if he once turned his back upon the enemy: a race
whose huge war-drums had, centuries before, sounded in Greek and Roman
combats. And from this hardy stock, which drooped awhile beneath the
pruning arms of civilized Rome, was the Gothic grandeur of the Saxon
stem grafted, and when its antique roots had been manured by the bones
of thousands of misbelieving Danes, and its exuberant shoots lopped by
the swords of the Norman chivalry, there sprang up that mighty tree,
the shadows of whose branches stretch far away over the pathless ocean,
reaching to the uttermost ends of the earth.
CHAPTER III.
THE DRUIDS.
"----You Druids now maintain
Your barbarous rites, and sacrifice again;
You what heaven is, and gods alone can tell,
Or else alone are ignorant: you dwell
In vast and desert woods; you teach no spirit,
Pluto's pale kingdom can by death inherit:
They in another world inform again,
The space betwixt two lives is all the death."
LUCAN'S PHARSALIA, _T. May's Translation_, 1635.
To Julius Cæsar we are indebted for the clearest description of the
religious rites and ceremonies of the Druids; and as he beheld them
administered by these Priests to the ancient Britons, so they had no
doubt existed for several centuries before the Roman invasion, and
are therefore matters of history, prior to that period. There was a
wild poetry about their heathenish creed, something gloomy, and grand,
and supernatural in the dim, dreamy old forests where their altars
were raised: in the deep shadows which hung over their rude grey
cromlechs, on which the sacred fire burned. We catch glimpses between
the gnarled and twisted stems of those magnificent and aged oaks of
the solemn-looking druid, in his white robe of office, his flowing
beard blown for a moment aside, and breaking the dark green of the
underwood with the lower portion of his sweeping drapery, while he
stands like a grave enchanter, his deep sunk and terrible eyes fixed
upon the blue smoke as it curls upward amid the foliage--fixed, yet
only to appearance; for let but a light and wandering expression
pass over one single countenance in that assembled group, and those
deep grey piercing eyes would be seen glaring in anger upon the
culprit, and whether it were youth or maiden they would be banished
from the sacrifice, and all held accursed who dared to commune with
them--a curse more terrible than that which knelled the doom of
the excommunicated in a later day. There were none bold enough to
extinguish the baleful fire which was kindled around the wicker idol,
when its angry flames went crackling above the heads of the human
victims who were offered up to appease their brutal gods. In the centre
of their darksome forests were their rich treasures piled together,
the plunder of war; the wealth wrested from some neighbouring tribe;
rich ornaments brought by unknown voyagers from distant countries in
exchange for the tin which the island produced; or trophies won by
the British warriors who had fought in the ranks of the Gauls on the
opposite shore--all piled without order together, and guarded only
by the superstitious dread which they threw around everything they
possessed; for there ever hung the fear of a dreadful death over the
head of the plunderer who dared to touch the treasures which were
allotted to the awful druids. They kept no written record of their
innermost mysteries, but amid the drowsy rustling of the leaves and
the melancholy murmuring of the waters which ever flowed around their
wooded abodes, they taught the secrets of their cruel creed to those
who for long years had aided in the administration of their horrible
ceremonies, who without a blanched cheek or a quailing heart had grown
grey beneath the blaze of human sacrifices, and fired the wicker pile
with an unshaken hand--these alone were the truly initiated. They left
the younger disciples to mumble over matters of less import--written
doctrines which taught how the soul passed into other bodies in
never-ending succession; but they permitted them not to meddle in
matters of life and death; and many came from afar to study a religion
which armed the druids with more than sovereign power. All law was
administered by the same dreaded priests; no one dared to appeal from
their awful decree; he who was once sentenced had but to bow his head
and obey--rebellion was death, and a curse was thundered against all
who ventured to approach him; from that moment he became an outcast
amongst mankind. To impress the living with a dread of their power
even after death, they hesitated not in their doctrines to proclaim,
that they held control over departed and rebellious souls; and in the
midnight winds that went wailing through the shadowy forests, they
bade their believers listen to the cry of the disembodied spirits who
were moaning for forgiveness, and were driven by every blast that blew
against the opening arms of the giant oaks; for they gave substance
to shadows, and pointed out forms in the dark-moving clouds to add
to the terrors of their creed. They worshipped the sun and moon, and
ever kept the sacred fire burning upon some awful altar which had been
reddened by the blood of sacrifice. They headed the solemn processions
to springs and fountains, and muttered their incantations over the
moving water, for, next to fire, it was the element they held in the
highest veneration. But their grand temples--like Stonehenge--stood
in the centre of light, in the midst of broad, open, and spacious
plains, and there the great Beltian fire was kindled; there the distant
tribes congregated together, and unknown gods were evoked, whose very
names have perished, and whose existence could only be found in the
wooded hill, the giant tree, or the murmuring spring or fountain, over
which they were supposed to preside. There sat the arch-druid, in his
white surplice, the shadow of the mighty pillars of rough-hewn stone
chequering the stony rim of that vast circle--from his neck suspended
the wonderful egg which his credulous believers said fell from twined
serpents, that vanished hissing high in the air, after having in vain
pursued the mounted horseman who caught it, then galloped off at full
speed--that egg, cased in gold, which could by its magical virtues
swim against the stream. He held the mysterious symbol of office, in
his hands more potent than the sceptre swayed by the most powerful of
monarchs that ever sat upon our island throne, as he sat with his brow
furrowed by long thought, and ploughed deep by many a meditated plot,
while his soul spurned the ignorant herd who were assembled around
him, and he bit his haughty lip at the thought that he could devise no
further humiliation than to make them kneel and lick the sand on which
he stood.
They held the mistletoe which grew on the oak sacred, and on the sixth
day of the moon came in solemn procession to the tree on which it grew,
and offered up sacrifice, and prepared a feast beneath its hallowed
branches, adorning themselves with its leaves, as if they could never
sufficiently reverence the tree on which the mistletoe grew, although
they named themselves druids after the oak. White bulls were dragged
into the ceremony; their stiff necks bowed, and their broad foreheads
bound to the stem of the tree, while their loud bellowings came in like
a wild chorus to the rude anthem which was chaunted on the occasion:
these were slaughtered, and the morning sacrifice went streaming up
among the green branches. The chief druid ascended the oak, treading
haughtily upon the bended backs and broad shoulders of the blinded
slaves, who struggled to become stepping-stones beneath his feet, and
eagerly bowed their necks that he might trample upon them, while he
gathered his white garment in his hand, and drew it aside, lest it
should become sullied by touching their homely apparel. Below him stood
his brother idolators, their spotless garments outspread ready to catch
the falling sprigs of the mistletoe as they dropped beneath the stroke
of the golden pruning-knife. Doubtless the solemn mockery ended by the
assembled multitude carrying home with them a leaf or a berry each,
of the all-healing plant, as it was called, while the druids lingered
behind to consume the fatted sacrifice, and forge new fetters to bind
down their ignorant followers to their heathenish creed. Still it is
on record that they taught their disciples many things concerning
the stars and their motion; that they pretended to some knowledge
of distant countries, and the nature of the gods they worshipped.
Gildas, one of the earliest of our British historians, seeming to
write from what he saw, tells us that their idols almost surpassed in
number those of Egypt, and that monuments were then to be seen (in his
day) of "hideous images, whose frigid, ever-lowering, and depraved
countenances still frown upon us both within and outside the walls of
deserted cities. We shall not," he says, "recite the names that once
were heard on our mountains, that were repeated at our fountains,
that were echoed on our hills, and were pronounced over our rivers,
because the honours due to the Divinity alone were paid to them by a
blinded people." That their religion was but a system of long-practised
imposture admits not of a doubt; and as we have proof that they
possessed considerable knowledge for that period, it is evident that
they had recourse to these devices to delude and keep in subjection
their fellow-men, thereby obtaining a power which enabled them to live
in comparative idleness and luxury. Such were the ancient Egyptian
priests; and such, with but few exceptions, were all who, for many
centuries, held mighty nations in thrall by the mystic powers with
which they cunningly clothed idolatry. True, there might be amongst
their number a few blinded fanatics, who were victims to the very
deceit which they practised upon others, whose faculties fell prostrate
before the imaginary idols of their own creation, and who bowed down
and worshipped the workmanship of their own hands.
All the facts we are in possession of show that they contributed
nothing to the support of the community; they took no share in war,
though they claimed their portion of the plunder obtained from it;
they were amenable to no tribunal but their own, but only sat apart
in their gloomy groves, weaving their dangerous webs in darker folds
over the eyes of their blinded worshippers. We see dimly through the
shadows of those ancient forests where the druids dwelt; but amongst
the forms that move there we catch glimpses of women sharing in their
heathen rites; it may be of young and beautiful forms, who had the
choice offered them, whether they would become sacrifices in the fires
which so often blazed before their grim idols, or share in the solemn
mockeries which those darksome groves enshrouded--those secrets which
but to whisper abroad would have been death.
The day of reckoning at last came--as it is ever sure to come--and
heavy was the vengeance which alighted upon those bearded druids;
instead of such living and moving evils, the mute marble of the less
offensive gods which the Romans worshipped usurped the places where
their blood-stained sacrifices were held. Jupiter frowned coldly down
in stone, but he injured not. Mars held his pointed spear aloft,
but the dreaded blow never descended. They saw the form of man
worshipped, and though far off, it was still a nearer approach to the
true Divinity than the wicker idol surrounded with flames, and filled
with the writhing and shrieking victims who expired in the midst of
indescribable agonies. Hope sat there mute and sorrowful, with her head
bowed, and her finger upon her lip, listening for the sound of those
wings which she knew would bring Love and Mercy to her aid. She turned
not her head to gaze upon those heathenish priests as they were dragged
forward to deepen the inhuman stain which sunk deep into the dyed
granite of the altar, for she knew that the atmosphere their breath had
so long poisoned must be purified before the Divinity could approach;
for that bright star which was to illume the world had not yet arisen
in the east. The civilized heathen was already preparing the way in
the wilderness, and sweeping down the ruder barbarism before him. There
were Roman galleys before, and the sound of the gospel-trumpet behind;
and those old oaks jarred again to their very roots, and the huge
circus of Stonehenge shook to its broad centre; for the white cliffs
that looked out over the sea were soon to echo back a strange language,
for Roman cohorts, guided by Julius Cæsar, were riding upon the waves.
CHAPTER IV.
LANDING OF JULIUS CÆSAR.
"The cliffs themselves are bulwarks strong: the shelves
And flats refuse great ships: the coast so open
That every stormy blast may rend their cables,
Put them from anchor: suffering double war--
Their men pitched battle--their ships stormy fight;
For charges 'tis no season to dispute,
Spend something, or lose all."
THE TRUE TROJANS, 1633.
Few generals could put in a better plea for invading a country than
that advanced by Julius Cæsar, for long before he landed in this
island, he had had to contend with a covert enemy in the Britons, who
frequently threw bodies of armed men upon the opposite coasts, and by
thus strengthening the enemy's ranks, protracted the war he had so long
waged with the Gauls. To chastise the hardy islanders, overawe and
take possession of their country, were but common events to the Roman
generals, and Cæsar no doubt calculated that to conquer he had but
to show his well-disciplined troops. He was also well aware that the
language and religion of the Britons and Gauls were almost the same,
and that the island on which his eye was fixed was the great centre
and stronghold of the druids; and, not ignorant of the power of these
heathen priests, whose mysterious rites banded nation with nation, he
doubtless thought, that if he could but once overthrow their altars, he
could the more easily march over the ruins to more extended conquests.
He had almost the plea of self-defence for setting out to invade
England as he did, and such, in reality, is the reason he assigns; and
not to possess the old leaven of ambition to strengthen his purpose,
was to lack that which, in a Roman general, swelled into the glory of
fame. Renown was the pearl Julius Cæsar came in quest of; he was not
a general to lead his legions back to the imperial city, when, after
having humbled the pride of the Gauls, he still saw from the opposite
coast the island of the presumptuous Britons--barbarians, who had
dared to hurl their pointed javelins in the very face of the Roman
eagle;--not a man to return home, when, by stretching his arm over that
narrow sea, he could gather such laurels as had never yet decked a
Roman brow.
The rumour of his intended invasion had already reached the Britons,
who, well aware of the victories he had won in the opposite continent,
and probably somewhat shaken by the terror which was attached to the
name of the Roman conqueror, lost no time in sending over ambassadors
with an offer of submission, and hostages. But although Cæsar received
the messengers kindly, and sent back with them Comius, a Gaul, in
whose talent and integrity he had the greatest confidence, still his
attention was not to be diverted from the object he had in view; and
much as he commended their pacific promises, he but waited the return
of the galley he had sent out to reconnoitre, before he embarked.
Nor had he to wait long, for on the fifth day after his departure,
Volusenus returned from his expedition, with the meagre information
he had been able to glean about the coast without landing; though,
such as it was, it induced Cæsar to set sail at once, and, with twelve
thousand men and eighty transports, he started from the sea coast which
stretches between Calais and Boulogne, and steered for the pale-faced
cliffs of Albion. It was in a morning early in autumn, and before the
Britons had gathered in their corn-harvest, when the Roman general
first reached the British shore; nor can we, from the force which
accompanied him, suppose that he was at all surprised to see the white
cliffs of Dover covered with armed men ready to oppose his landing.
But he was too wary a commander to attempt this in so unfavourable a
spot, and in the face of such a force, and therefore resolved to lie
by, until past the hour of noon, and await the arrival of the remainder
of his fleet; for beside the force which we have already enumerated,
there were eighteen transports in which his cavalry were embarked,
but these were not destined to take a share in his first victory; so
finding both wind and tide in his favour, he, without their aid, sailed
six or seven miles further down the coast, until he reached the low
and open shore which stretches between Walmer Castle and Sandwich.
This manoeuvre, however, was not lost upon the Britons, for as he
measured his way over the sea, so did they keep pace with him upon the
land, and when he reached the spot which was so soon to be the scene
of slaughter, he found the island-army drawn up ready to receive him,
with their cavalry and war-chariots placed in the order of battle,
while many a half-naked and hardy soldier stood knee-deep amongst the
breakers, which beat upon the beach, with pointed javelin, and massy
club, and rough-hewn war-hatchet, eager to oppose his landing;--the
proud Roman himself confesses that they presented a bold front, and
made a brave defence. Superior military skill, and long-practised
discipline, together with the formidable war-engines which he brought
over in his galleys, and from which showers of missiles were projected
that spread death and consternation around, were too much for the
Britons, few of whom, except such as had fought in the ranks of the
Gauls on the opposite shore, had ever before looked upon such terrible
instruments of destruction; and under cover of these, after a short
contest, the Roman general managed to disembark two of his legions.
But for this mode of warfare, and those dreadful engines opening so
suddenly upon them, Cæsar would probably never have been able to land
his forces; for we may readily imagine that, unaccustomed as they
were to such a mode of attack, the consternation that it spread could
scarcely be exceeded by a first-class line-of-battle ship pouring in a
broadside amongst the startled savages of the South Sea Islands, whose
shores had never before echoed back the thunder of a cannon. Although
Cæsar himself states that for a time the Roman soldiers were reluctant
to leave their ships, owing to the extent of water which flowed between
them and the shore, still there is but little doubt that the fearless
front presented by the Britons, as they stood knee-deep among the
waves, in spite of the missiles which were sent forth in showers from
the Roman galleys, somewhat appalled their highly disciplined invaders.
Cæsar has left it on record that his soldiers hesitated to land, until
one of his standard-bearers, belonging to the tenth legion, sprang
from the side of the galley into the sea, and waving the ensign over
his head, exclaimed, "Follow me, my fellow-soldiers! unless you will
give up your eagle to the enemy. I, at least, will do my duty to the
republic and to our general." It was then, roused by the example of
the courageous standard-bearer, that the Roman soldiers quitted their
ships, and the combatants met hand to hand.
Although upon that ancient battle-ground have the winds and waves for
nearly two thousand years beaten, and scarcely a name is left of those
who fought, and fell, and dyed the stormy sea-beach with their blood;
still, as we gaze down the dim vista of years, the mind's eye again
catches glimpses of the unknown combatants--of the warm autumn sunshine
falling upon those white and distant cliffs--of the high-decked Roman
galleys rising above the ever-moving waves, and we seem to hear the
deep voice of the Roman general rising beyond the murmur of the ocean;
we see the gilded eagle rocking and swaying over the contending ranks,
as they are driven forward or repulsed, just as the tide of battle ebbs
and flows; and ever upon the beaten beach where the waves come and go,
they wash over some mangled and prostrate form, throwing up here a
helmet and there a shield, while figures of the mailed Roman, and the
half-naked Briton, lie dead and bleeding side by side, their deep sleep
unbroken by the shout, and tramp, and tumult of war. The javelin with
its leathern thong lies useless beside the bare brawny arm that could
hurl it to within an inch of its mark, then recover it again without
stepping from out the ranged rank; the dreaded spear lies broken, and
the sharp head trodden deep into the sand by a Roman footstep. Higher
up the beach, we hear the thunder of the scythe-wheeled war-chariots
of the Britons, and catch glimpses of the glittering and outstretched
blades, as they sparkle along in their swift career like a silvery
meteor, and all we can trace of their course is the zig-zag pathway
streaked with blood. Faint, and afar off, we hear the voices of the
bearded druids hymning their war-chaunt, somewhere beyond the tall
summits of the bald-faced cliffs. Anon, the roar of battle becomes more
indistinct--slowly and reluctantly the Britons retreat,--the Roman
soldiers pursue them not, but fall back again upon their galleys,
and we hear only a few groans, and the lapping of the waves upon the
sea-shore. And such might have been a brief summary of that combat,
interspersed here and there with the daring deeds of warriors whose
names will never be known; and then the eye of the imagination closes
upon the scene, and all again is enveloped in the deep darkness of
nearly two thousand years.
As the Roman cavalry had not yet arrived, Cæsar was prevented from
following up the advantage he had gained over the Britons, and marching
to where they were encamped, a little way within the island. The
natives, however, doubtless to gain time, and better prepare themselves
for a second attack, sent messengers to the Roman general, who were
deputed to offer hostages as a guarantee of their submission to the
Roman arms. They also liberated Comius, whom he had sent over with
offers of alliance; and after a sharp rebuke, in which the Roman
invader no doubt attempted to show how wrong it was on their part
to attempt to oppose his landing and seizing upon their island, he
forgave them, on condition that they would send him a given number
of hostages, and allow him, without interference, to act as he chose
for the future. Such, in spirit, were the terms on which the haughty
conqueror dismissed the British chiefs, who probably returned with
the determination of breaking them whenever an opportunity presented
itself. A few hostages were, however, delivered, and several of the
British leaders presented themselves before Cæsar, perhaps as covert
spies, although they came with avowed offers of allegiance, smarting as
they were under their recent defeat.
The Roman general was not destined to accomplish his conquest without
meeting with some disasters. The vessels which contained his cavalry,
and were unable to accompany the first portion of his fleet, were again
doomed to be driven back by a tempest upon the coast of Gaul, even
after they had approached so near the British shore as to be within
view of Cæsar's encampment. The fatal night that saw his cavalry dashed
back upon the opposite coast, also witnessed the destruction of several
of his galleys, which were drawn up on the beach behind his encampment;
while those that were lying at anchor in the distant roadstead were
either wrecked or cast upon the shore, and so battered by the winds
and waves as to be wholly unfit for sea-service; for a high tide
seemed to have rushed over his galleys; and this, together with the
storm, scarcely left him in the possession of a vessel in which he
could put out to sea with his troops. Without either provisions to
feed his soldiers, or materials to repair his shattered ships, and
his whole camp deeply dispirited by these unforeseen calamities, the
Roman general found himself, at the close of autumn, on a stormy
and unfriendly coast, and in possession of but little more of the
island than the barren beach on which he had won his hitherto useless
victory. The Britons were not long before they discovered the full
extent of these disasters; frequent visits to the Roman encampment
had also made them better acquainted with the number of the troops;
and as they had already measured their strength against the Roman
arms, and the Roman weapons had doubtless lost much of their former
terror in their eyes, they began to make preparations for sweeping
off the whole force of the invading army, for they clearly saw that
it was without either provisions, cavalry, or ships; and though they
commenced their work cautiously, they made sure of obtaining an easy
victory, and such as they thought would intimidate the hearts of all
future invaders. Cæsar was too wary a general not to see through
their designs, for he perceived that the visits of the chiefs to his
encampment were less frequent than formerly; that they were also slow
in sending in the hostages they had promised to give up; so, Roman-like
he determined to arm himself against the worst. He ordered some of
his troops to repair such ships as were sea-worthy, out of the wreck
of those which were useless; these, when ready, he sent over to Gaul
for stores; others of his soldiers he sent out to scour the country
in search of provisions, and to gather in whatever corn they could
find, which must have been very trifling, as he states that, except
in one field, all beside in the neighbourhood had been harvested. In
this field, which stood at a short distance from one of those old
primeval forests which everywhere abounded in the island, one of his
legions were busily engaged gathering in corn, when they were suddenly
attacked by the armed islanders, who rushed out of their hiding-places
from the neighbouring thicket. Fortunately for the Roman soldiers,
this chanced to be no great distance from their encampment; and as
the ever-watchful eye of Cæsar was open while he stood looking out
from his strong fortifications, he saw a huge cloud of dust rising
in the air in the direction of the distant corn-field, and sallying
out of the encampment, at the head of two of his cohorts, he bade the
remainder of the legion follow him with the utmost speed, and rushed
off to the rescue of his soldiers. A few more minutes and he would
have arrived too late to save any of them, for he found his legion,
which had already suffered considerable loss, hemmed in on every side
by the cavalry and war-chariots of the Britons; and he had no sooner
succeeded in withdrawing his engaged forces from the corn-field,
than he hurried back to his strong entrenchments, the brave islanders
having compelled him to make a hasty retreat. Several days of heavy
rain followed, during which the Roman general confined his soldiers
to the camp. But the hardy Britons were not to be deterred by the
elements from following up the slight advantage which they had gained;
so mustering a strong force of both horse and foot, they drew up and
surrounded the Roman entrenchments. Cæsar was too brave to sit quietly
down and be bearded in his own stronghold by an army of barbarians; so
watching a favourable moment, he marshalled forth his mailed legions,
which were by this time strengthened by a small body of cavalry that
had returned with Comius from Gaul; and with these he fell upon the
Britons and dispersed them with great slaughter, also pursuing them
into the country, and setting fire to many of their huts, before he
again returned to his encampment. The Britons, as before, sued for
peace, which Cæsar readily granted, as he was anxious to return to Gaul
with his leaky ships and wearied troops; nor did he wait to receive the
offered hostages, but with the first fair wind set sail, having gained
but little more than hard blows by this his first invasion.
[Illustration: _Combat between the Romans and Britons._]
The warm spring days which brought back the swallow from over the sea,
saw the Roman galleys again riding on the sunny waves that broke upon
our rock-girt coast. From the surrounding heights and smooth slopes
which dipped gently down into the sea, the assembled Britons beheld
eight hundred vessels of various sizes hastening shoreward from the
opening ocean. Amid waving crests and glittering coats of mail, and
Roman eagles blazing like gold in the distance, and long javelins whose
points shone like silver in the sunlight, as they rose high above the
decks of the galleys, they came rolling along like a moving forest of
spears, swayed aside for a moment as some restive war-steed, impatient
to plant his sharp hoof upon the earth, jerked his haughty neck, and
shook out his long dark mane upon the refreshing breeze, while his
shrill neigh came ringing upon the beach above the hoarse murmur of the
breakers, which rolled at the feet of the terrified Britons. On those
decks were above thirty thousand Roman soldiers assembled, headed again
by Julius Cæsar, and now strengthened by two thousand cavalry. It is
said that the excuse offered by the Roman general for this his second
invasion, was, that hostages had not been sent in according to treaty,
though the truth beyond doubt is, that his ambition was dissatisfied
with the hasty retreat he was compelled to make; his pride mortified at
the bold front the islanders had presented, for he must have felt, in
his hurried departure to Gaul, that he bore back but little to entitle
him to the much-coveted name of Conqueror, a name which his wars with
the Britons never won him, for even Tacitus deigned to honour him
with little more than the title of Discoverer, after all his exploits
in our island had terminated. Unlike his former reception, he this
time landed without having to strike a blow, for the sight of such an
armed host struck terror into the hearts of the natives, and they fled
in the direction of the Stour, or near to that neighbourhood where
Canterbury now stands. A proof how earnestly Cæsar commenced his second
campaign in the island, and how resolved he was to bring the war to
a speedy end, is found, in his setting out at midnight to pursue the
Britons, scarcely leaving a sixth part of his army behind, to protect
his shipping and encampment. Perchance, the haughty Roman had boasted
how soon he would bring over a few of the barbaric chiefs for his
friends, and add to their stock of foreign curiosities a few dozens
of war-chariots, and had laughed amongst his officers at the joke of
their being picked up by some island warrior, and carried off in his
scythe-armed car by a couple of swift-footed steeds. He frequently
wrote to Rome, and perhaps occasionally boasted in his epistles, what
speedy work he would make of the conquest of Britain. Be this as it
may, there is proof in the strength of the force which he this time
landed, that he already began to appreciate aright the brave blood that
flowed through those ancient British veins.
In the still depth of midnight did the measured tramp of Roman infantry
ring upon the silence, as they strode inland towards the heart of Kent,
and beside those old forests and reedy morasses was the heavy tread of
Cæsar's cavalry heard; the rattle of their mail, and the jingling of
their harness, broken by the short answers of the scouts as they rode
hastily in and out, announcing a clear course, or with low obeisance
receiving the commands of the general. We may picture some poor peasant
startled from his sleep by that armed throng, dragged out of his
wattled hut by the side of the wild forest, and rudely handled by the
Roman soldiers, because he either refused to tell, or was ignorant of
the position his countrymen had taken up. We may picture the herdsman
hurrying his flocks into the forest fastnesses as he heard that solemn
and distant tramp coming like subdued thunder upon the night-breeze, so
unlike the wild shoutings and mingled rolling of his own war-chariots,
amid which the voices of women and children were ever mingled; so
solemn, deep, and orderly would march along those well-disciplined
Roman troops, contrasted with the irregular movements of the Britons.
Cæsar reached the reedy margin of a river in the cold grey dawn of a
spring morning; and as the misty vapour cleared up from the face of
the water, he beheld the hardy islanders drawn up on the rising ground
beyond the opposite bank, ready to dispute the passage if he ventured
across. The charge was sounded, and at the first blast of the Roman
trumpets the cavalry dashed into the river, and the well-tempered steel
blades of the invaders soon began to hew a path through the opposing
ranks, for almost at the first stroke the swords of the Britons, which
were made of tin and copper, bent, and became useless, while those
wielded by their assailants were double-edged, and left a gash every
time they descended. The horses broke through the British infantry,
as if they had been but a reed fence; and as their cavalry was the
heaviest, they met in full career the rush of the island war-chariots,
plunged their long javelins into the chests of the horses, and received
the shock of the British cavalry on the points of their highly-tempered
and strong-shafted spears. The whole affray seemed more like a skirmish
than a regular engagement, as if the war-chariots and cavalry of the
Britons were only employed to check the advance of the Roman columns,
while the remainder of their force retreated to a strong fortification,
which stood at some distance in the woods, and which was barricaded by
felled trees, fastened together and piled one above another; thither
the remainder of the army also fled, leaving the Romans to follow
after they had regained the order of march, and sent back to their
camp those who were wounded in the skirmish on the river bank. These
marches through wild, uncultivated forests were very harassing to
the heavy-armed Roman legions, who made but slow progress compared
to the light-footed troops of the Britons, for they were inured to
this woodland warfare, and as familiar with the forest passes as the
antlered deer.
Pursuit was again the order of the day; the stronghold in the forest
was carried by the Romans, and amongst the legions which distinguished
themselves in the contest, was the one who, but for the timely
arrival of Cæsar, would probably have left their bones to whiten
in the harvest-field, from which they had had so narrow an escape
in the preceding autumn. Another evening darkened over the forest,
under cover of which the Britons again retreated further inland,
without being pursued; for the Roman general seemed to have a dread
of those gloomy old woods, through which the paths, even in the open
noon-day, were rugged, uncertain, and difficult, and were as likely
to lead towards some bog, lake, or dangerous morass, as to any of the
British fortifications; the Roman soldiers were therefore employed in
throwing up intrenchments, and strengthening their position in case
of a surprise. It came, but not until morning, and instead of the
Britons, was brought by a party of Roman horsemen from the camp; the
galleys were again driven upon the shore by the waves, and many of them
wrecked; the angry ocean had once more risen up against the fortunes
of Cæsar. These unwelcome tidings arrived just as he had given the
order to advance; a few minutes more, and he would have been off in
full pursuit after the Britons; the unexplored forest stretched before
him; his eagles glittered in the morning sunshine; the trumpets had
sounded the march, when the order was given to halt, and above twenty
thousand armed Romans were compelled to return at the bidding of the
waves. The mound they had thrown up was deserted; the river, which
had but a few hours before been reddened by the blood of many a brave
warrior, was repassed without opposition; and both cavalry and infantry
now commenced a rapid retreat in the direction of the Roman encampment.
When Cæsar reached the sea-shore, he beheld a sight discouraging enough
to blanch even a Roman cheek; many of his finest galleys had become
total wrecks; others it seemed almost impossible to repair; the few
that were saved he despatched at once to Gaul for assistance, set
every hand that could use a saw, axe, or mallet, immediately to work,
and instead of sitting down and bemoaning his ill-fortune, he, like
a brave-hearted Roman as he was, began to make up for his loss, and
gave orders for building several new ships. Added to this, he had the
remainder drawn on shore, and ran up a barrier to protect them from the
ravages of the ocean, thus including a dry-dock within his fortified
encampment. All these preparations necessarily consumed some time,
during which the islanders remained undisturbed.
Returning to the Britons, who had not been idle during this brief
interval, we find their army greatly increased, and a renowned prince,
named Cassivellaunus, placed as commander at the head of the states,
they wisely judging that one who had so signalized himself in his
wars with the neighbouring tribes, was best fitted to lead them on,
now that they were banded together for mutual protection against the
Romans. Nobly did the barbaric chief acquit himself; he waited not to
be attacked; but having selected his own battle-ground, charged upon
the Roman cavalry at once, with his horsemen and war-chariots. Although
Cæsar did at last gain a slight victory, and, as he himself says,
drove the Britons into the woods, and lost several of his soldiers
through venturing too far, still it does not appear that he obtained
the day, for the Britons already began to find the advantages they
obtained through occasional retreats, which enabled them to draw the
enemy either nearer to, or into the woods--a stratagem which in this
skirmish they availed themselves of; for while the Romans were busy, as
was their custom, in protecting their camp for the night, by throwing
up ramparts and digging trenches around it, the Britons sallied out
from another opening in the wood, and slaughtered the outer guard. The
Roman general ordered two cohorts to advance to the rescue; they were
also repulsed, and a tribune was slain; fresh troops were summoned into
action, and the Britons betook themselves to their old leafy coverts
with but very little loss. On this occasion, the Roman general was
compelled to acknowledge, that his heavy-armed soldiers were no match
for an enemy who only retreated one moment to advance with greater
force the next, and would, whenever an opportunity presented itself,
dismount from their horses, or leap out of their chariots, and renew
the battle on foot, and that, too, on the very edge of some dangerous
bog, where an armed horseman was sure to founder if he but made a leap
beyond the boundary line with which they were so familiar. Another
day, a disastrous one for the Britons, and the battle was renewed,
and they, as before, commenced the attack, waiting, however, until
the Roman general had sent out a great portion of his cavalry and
infantry to forage--a body amounting to more than half his army, no
mean acknowledgment of the estimation in which the island force was
held, while it required from ten to fifteen thousand men to collect
the supplies he needed for one day; a tolerable proof that he had
not forgotten the all but fatal skirmish in the corn-field when he
first landed. Emboldened by their success on the previous day, the
Britons this time charged up to the solid body of the Roman legions,
rushing fearlessly against the wall which their well-disciplined ranks
presented, a firm phalanx, that had withstood the shock of the bravest
armies in Europe without being broken--an array strengthened every
moment by the return of the foragers. One solid, impenetrable mass now
bore down, like a mighty avalanche, upon the congregated Britons; a
vast sea of spears, and shields, and swords, all heaving onward without
resistance, Cæsar heralding the way, like the God of the storm, the
armed cavalry thundering onward like the foremost wave, until the
whole mass struck upon the iron stems of the gnarled oaks, which stood
at the edge of the forest, then rolled back again into the plain,
leaving a ridgy line of wounded and dead to mark their destructive
course. It was the first open shore on which the full tide of the Roman
arms had flowed on the islanders. The waves had many a time before
gathered together and broken, but here the full surge of battle swept
uninterrupted upon the beach. Although the sun still sets over that
great grave-yard of the dead, not a monument remains to tell of its
"whereabout," or point out the spot where many a brave soldier looked
round and took his rest.
Through Kent, and along the valley which stretches at the foot of
the Surrey hills, did Cæsar pursue the shattered army of the British
prince, his march probably extending over that level line of beautiful
meadow-land on which the old palace of Eltham still stands, along the
wooded neighbourhood of Penge and Sydenham, and out at the foot of the
Norwood hills, to where, far beyond, the Thames still glitters like a
belt of silver as it goes winding round near Chertsey. Here the British
leader had rallied; on the opposite bank stood his forces, and in the
bed of the river he had caused pointed stakes to be planted, to prevent
his pursuers from crossing the ford. These were but slight obstacles
in the path of Cæsar; he ordered his cavalry to advance, commanded the
infantry to follow at their heels, or at their sides, as they best
could; and so they passed, some grasping the manes of the war-horses
with one hand to steady their steps in the current, while with the
other they held the double-edged sword, ready to hew or thrust, the
moment they came within arm's length of the enemy. Cassivellaunus
was once more compelled to retreat, though never so far but that he
was always in readiness to fall upon any detached cohorts, and with
his five thousand war-chariots to hang upon and harass any party of
foragers: Cæsar was at last compelled to send out his legions to
protect the horsemen while they gathered in provisions. Even then the
island prince drove and carried off all the cattle and corn which was
pastured or garnered in the neighbourhood of the Roman encampment. The
invaders were never safe except when within their own entrenchments;
for they had now to deal with an enemy who had grown too wary to trust
himself again in the open field, but contented himself by harassing and
hanging upon the detached masses which he could waylay. He was well
acquainted with all the secret passes and intricate roads, and kept
the Roman guards in a continual state of alarm; and when it was not
safe to attack them, the Britons would at times suddenly assemble at
the outskirts of the woods, and shaking their javelins, to the foot of
which a hollow ball of copper, containing lumps of metal or pebbles,
was affixed, commence such a sudden thundering and shouting as startled
the horses, and caused them to run affrighted in every direction; they
then seized upon the forage, and ere the heavy legions could overtake
them, they were off at full speed far away in the forest passes, along
paths known only to themselves. Such a system of warfare was new
even to Cæsar, and as yet he had only gained the ground he encamped
upon--that which contained his army, for the time, was all he could
call his own.
But the Britons could not long remain true to themselves; petty
jealousies and long-stifled murmurs began at last to find vent; one
tribe after another came to the Roman camp; to all he made fair
promises, took their corn and their hostages, sowing no doubt the
seeds of dissension deeper amongst them at the same time, and getting
them also to inform him where the capital of their warlike chief was
situated, which secret they were base enough to betray; for many of
the petty princes envied the renown which Cassivellaunus had won by
his valour. Even Cæsar's narrative at this turn of events enlists our
sympathies on the side of the British general, and the handful of
brave followers who still remained true to their country's cause. His
capital, which is supposed to have stood on the site of St. Albans, and
which in those days was surrounded by deep woods and broad marshes, was
attacked; many were slain, some prisoners taken, and numbers of cattle
driven away; for the forest town of this courageous chief appears to
have been nothing more than a cluster of woodland huts surrounded by
a ditch, and strengthened by a rampart of mud and trees, a work which
the Roman legions would level to the earth in a brief space of time.
Though beaten and forced from his capital, the British prince retreated
upon another fortress further into the wood; from this he was also
driven. Still his great heart buoyed him up; and although defeated, he
determined to have another struggle for the liberty of his unworthy
country, and despatched messengers into Kent, bidding the Britons to
fall at once upon the Roman camp and fleet. Had the prince himself been
present, it is not improbable that this daring deed would have been
executed, for he was unequalled in falling upon the enemy, and carrying
his point by surprise: but he was not; and although the attack did
honour to the valour of the brave men of Kent, it failed. Many were
slain, and the Romans returned victorious to their camp. It wanted
but the genius who meditated so bold a stroke to have carried it into
effect; had he been there, Cæsar's eagles would never more have spread
out their golden wings beneath the triumphal arches of haughty Rome.
Fain would we here drop the curtain over the name of this ancient
British warrior, and leave him to sleep in the heart of his high-piled
barrow undisturbed. Alas! he was compelled to sue to the Roman general
for peace, who no doubt offered it him willingly, conscious that, had
he succeeded in his bold attempt upon the camp and fleet, the Roman
would have had to kneel for the same grant at the foot of the Briton.
Cæsar demanded hostages, got them, and hurried off to his ships, and
without leaving a Roman troop behind, hastened with all his force to
the coast of Gaul, and never again did he set foot upon our island
shore. Over the future career of Cassivellaunus the deep midnight of
oblivion has settled down; the waves of time have washed no further
record upon that vast shore which is strewn over with the wrecks of so
many mighty deeds; the assembled druids who chaunted his requiem, and
the Cymric or Celtic bard who in rude rhymes broke the forest echoes as
he recounted his exploits in battle, have all passed away; and but for
the pen of his Roman opponent we should never have known the bravery
of that British heart, which, nearly two thousand years ago, beat with
hopes and fears like our own.
CHAPTER V.
CARACTACUS, BOADICEA, AND AGRICOLA.
"And many an old man's sigh, and many a widow's,
And many an orphan's water-standing eye,--
Men for their sons', wives for their husbands' fate,
And orphans for their parents' timeless death,--
Did rue the hour that ever thou wert born."
SHAKSPERE.
For nearly a century after the departure of Cæsar, we have no records
of the events which transpired in England; that the inhabitants made
some progress in civilization during that period is all we know;
for there can be but little doubt that a few of the Roman soldiers
remained behind, and settled in the island after the first invasion,
and introduced some degree of refinement amongst the tribes with whom
they peaceably dwelt. No attempt, however, was made, during this long
interval, to fortify the island against any future invasion; and when
the Roman commander, Plautius, landed, about ninety-seven years after
the retirement of Cæsar, he met with no resistance until he had led
his army some distance into the inland country. After a time a few
skirmishes took place--some of the tribes submitted--but nothing like
a determined resistance seems to have been offered to the Roman arms,
until Plautius had extended his victories beyond the Severn, and
compelled the Britons to retreat into the marshes beside the Thames.
Here it was that the Roman commander first learned to estimate aright
the valour of the force he had to contend against; for the bogs and
swamps which had so often checked the meditated movements of Cæsar,
proved nearly fatal to the force headed by Plautius, who, after
suffering a severe loss, retreated to a secure position beside the
Thames. In this strong encampment he calmly awaited the arrival of the
Emperor Claudius, who, after a time, joined him with a considerable
reinforcement--just stayed long enough to look round him--received the
submission of a few petty states--and then returned most triumphantly
to Rome; for it is questionable whether he ever fought a single battle.
It is at this period that the figure of Caractacus heaves up slowly
above the scene; we see him but dimly and indistinctly at first, but,
after a time, he towers above all his compeers, as Cassivellaunus
did in the days of Cæsar. We see him moving now and then between the
divided legions commanded by Vespasian and Plautius, but nothing of
importance is done on either side. The Isle of Wight is for a short
time subdued; a small portion of the island south of the Thames is
occupied by the invaders; then Plautius is recalled to Rome, and before
he well arrives at the imperial city, the whole camp is in disorder;
the Roman legions can no longer protect the states that have submitted
to them. Caractacus is up, armed, and in earnest. Ostorius Scapula next
appears, and places himself at the head of the Roman ranks, strikes an
unexpected blow in the midst of winter, and gains some advantage over
the Britons. About this time it appears that the Romans first commenced
the erection of forts in the island, thus keeping the conquered states
within well-guarded lines, and protecting them from the attacks of
the unsubdued tribes, taking good care, at the same time, that they
did not escape and join their independent countrymen. His next step
was to disarm all the states within these limits; and as some of them
had become willing allies, rebellion soon broke out within these
circumscribed bounds. Once disarmed, it will readily be imagined how
easily they were beaten. Ostorius had now work enough on his hands; the
tribes that occupied the present counties of York and Lancashire next
arose, attacked the Roman legions, and were defeated. It was then that
the ancient Silures sprang up, the bravest of all the British tribes,
the true Cimbrii of early renown. The battle-ground now shifts into
Wales, and Caractacus is the commander. Almost every mountain-pass and
ford were familiar to him; his renown already rang through the island;
wherever the Roman eagle had bowed its haughty neck, he had been
present; the Roman general knew with whom he had to deal, and moved
forward with all his available force. Around the standard of Caractacus
had rallied every tribe from the surrounding country, who refused
to bow their necks to the invaders. Tacitus says that he chose his
ground with great skill, in the centre of steep and difficult hills,
raising ramparts of massive stones, where the ascent was possible;
while between his army and the road by which the Romans must approach,
there flowed a river which it was difficult to ford. As the enemy drew
near, he exhorted his soldiers to remember how their forefathers had
driven Cæsar from Britain, spake to them of freedom, their homes,
their wives and children, in a style which the Roman historians would
have pronounced eloquent, had the address flowed from the mouth of one
of their own generals. The Britons again were conquered, though they
fought bravely--their naked bosoms and helmetless heads were sure marks
for every well-tempered Roman blade, while their own copper swords
bent back at the first thrust they made at their mail-clad enemies.
Caractacus was not slain, though he only escaped to be given up in
chains to the Romans by his treacherous stepmother, Cartismanda, after
having for nine years waged war against the invaders of Britain. The
British leader was dragged (with his wife and children) a prisoner to
Rome; his fame had flown before him, and the Romans, who ever respected
valour, crowded round to look at the renowned island chief. He alone,
of all the British captives, shrunk not when brought before the Roman
emperor, Claudius. There was a noble bearing about the man: that eye
which had never quailed before the keen edge of the uplifted blade in
battle--that heart which had never sunk, though it was the last to
retreat from the hard fought field, buoyed him up in the presence of
his enemy, and the noble Roman ordered his chains to be struck off, an
act which did honour to the successor of Cæsar. Caractacus would have
done the same, had Claudius obtained the same renown, and so stood a
captive before him. Whether the brave barbarian died in some contest
with a gladiator in the arena of Rome, "butchered to make a holiday"
in a later day, before Nero, or returned to his country, or joined the
legions of his conquerors, and fell fighting in some foreign land, we
know not--we see his chains struck off before the Emperor Claudius,
then he vanishes for ever from the page of history.
[Illustration: _Caractacus carried captive to Rome._]
Even this undoubted victory was of but little advantage to the Roman
arms. The Silures proved themselves worthy descendants of the ancient
Cymry, the terror of whose name, as we have before shown, had in former
times carried consternation even to the very gates of Rome. They broke
up the enemy's camp, fell upon their lines and forts, drove the Roman
legions back to their old intrenchments, and, but for the timely
arrival of a party of foragers, would have cut up every soldier within
the Roman encampment in Wales. Nor could Ostorius, when he brought
up all his legions to battle, conquer them again. One skirmish was
but the forerunner of another; the Britons but retreated to-day, to
advance with stronger force on the morrow; until at last, harassed and
vexed, ever fighting but obtaining no advantage, the commander, who had
conquered Caractacus, fortified himself within his camp, and died. He
was the bravest general that the Britons had ever looked upon since the
days of Cæsar. Pass we by Frontinus, Didius, and Veranius; there are
other shadows to pass over this dimly-lighted stage of our history, who
"will do strange deeds and then depart."
Wearied and harassed by such a succession of invasions, the chiefs of
the druids, with many of the Britons who refused to submit to the Roman
yoke, retired to the island of Anglesey, that they might, amid its
shadowy groves and deep passes, follow their religious rites without
molestation, and sleep securely without being aroused by the din of
arms which was ever awakening the echoes that dwelt amongst gloomy
Albion's white cliffs. To this island, guarded more by the terrors of
superstition than the substantial array of arms, the Roman commander,
Paulinus Suetonius, determined to cross; and to accomplish his purpose,
he built a number of flat-bottomed boats in which he placed his troops.
As the invading force neared the opposite shore, they were struck with
terror by the strange scene which rose before them, and many a Roman
heart that had never before quailed in the stormy front of battle,
stood appalled before the dreaded array which had there congregated.
It seemed as if they had reached the shores of the fabulous Hades
of their ancient poets; for there women were seen rushing in every
direction in dresses on which were woven the forms of dismal objects;
and while their long dishevelled hair streamed out in the sea-breeze,
they brandished their flaming torches aloft as they rushed to and fro,
their eyes glaring wildly out of the dense smoke, as it blew back again
in their angry faces, while they looked out "fierce as the furies,
terrible as hell." Behind them were the grim druids collected, with
hands and eyes uplifted, as they invoked the curses of the gods upon
the heads of the Roman legions; before them the huge fires which were
already kindled, blazed and crackled, and shot out their consuming
tongues of flame, as if they were hungry for their prey, while the
druids pointed to the invading force, and bade their warriors hasten
and bring their victims to the sacrifice. The Roman soldiers seemed
paralysed; they stood almost motionless, as if they had not power to
strike a blow. They fell back affrighted before the lighted torches
of the women, and the curses of the druids, which struck more terror
into their souls than if the thunder of a thousand war-chariots had
borne down upon them, in all their headlong array. Aroused at last by
the voice of their leader, who bade them to despise a force of frantic
women and praying priests, they rushed boldly on, even to the very foot
of the dreaded fires; and many a bearded druid was that day driven
before the points of the Roman spears into the devouring flames which
they had kindled for the destruction of their invaders. Dreadful was
the carnage that ensued; even the sacred groves were fired or cut down;
if the Britons escaped the flames, it was but to rush back again upon
the points of the Roman swords--the sun sunk upon a scene of desolation
and death--a landscape blackened with ashes--fires that had been
extinguished by blood, whose grey embers faded and died out, as the
last sobs of the expiring victims subsided into the eternal silence of
death.
The spirit of British vengeance, though asleep, was not yet dead, and
at the rumour of these dreadful deeds it sprang up, awake and armed,
on the opposite shore; as if the blow which struck down their sacred
groves, and overthrew their ancient altars, had sent a shock across
the straits of Menai, which had been felt throughout the whole length
and breadth of the land; as if at the fall of the sacred groves of
Mona the spirits of the departed dead had rushed across, while the
voices of the murdered druids filled all the air with their wailing
cries of lamentation, until even women sprang up demanding vengeance,
and Boadicea leaped into her war-chariot, as if to rebuke the British
warriors by her presence, and to show them that the soul of a woman,
loathing their abject slavery, was ready to lead them on to either
liberty or death, and to place her fair form in the dangerous front
of battle--for her white shoulders had not escaped the mark of the
Roman scourge. Her daughters had been violated before her eyes, her
subjects driven from their homes, the whole territory of the Iceni
over which she reigned as queen groaned again beneath the weight of
cruelty, and oppression, and wrong; her subjects were made slaves; her
relations were dragged into captivity by the haughty conquerors; her
priests slaughtered; her altars overthrown, and another creed thrust
into the throats of those over whom she ruled, at the points of the
Roman swords. Her sufferings, her birth, the death of her husband
king Prasutagus, her towering spirit, her bold demeanour, and the
energy of her address, struck like an electric shock throughout all
the surrounding tribes, and many a state which had bowed in abject
submission beneath the haughty feet of the conquerors, now sprang up,
and as if endowed with a new life, rushed onward to the great mustering
ground of battle, like clouds hastening up to join the dark mass which
gathers about the dreaded thunder-storm, before the deafening explosion
bursts forth.
On the Roman colony of Camaladonum did this terrible tempest first
break, scattering before it a whole Roman legion, and scarcely leaving
one alive behind to tell the tale. The voices of pity and mercy were
unheard amid that dire and revengeful din; no quarter was given, no
prisoners were made; blinded with revenge, stung to madness by the
remembrance of their grievous wrongs, the assailants rushed forward,
sparing neither age nor sex; destruction seemed to have set all her
dreadful instruments at once to work, and in a few days upwards of
seventy thousand Romans perished by the gibbet, the fire, and the
sword. Such of the Roman officers as could escape, fled to their
galleys, and hurried off to Gaul. Even Suetonius, who had hastened back
at the first rumour of this dreadful carnage, was compelled to abandon
London, already a place of some distinction, in despair, and hurry off
with his legions into the open provinces. As he retreated, the Britons
entered; and out of the vast multitude which a few hours before those
walls had inclosed, scarcely a soul remained alive. The Roman soldiers
rushed into their temples to avoid the assailants; the figure of the
goddess of Victory which they worshipped fell to the ground; the
females ran wailing and shrieking into the streets, into the council
chambers, into the theatres, with their children in their arms. In
the red sunsets of the evening sky their heated imagination traced
moving and blood-coloured phantoms, colonies in ruins, and overthrown
temples, whose pillars were stained with human gore, and in the ridges
which the receding tide left upon the shore, their fancies conjured up
the carcases of the dead. Before the desolating forces of the stern
Boadicea ran Fear and Terror, with trembling steps and pale looks; by
her side grim Destruction, and blood-dyed Carnage stalked, while behind
marched Death, taking no note of Sorrow, and Grief, and Silence, whom
he left together to mourn amid the solitude of those unpeopled ruins.
Meantime, Suetonius, having strengthened his army to a force which now
amounted to upwards of ten thousand men, chose the most favourable
position for his troops, where he awaited the arrival of the Britons
to commence the battle. Nor had he to wait long; for, flushed with
victory, and reeking fresh from the carnage, the assailants came up,
with Boadicea, thundering in her war-chariot, at their head, and soon
drew together in the order of battle. The Romans were now actuated by
feelings of revenge.
With her long yellow hair unbound, and falling in clusters far below
the golden chain which encircled her waist, her dark eyes flashing
vengeance as she glanced angrily aside to where the Roman legions were
drawn up in the distance, (an impenetrable mass, looking in their
coats of mail like a wall of steel, bristling with swords and spears,)
and with the curved crimson of her cruel lip haughtily upturned,
Boadicea rose tall and queen-like from the war-chariot in which her
weeping daughters were seated, and turning to the assembled tribes who
hemmed her round with a forest of tall spears, she raised her hand to
command silence; and when the busy murmur of subdued applause which
acknowledged her bravery had died away, she bade them remember the
wrongs they had to revenge, the weight of oppression which had so long
bowed their necks to the dust; the sword, and fire, and famine, which
had desolated their fair land; their sons and daughters carried off
and doomed to all the miseries of slavery; their priests ruthlessly
butchered at the foot of the altar; their ancient groves hewn to the
ground by sacrilegious hands, and consumed by fire; she pointed to
her daughters whom the invaders had violated, and raising her white
and rounded arm, showed the marks which the scourge of the ruffianly
Catus had left behind; then brandishing her spear aloft, she shook
the loosened reins over her restive steeds, and was soon lost in the
thickest of the battle. But the lapse of a century, and the many
battles in which they had fought, had not yet enabled the Britons to
stand firm before the shock of the Roman legions. They were defeated
with tremendous slaughter; and the queen, who had so nobly revenged
her country's wrongs, only escaped the carnage to perish by her own
hand. Even down the dim vista of time we can yet perceive her; the
flower of her army lying around dead; the remnant routed and pursued
by the merciless Romans, while she, heartbroken, hopeless, and alone,
sacrifices her own life; and though but a heathen, does a deed which
in that barbarous age would have ennobled her had she been born in
the country of her civilized invaders, who would proudly have erected
a statue to her memory in that city whose haughty emperors proclaimed
themselves the conquerors of the world. Little did the vanquishers
dream a woman would spring up and emulate the deeds of their most
renowned warriors, and that the fair barbarian would in after ages
leave behind her a more than Roman name.
But neither the destruction of the druids, the death of Boadicea, nor
the destruction of her immense army, enabled the Romans to extend their
possessions with safety in the island. They were ever, as in the days
of Cæsar, upon the defensive; no colony, unless a legion of soldiers
were encamped in the immediate neighbourhood, was safe; and even after
defeating the queen of the Iceni, and receiving a great force of both
infantry and cavalry, Suetonius left the island unconquered, and the
war unfinished, and returned to Rome.
It is a pleasure to turn from these scenes of slaughter, to find
that the next Roman general of note who came over to govern Britain,
subdued more tribes by the arts of peace, and by kindness, than all
his predecessors had done by the force of arms. Such is the power of
genius, that we seem again to be in the company of one we have long
known; for Agricola was the father-in-law of Tacitus, the eloquent
historian, and there is but little doubt that the record of the few
facts we are in possession of connected with this period were dictated
by the general himself to his highly gifted son-in-law; we can almost
in fancy see the grey-headed veteran and the author seated together in
some Roman villa discoursing about these "deeds of other days." He had
served under Suetonius, was present at that dreadful massacre in the
island of Anglesey, where men, women, and children were so mercilessly
butchered--had with his own eyes looked upon Boadicea. What would we
not now give to know all that he had seen? To write this portion of our
history with his eyes--to go on from page to page recording what he
witnessed from day to day--to have him seated by our hearth now as he
no doubt many a time sat beside Tacitus. What word-pictures would we
then paint--what wild scenes would we portray!
It was Agricola who first taught the ancient Britons to erect better
houses, to build walled cities instead of huts; who bestowed praise
upon their improvements, instructed them in the Roman language, and
persuaded them to adopt a more civilized costume; to erect baths and
temples; to improve their agriculture; and thus by degrees he so led
them on from step to step, that instead of a race of rude barbarians,
they began to assume the aspect of a more civilized nation. Still he
had to contend with old and stubborn tribes, who held it a disgrace
to adopt any other manners than those of their rude forefathers--the
same difficulties beset the path of the Norman on a later day--the
same obstacles are met with in Ireland at the present hour--pride,
indolence, ignorance, and a host of other evils have first to be
uprooted before the better seed can be sown. It would but be wearisome
to follow the footsteps of the Roman general through all his campaigns;
before him the imperial eagles were borne to the very foot of the
Grampian hills; he erected forts for the better protection of the
country he had conquered, and the huge rampart which ran from the Frith
of Clyde to the Forth was begun under Agricola. He appears to have been
the first of the Roman commanders who brought his legions in contact
with the Caledonians, or men of the woods, and even there he met with
a formidable opponent in the Caledonian chief named Galgacus; the same
struggle for liberty was made there as in England--battles, bloodshed,
death, and desolation are about all that history records of these
campaigns, if we except what may be called a voyage of discovery; for
it appears that the Roman general sailed round the coast of Scotland to
the Land's End in Cornwall, and thence to the point from which he had
first started--supposed to be Sandwich--being the first of the Roman
generals who, from personal observation, discovered that Britain was
an island. Shortly after completing this voyage Agricola was recalled
to Rome. The next period of our history carries us to other conflicts,
which took place before those mighty bulwarks that the Roman conquerors
built up to keep back the northern invaders, who in their turn overran
England with more success than the Romans had done before them. It was
then a war between the Romans and the Picts and Scots, instead of, as
before, between the Romans and the Britons. Although they doubtless
originally descended from the same Celtic race, yet through the lapse
of years, and their having lingered for some time in Ireland and in
Gaul, we are entangled in so many doubts, that all we can clearly
comprehend is, that three different languages were spoken in the
island of Britain at this period, namely, Welsh, Irish, and another;
but whether the latter was Gothic or Pictish, learned men who have
dedicated long years of study to the subject have not yet determined by
what name it is to be distinguished.
CHAPTER VI.
DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS.
"He looked and saw wide territory spread
Before him; towns and rural works between,
Cities of men, with lofty gates and towers,
Concourse in arms, fierce forces threatening war--
Assaulting: others, from the wall defend
With dart and javelin, stones and sulphurous fire:
On each hand slaughter and gigantic deeds."
MILTON'S PARADISE LOST, BOOK XI.
The fortified line erected by Agricola was soon broken through by
the northern tribes, and the Emperor Adrian erected a much stronger
barrier, though considerably within the former; and this extended from
the Tyne to the Solway, crossing the whole breadth of that portion of
the island. Urbicus, as if determined that the Romans should not lose
an inch of territory which they had once possessed, restored the more
northern boundary which Adrian had abandoned, and once more stretched
the Roman frontier between the Friths of Clyde and Forth; they thus
possessed two walls, the more northern one, first begun by Agricola,
and the southern one, erected by Adrian. Forts were built at little
more than a mile distant from each other along this line, and a broad
rampart ran within the wall, by which troops could readily march from
one part to another. This outer barrier was the scene where many a hard
contest took place, and in the reign of Commodus it was again broken
down, and the country ravaged up to the very foundations of the wall
of Adrian. This skirmishing and besieging, building up and breaking
down of barriers, lasted for nearly a century, during which period
scarcely a single event transpired in Britain of sufficient importance
to be recorded, though there is every proof that the Britons were,
in the meantime, making rapid strides in civilization; for England
rested securely under the guardianship of the Roman arms. The battles
fought at the northern barriers disturbed not the tranquillity of the
southern parts of the island. It was not until the commencement of
the third century, when old and gouty, and compelled to be borne at
the head of his army in a litter, that the Emperor Severus determined
to conquer the Caledonians, and boldly sallied out for that purpose
beyond the northern frontier. His loss was enormous, and between war
with the natives, and the wearisome labour in making roads, felling
forests, and draining marshes, which had hitherto been impassable to
the Roman troops, fifty thousand soldiers were sacrificed. Nothing
daunted, however, the gouty old emperor still pressed onward, until he
reached the Frith of Moray, and was struck with the difference in the
length of the days, and shortness of the nights, compared with those
in southern latitudes. Saving making a few new roads, and receiving
the submission of the few tribes who chanced to lie in his way, he
appears to have done nothing towards conquering this hardy race; so he
returned to Newcastle, and began to build a stronger barrier than any
of his predecessors had hitherto erected. On the northern side of this
immense wall, he caused a deep ditch to be dug, about thirty-six feet
wide, while the wall itself was twelve feet in height; thus, from the
bottom of the ditch on the northern side there rose a barrier about
twenty-five feet high, which was also further strengthened by a large
number of fortifications, and above three hundred turrets. But before
Severus had well completed his gigantic labours, the Caledonians had
again over-leaped the more northern barrier, and fought their way up to
the new trenches. The grey-headed old hero vowed vengeance, and swore
by "Mars the Red," that he would spare neither age nor sex. Death, who
is sometimes merciful, kindly stepped in, and instead of allowing him
to swing in his litter towards new scenes of slaughter, cut short his
contemplated campaign at York, about the year two hundred and eleven;
and after his death, the northern barrier was again given up to the
Caledonians.
A wearisome time must it have been to those old Roman legions, who had
to keep guard on that long, monotonous wall, which went stretching for
nearly seventy miles over hill and valley; nothing but a desolate
country to look over, or that wide, yawning, melancholy ditch to
peep into from the battlements, or a beacon-fire to light on the top
of the turret, as a signal that the barbarians were approaching. An
occasional skirmish must have been a relief to that weary round of
every-day life, made up in marches from fort to fort, where there
was no variety, saving in a change of sentries--no relief excepting
now and then sallying out for forage; for between the outer and
inner wall, the whole country seems at this period to have been a
wilderness--a silent field of death, in which the bones of many a brave
man were left to bleach in the bleak wind, and from which only the
croak of the raven and the howl of the wolf came upon the long dark
midnights that settled down over those ancient battlements. Sometimes
the bold barbarians sailed round the end of the wall in their wicker
boats, covered with "black bull's hide," and landed within the Roman
intrenchments, or spread consternation amongst the British villages;
but with the exception of an occasional inroad like this, the whole
of the northern part of the island appears to have been quiet for
nearly another century, during which the Roman arms seem to have become
weakened, and the British tribes to have given themselves up more to
the arts of peace than of war. Such privileges as were granted to
the Roman citizens, were also now extended to the Britons; and under
the dominion of Caracalla, the successor of Severus, there is but
little doubt that the southern islanders settled peaceably down in
their homesteads (now comfortable abodes), and began to be somewhat
more Romanized in their manners, that marriages took place between
the Romans and the Britons, and that love and peace had now settled
down side by side, in those very spots which the stormy spirits of
Cassivellaunus, Caractacus, and Boadicea had formerly passed over. The
wheels of the dreaded war-chariots seem to have rested on their axles;
we scarcely meet with the record of a single revolt amongst the native
tribes, excepting those beyond the wall of Adrian. Through the pages
of Gildas we catch glimpses of strange miracles, and see the shadow of
the cross falling over the old druidical altars, but nothing appears
distinct; and although we may doubt many passages in the writings of
this our earliest historian, it would be uncharitable to the memory
of the dead even to entertain a thought that he wilfully falsified a
single fact. The only marvel is, that, living in an age when so few
could write--when only common rumours were floating about him--when he
was surrounded with the faint outlines of old traditions, he should
have piled together so many facts which are borne out by contemporary
history. To place no faith in the narrative of Gildas, is to throw
overboard the writings of the venerable Bede, and float over the sea
of time for many a long year, without a single record to guide us.
Although we have confidence in many of these ancient chronicles of
the undefended dead, we shall pass on to undisputed facts, founded
upon their faint records; for we have scarcely any other light to
guide us through these dark caverns, which the ever-working hand of
slow-consuming Time hath hollowed out.
About the commencement of the fourth century, a new enemy made its
appearance upon the British coast, and though it only at first flitted
about from place to place like a shadow, it at last fixed itself firmly
upon the soil, never again to be wholly obliterated. This was the
Saxon--not at that period the only enemy which beside the Caledonians
invaded Britain, for there were others--Scandinavian pirates, ever
ready with their long ships to dart across the British channel upon
our coast. These invaders were kept at bay for a time by a bold naval
commander called Carausius, supposed himself originally to have been a
pirate, and occasionally to have countenanced the inroads of the enemy;
and on this account, or from the dreaded strength of his powerful
fleet, a command was issued from Rome to put him to death. He, however,
continued for some time to keep the mastery of the British Channel,
defied Rome and all its powers, assumed the chief command over Britain,
and was at last stabbed by the hand of his own confidential minister
at York. Allectus, Constantine, Chlorus, and Constantine the Great,
follow each other in succession, each doing their allotted work, then
fading away into Egyptian darkness, scarcely leaving a record behind
beyond their names; for the eyes of the Roman eagle were now beginning
to wax dim, and a fading light was fast settling down upon the Eternal
city, and gloomy and ominous shadows were ever seen flitting athwart
the golden disc whose rounded glory had so long fallen unclouded
upon the Imperial city. Even in Britain the wall of Severus had been
broken through, a Roman general slain, and London itself pillaged by
these hordes of barbarians. The plunderers were, however, attacked by
Theodosius, the spoils retaken, and the inhabitants, whom they were
driving before them in chains, liberated. These assailants are supposed
to have been mingled bodies of the Picts, Scots, and Saxons, and the
addition of Saxonicus was added to the name of Theodosius, in honour of
this victory.
The Roman soldiers in Britain now began to elect their own generals,
and to shake off their allegiance to the Emperor: one undoubted cause
for so few legions being found in England at this period, and a proof
that that once mighty arm had already grown too weak to strike any
effective blow in the distant territories. Chief amongst those elected
to this high rank in Britain stood Maximus, who might doubtless have
obtained undisputed possession of the British Island, had not his
ambition led him to grasp at that portion of the Roman empire which
was in the possession of Gratian. To accomplish this, he crossed over
to Gaul with nearly all his island force, thus leaving Britain almost
defenceless, and at the mercy of the Picts, and Scots, and Saxons, who
were ever on the look-out for plunder. He attained his object, and
lost his life, having been betrayed and put to death by Theodosius the
Great, under whose sway the eastern and western empire of Rome was
again united. Alaric the Goth was now pouring his armed legions into
Italy, and to meet this overwhelming force, Germany, and Gaul, and
Britain were drained of their troops, and our island again left a prey
to the old invaders, who no doubt reaped another rich harvest; for the
Britons, no longer able to defend themselves against these numerous
hordes of barbarians, were compelled to apply for assistance to Rome.
Probably some time elapsed before the required aid was sent, for we
cannot conceive that Stilicho would part with a single legion until
after he had won the battle of Pollentia, and seen the routed army
of Alaric in full retreat. Such was the penalty Britain paid for her
progress in civilization,--the flower of her youth were carried off to
fight and fall in foreign wars,--and when she most needed the powerful
arms of her native sons to protect her, they were attacking the enemies
of Rome in a distant land, and leaving their own island-home a prey to
new invaders. Nor was this all: when the arms of Rome had grown too
feeble to protect Britain,--when beside their own legions, the country
had been drained of almost every available soldier--when in every
way it was weakened, and scarcely possessed the power to make any
defence, it was deserted by the Romans, left almost prostrate at the
feet of Pictish, Scottish, and Saxon hordes, either to sue for mercy
on the best terms that could be obtained, or to perish, from its very
helplessness. Alas! Rome could no longer defend herself, her glory had
all but departed; and the Britons, who for about two centuries had
never been allowed to defend themselves, and were now almost strangers
to arms, were left to combat a force which many a time had driven back
the Roman legions.
The few Roman troops that yet remained in Britain began to elect and
depose their own commanders at pleasure. They first chose Marcus,
allowed him to rule for a short period, then put him to death. Gratian
was next elevated to power, bowed down to and obeyed for three or
four months, then murdered. Their next choice fell upon Constantine,
influenced, it is said, by his high-sounding name; and it almost
appears, by his carrying over his forces to Gaul, as Maximus had
done before him, and aiming at a wider stretch of territory, that he
scarcely thought Britain worth reigning over. Numbers of the brave
British youth were sacrificed to his ambition; and England seems
at this time to have only been a great nursery for foreign wars.
Gerontius, who appears to have been a British chief, now rose to some
influence, and basely betrayed his countrymen by entering into a league
with the Picts, and Scots, and Saxons, and no doubt sharing the plunder
they took from the wretched Britons; he also appears to have carried an
armed force out of the island, probably raised by means of the bargain
he made with the barbarians; he was pursued into Spain by the troops of
the Roman emperor, Honorius; fled into a house for shelter after the
battle; it was set fire to, and he perished in the flames--a dreadful
death, yet almost merited by such a traitorous act as, first selling
his country to these northern robbers and pirates, carrying off those
who were able to protect her, and then leaving his kindred a prey to
the barbarians. The Britons, in their misery, again applied for help
to Rome: Honorius could render none, so he sent them such a letter as
a cold friend, wearied out by repeated applications, sometimes pens to
a poor, broken-down bankrupt; he could do nothing for them, they must
now assist themselves; he forgave them the allegiance they owed, but
had not a soldier to spare. So were the Britons blessed with a liberty
which was of no use to them; they were left to shift for themselves,
like an old slave, who, instead of being a help, becomes an encumbrance
to his task-master, who, to get rid of him, "God blesses him," and
turns him out a free man, with the privilege to beg, or starve, or
perish, unless in his old helpless age he can provide for himself. Not
that the Roman emperor was so unkind in himself; he would perhaps have
assisted the Britons if he could; he was but one in a long chain of
evils, and that the last, and least powerful, which, by disarming the
Britons, and draining off all their strength to feed other channels,
had reduced them to their present helpless state. True, they had now
temples, and baths, and pillared porticoes, and splendid galleries,
and mosaic pavements, and beautifully shaped earthen-vessels; had some
knowledge of Roman literature, and, above all, Roman freedom. Alas!
alas! their old forest fortresses, and neglected war-chariots, and
rude huts, guarded by the dangerous morass, and quaking bog, would
now have stood them in better stead; their splendid mansions were
but temptations to the barbarians, their broad, firm roads so many
open doors to the robbers. They may not inaptly be compared to some
poor family, left in a large and splendid mansion in some dangerous
neighbourhood, which the owner has deserted, with all his retinue and
wealth, for fear of the thieves and murderers who were ever assailing
him, leaving only behind a book or two for their amusement, a few
useless statues to gaze upon, and but little beside great gaping
galleries, whose very echoes were alarming to the new possessors. Sir
Walter Scott has beautifully said, when speaking of the Romans leaving
the Britons in this defenceless state, that "Their parting exhortation
to them to stand in their own defence, and their affectation of having,
by abandoning the island, restored them to freedom, were as cruel as
it would be to dismiss a domesticated bird or animal to shift for
itself, after having been from its birth fed and supplied by the hand
of man."[1] Strange retribution, that whilst the sun of Rome should
from this period sink never to rise again in its former glory, that of
Britain should slowly emerge from the storm and clouds which threatened
nothing but future darkness, and burst at last into a golden blaze,
whose brightness now gilds the remotest regions of the earth.
But Britain had still a few sons left, worthy of the names which their
brave forefathers bore; the blood of Boadicea still flowed in their
veins; it might have been thinned by the luxury of the Roman bath, and
deadened by long inactivity, but though it only ran sluggishly, it was
still the same as had roused the strong hearts of Cassivellaunus and
Caractacus when the Roman trumpets brayed defiance at the gates of
their forest cities. There was still liberty or death left to struggle
for; the Roman freedom they threw down in disdain, and trampled upon
the solemn mockery; and when they once cast off this poisoned garment,
they arose like men inspired with a new life; they seemed to look about
as if suddenly aroused from some despairing dream--as if astonished
to hear their old island waves rolling upon a beach unploughed by the
keel of a Roman galley--as if wondering that they had not before broken
through those circumscribed lines, and forts, and ramparts, while they
were yet guarded with the few Roman sentinels; they saw the sunshine
streaming upon their broad meadows, and old forests, and green hills,
and tall pale-faced cliffs, turning to gold every ripple that came
from afar to embrace the sparkling sands of the white beach, and they
felt that such a beautiful country was never intended to become the
home of slaves. They shed a few natural tears when they remembered how
many of their sons and daughters had been borne over those billows in
the gilded galleys of the invaders; they recalled the faces they had
seen depart for ever over the lessening waves; the mother weeping over
her son; the manacled father, whose "eyes burnt and throbbed, but had
no tears;" the pale-cheeked British maidens, who sat with their faces
buried in their hands, as, amid the distant sound of Roman music,
their lovers were hurried away to leave their bones bleaching upon
some foreign shore; and they would have fallen down and prostrated
themselves upon the ground for very sorrow, had not the thunder of
their northern invaders rung with a startling sound upon their ears,
and they felt thankful that much work yet remained to be done, and
that they were now left to fight their own battles, even as their
forefathers had fought, in the dearly remembered days of their ancient
glory.
With a population so thinned as it must have been by the heavy drainage
made from time to time from the flower of its youth, we can readily
conceive how difficult it was to defend the wall which Severus had
erected, after the departure of the Romans. But we cannot imagine that
the Britons would hesitate to abandon a position which they could no
longer maintain, or waste their strength at an outer barrier when
the enemy had already marched far into the country. On this point
the venerable Gildas must have been misinformed, and the narrative
of Zosimus is, beyond doubt, the correct one. From his history it
is evident that the Britons rose up and boldly defended themselves
from the northern invaders; they also deposed the Roman rulers that
still lingered in the British cities, and who, no longer overawed by
the dictates of the emperor, doubtless hoped to establish themselves
as kings, or chiefs, amongst the different tribes they had so long
held in thrall. But the Britons threw off this foreign yoke, and at
last rooted out all that remained of the power of Rome. Thus, beside
the Picts and Scots, who were ever pouring in their ravaging hordes
from the north, and the Saxons, who came with almost every favourable
breeze which blew, to the British shore, there was an old and stubborn
foe to uproot, and one which had for above four centuries retained a
tenacious hold of our island soil. Many of the Romans who remained
were in possession of splendid mansions, and large estates, and as the
imperial city was now over-run with bands of barbarians, they were
loath to leave a land abounding with plenty, for a country then shaken
to its very centre by the thunder of war. Though not clearly stated,
there is strong reason for believing that these very Romans, who were
so reluctant to quit Britain, connived at the ravages of the Picts and
Scots, as if hoping, by their aid, once more to establish themselves in
the island.
This was a terrible time for the struggling Britons--it was no longer
a war in which offers of peace were made, and hostages received, but
a contest between two powers, for the very soil on which they trod.
This the islanders knew, and though often sorely depressed and hardly
driven, they still continued to look the storm in the face. Every man
had now his own household to fight for--the Roman party was led on by
Aurelius Ambrosius, the British headed by Vortigern; a name which they
long remembered and detested, for the misery it brought into the land.
As for Rome, she had no longer leisure to turn her eye upon the distant
struggle, for Attila and his Goths were now baying at her heels; there
was a cry of wailing and lamentation in her towered streets, and the
wide landscape which stretched at her imperial feet, was blackened by
the fire of the destroyer. She had no time, either to look on or send
assistance to either party; and when Ætius had read the petition sent
by the Britons, who complained that "the barbarians chase us into the
sea; the sea throws us back upon the barbarians; and we have only the
hard choice left us of perishing by the sword or by the waves," he
doubtless cast it aside, and exclaimed, "I also am beset by a host of
enemies, and cannot help you:" a grim smile, perhaps, for a moment
lighting up his features, as he recalled the Romans who, false to their
country, had basely lingered in the British island, and thus deserted
him in the hour of need; and as the stern shadow again settled down
upon his features, he consoled himself for a moment by thinking that
they also had met with their reward--then again prepared to defend
himself against the overwhelming force of Attila.
Harassed on all sides, the Britons now began to look to other quarters
for aid, for they appear to have assembled at last under one head,
and to have been guided in their course by Vortigern. The character
of this ancient British king is placed in so many various lights by
the historians who have recorded the events of this obscure period,
that it is impossible to get at the truth. What he did, is tolerably
clear; nor are we altogether justified in ascribing his motives only
to self advancement; pressed within and without by powerful enemies,
he, no doubt, sought assistance from the strongest side, though it
is not evident that he ever made any formal offer. He must have had
some acquaintance with the Saxons, whom he enlisted in his cause--it
is improbable that he would hail an enemy, standing out at sea with
his ships--invite him to land and attack a foe, with whom this very
stranger had been leagued. One man might have done so, but what
Vortigern did had, doubtless, the sanction of the British chiefs who
were assembled around him at the time. They must have had strong
faith in the Saxons, and it is not improbable that some of them had
been allowed to settle in the Isle of Thanet--had already aided the
Britons in their wars against the Romans, who were located in the
island, as well as against their northern invaders, before they were
intrusted with the defence of Britain. But we must first glance at
the England of that day before we introduce our Saxon ancestors--the
"grey forefathers" of our native land, whose very language outlived
that of their Norman conquerors, and who blotted out almost every
trace of the ancient Britons by their power--"A tribe which, in the
days of Ptolemy," says Sharon Turner, in his admirable history of the
Anglo-Saxons, "just darkened the neck of the peninsula of Jutland, and
three inconsiderable islands in its neighbourhood. One of the obscure
tribes whom Providence selected, and trained to form the nobler nations
of France, Germany, and England, and who have accomplished their
distinguished destiny." These stand dimly arrayed upon the distant
shore of time, and calmly await our coming.
CHAPTER VII.
BRITAIN AFTER THE ROMAN PERIOD.
"What, though those golden eagles of the sun
Have gone for ever, and we are alone,
Shall we sit here and mourn? No! look around,
There still are in the sky trails of their glory,
And in the clouds traces where they have been.--
Their wings no longer shadow us with fear.
Let us then soar, and from this grovelling state
Rise up, and be what they have never been."
ODE TO HOPE.
Britain, after the departure of the Romans, was no longer a country
covered every way with wild waving woods, dangerous bogs, and vast
wastes of reedy and unprofitable marshes. Smooth green pastures, where
flocks and herds lowed and bleated, and long slips of corn waved in the
summer sunshine, and fruit-trees which in spring were hung with white
and crimson blossoms, and whose branches in autumn bowed beneath the
weight of heavy fruitage, now swelled above the swampy waste, and gave
a cheerful look to the grassy glade which had made room for the bright
sunshine to enter into the very heart of those gloomy old forests.
Walled towns, also, heaved up above the landscape, and great broad
brown roads went stretching for miles through a country over which,
a few centuries before, a mounted horseman would have foundered. The
dreamy silence which once reigned for weary miles over the lonesome
woodland, was now broken by the hum of human voices; and the ancient
oaks, which for many a silent year had only over-shadowed the lairs
of beasts of the chase, now overhung pleasant footpaths, or stretched
along the sides of well-frequented roads, sure guides to the lonely
wayfarer that he could no longer mistake his course from town to town.
Though many a broad bog, and long league of wood and wilderness still
lay on either hand, yet, every here and there, the home of man rose
up amid the waste, showing that the stir of life had begun to break
the sleep of those solitudes. Instead of the shadowy avenue of trees
which marked the entrance to their forest fortresses, lofty arches now
spanned the roads which opened into their walled streets, and above
the roofs of their houses tall temples towered in all the richness
of Roman architecture, dedicated to the classical gods and goddesses
whose sculptured forms graced the lofty domes of the imperial city.
Few and far between, in the dim groves, whose silent shadows remained
undisturbed, the tall grass climbed and drooped about the neglected
altar of the druids, and on the huge stone where the holy fire once
burned, the grey lichen and the green moss now grew. Even the Roman
sentinel, as he paced to and fro behind the lofty battlement, sometimes
halted in the midst of his measured march, and leaned on his spear to
listen to the low "Hallelujah" which came floating with faint sound
upon the air, as if fearful of awakening the spirit of some angry
idolator. In the stars which pave the blue floor of heaven, men began
to trace the form of the cross, and to see the spirit of the dove in
the white moonlight that threw its silver upon the face of the waters,
for Britain already numbered amongst her slaughtered sons those who had
suffered martrydom for the love they bore to their crucified Redeemer.
Under the shadow of the Roman eagles had marched soldiers, proud that
they bore on their hearts the image of the cross of Christ. In spite
of the decree of Diocletian, the Gospel sound still spread, and around
the bleeding head of the British martyr St. Alban, there shone a glory
which eclipsed all the ancient splendour of Rome. The mountains, the
rivers, and the ancient oaks, were soon to echo back the worship of
the true God, and no longer to remain the objects of idolatry. The
unholy doctrine of the druids was ere long to be unmasked, and instead
of the gloomy gods which frowned down in stone amid the darksome
groves, and whose dead eyes ever looked upon the melancholy water that
murmured around the altars on which they stood, the light of a benign
countenance was about to break in beauty over the British isle, and a
voice to be heard, proclaiming peace and good-will to all mankind. For
the Picts and Scots had already fallen back affrighted before the holy
Hymns of Zion, and been more startled by the loud Hallelujah chaunted
by the soldiers of Christ, who were led on by Germanus, than ever
they were by the loud braying of the brazen trumpets of Rome. British
ladies, ever foremost to tread the paths of religion and virtue, had
boldly heralded the way, and in spite of the lowering and forbidding
looks of the druids, Græcina and Claudia had already knelt before the
throne of the True God. Though the vanguard came heavily up amid cloud
and storm, Hope, and Love, and Mercy, rode fearlessly upon the wings of
the tempest.
It is but just to the memory of those ancient Roman invaders, that we
should confess they never reduced to slavery and total subjection the
tribes which they conquered; that, generally, in return for the taxes
they imposed, and the expense to which they put the invaded country,
they instructed the inhabitants in the Roman arts--and although they
humbled their martial spirit, and left the conquered tribes less able
to defend themselves, still the signs of civilization everywhere
marked their course. Beside being brave generals, the Roman commanders
were also able statesmen; nor had the Britons for centuries before,
nor did they for centuries after, sleep in that peaceful security
which they enjoyed under the sway of the wise Agricola. Though the
conquerors taxed their corn, they taught the Britons a better method
of cultivating it; though they made heavy levies upon their cattle,
they were the first to set them the example of reclaiming many an
acre of pasturage from the hitherto useless marsh and forest. They
instructed them in planting the fruit-trees, from which the tithe was
taken; and, in addition to orchards, pointed out to them the art of
dressing vineyards. Fifteen hundred years or more may have chilled our
climate, but in those days the purple and bunchy grape drooped around
many a British homestead. The chief towns were governed by Roman laws;
London and Verulamium were already celebrated cities, and the latter
reared high its lofty towers, and temples, and theatres, in all the
architectural grandeur of Roman art. For centuries after did many of
these majestic monuments remain, even when the skeleton of the once
mighty Rome had all but crumbled into dust, as if to proclaim that
the last work of those all-dreaded conquerors was the civilization
of Britain. They divided our island into five provinces, appointed
governors and officers to administer justice, and collect taxes in each
division. Over all these a chief ruler was placed, who was accountable
for his actions to the Roman emperor, and whose written orders were
given to him in a green-covered book, emblazoned with golden castles,
when he was installed in the dignity of his office--as, in almost
all colonies, there were doubtless many who, "clothed in authority,"
ruled with an iron hand over their fellow-men; not that such always
escaped--for, as we have before stated, the revolt of Boadicea was
caused by the oppression of Roman rulers, and dreadful was the
reckoning of her vengeance.
We have already had occasion to remark how easily the Romans broke
through the ancient British fortresses, and how frequently the Picts
and Scots made inroads through the ramparts erected by the Romans.
Saving, however, in such works as appear to have been hastily thrown
up by the Britons, when they retreated into their native forests, they
displayed considerable skill in the erection of their strongholds. They
occasionally constructed high walls, with blocks of granite five or six
feet long, and these they piled together without the aid of cement,
digging a deep ditch outside, to make access more difficult; and as
this fortress was built in the form of a circle, and the wall was of
sufficient thickness to permit half a dozen men to walk on it abreast,
it must, although not of such extent, have been as difficult to storm
as the barriers thrown up by the Romans. The huge stone, supposed to
weigh upwards of seven hundred tons, which is placed on the points of
two rocks in Cornwall, and the massy blocks raised and piled on each
other at Stonehenge, show that, ages before the Roman invasion, Britain
was inhabited by a tribe whose knowledge of the power of leverage, and
skill in removing such gigantic blocks from the distant quarries, were
only surpassed by the builders of the Egyptian Pyramids. No wonder that
a race possessed of such natural genius was, under tuition of the Roman
architects, enabled to produce such a class of workmen, that a demand
was made for them even in Gaul, and that the skill of the British
mechanic was in that early age acknowledged on the continent. Industry
led to wealth, and the latter to luxuries to which the simple Britons
had, before the Roman period, been entire strangers; instead of the
cloak of skin, and the dyed sagum, those who dwelt in towns now wore
the Roman toga, and the British ladies began to decorate themselves
with jewels of gold, silver, and precious stones, instead of their own
island pearls, once so celebrated as to cause even a grave historian
to attribute the invasion of Julius Cæsar to no other motive than a
wish to fill his galley with them. They now wore bracelets and collars
of gold, and amongst the imports to Britain, we find mention of ivory
bridles, chains of gold, cups of amber, and drinking-vessels of glass,
made in the most elegant forms. A great change had taken place in the
habits of these ancient in-dwellers of the forest, whose eyes in former
days had seldom been gladdened by a sight of such treasures, unless
when brought, now and then, by some warrior from the Gaulish wars, to
be looked on and wondered at, or caught sight of for a moment amongst
the coveted hoards of the druids. We have it on record, that the waist
of queen Boadicea was encircled by a chain, or girdle of gold; and
shortly after we have proof that nearly the whole of the British tribes
were in subjection under the Roman power--clear evidence that wealth,
refinement, and civilization had softened down the rugged and hardy
sinews of war--that the old warriors of the wild woods were better
adapted for the struggles of battle than their sons who had put on the
Roman toga, and reared their homes within the limits of walled cities.
As it was with the Britons, so it was with the Saxons--they also became
less courageous, as they grew more civilized. And here a grave question
naturally intrudes itself into our narrative, which to answer aright
must either yield in favour of a state of barbarism, or pull down that
great idol called a hero--though there are many exceptions on record
to uphold the latter, some of which we have already instanced, as in
Cassivellaunus and Caractacus.
It is apparent that the more southern inhabitants of the British
island had by this time adopted the Roman custom of interring their
dead. Formerly the northern tribes did but little more than place the
body in the naked earth, cover it up, and mark the spot by a pile
of stones; and that rude monument was left to point out the last
resting-place of the departed. The more southern tribes erected huge
barrows above their dead, burying with them all that was considered
most valuable, articles of gold and silver, weapons used in the war
and in the chase, and even the body of the favourite dog, when he
died, was not considered unworthy of sharing his master's grave.
Many of these mounds of earth were immense, and in several cases it
is clear that the soil which formed them had been brought from a
considerable distance, perhaps from the very spot which had been marked
by the valorous though now forgotten deeds of the dead. These ancient
sepulchres varied greatly in size and shape. Those which appear to have
contained the remains of the earlier inhabitants of our island, were
frequently above a hundred yards in length; and if, as it has been
supposed, each follower brought his wicker basket of earth to empty
upon the chieftain's grave, or the high-piled hillock was the work
of the friends of the departed, though so many long centuries have
elapsed, they yet speak of the respect in which those early warriors
were held. Sometimes the body was placed in a cist, with the legs drawn
back towards the head, and this position of burying seems to have been
adopted at a very remote period by the Britons. Sometimes the trunk of
a large tree was cut up into a proportionate length, hewn hollow, and
the body placed within it. This again appears to have been a custom of
very ancient date. They were also in the habit of burning the bodies of
the dead--of collecting the burnt bones and placing them in the lowest
bed of the barrow, then piling the stupendous mound above the ashes.
Those tribes that became more Romanised appear to have followed the
custom of their conquerors of burning the bodies, and collecting the
ashes in urns; many of these have been discovered in what are called
the Roman-British barrows, which display but indifferent workmanship.
Others which have been dug out of old Roman burying-places show much
elegance both in their forms and ornaments. With these have also been
found mingled incense and drinking cups of the most beautiful patterns.
The Britons appear to have had no common grave-yard; one barrow seems
to have covered the remains of a chief, another that of his wife and
children; perchance those who fell in the same battle were sometimes
interred together, or it may be that the lesser hillocks covered the
remains of the vassals, hemming around the huge barrow under which the
chieftain slept, as if to protect him even in death--a silent guard
surrounding his remains, as when living they had rallied about him.
What were the forms of their solemn processions--what ceremonies they
used while burying their dead--what heathen prayers they offered up to
their rude gods, or what war-hymns they chaunted over the remains of
their chiefs, we know not. The snows of nearly two thousand winters
have fallen, whitened, and melted upon, their graves, but whether the
latter were interred amid the deep war-cry of the tribe, or consigned
to the earth amid tears and sorrowful sounds, we can never know. The
glass beads, the amulets, and breastplates of gold--the spear-heads
of bronze and flint, the rude necklaces of shells, and the pins and
ornaments which we have discovered, throw no light upon the name, rank,
or history of the dead.
The barbarous custom of painting or tatooing their skins soon grew into
disfavour as the Britons became civilized. They began to find other
uses for the dye which they extracted from the herb called woad, and
instead of distinguishing themselves by the hideous forms of beasts
or reptiles which they were wont to puncture and imprint upon their
bodies, they now bore the marks of their rank in the form of their
costume, and sought for their renown in the plaudits of other men. They
began to look for their leaders amongst the ancient families, and to
trace back their genealogies to their earliest heroes. This ended all
Roman claims, for they refused to grant any land to such as had not
descended from the primitive tribes; it led also to much dissension,
to many heart-burnings and bitter jealousies; family was divided
against family, and tribe against tribe; petty kings sprang up in every
province; there was much blood shed--more to be spilt; and as Vortigern
alone had maintained his claim, he was determined to support his
position at any sacrifice. Whether Hengist and Horsa came on a mission
of peace, or as traders or pirates, or were driven by a storm upon the
coast, or were exiled from their country, are matters of no moment.
They were hired--their business was to fight--they were paid for doing
so--they accepted the terms offered by the British king, acquitted
themselves manfully, and finally were the means of establishing the
Saxons in Britain. To the commencement of this period we have now
arrived, and the next who pass through the gate of history are our old
English forefathers, the Saxons.
=The Saxon Invasion.=
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ANCIENT SAXONS.
"The stupendously holy gods considered these things:
They gave names to the night and to the twilight;
They called the morning and mid-day so.
There sat an old man towards the east in a wood of iron,
Where he nourished the sons of Fenris.
Every one of these grew up prodigious--a giant form,--
The sons of the two brothers inhabit the vast mansions of the winds.
A hall stands brighter than the sun,
Covered with gold in Gimle."--THE VOLUPSA.
The Saxons were a German or Gothic race, possessing an entirely
different language to that of the Celts or ancient Britons; and
although they do not appear to have attracted the same attention as
the other tribes, they were, doubtless, settled at a very early period
in Europe. At the time when they begin to stand forth so prominently
in the pages of history, they occupied the peninsula of Jutland, now
a portion of Denmark, with two or three neighbouring islands, known
by the names of North Strande, Busen, and Heligoland, all situate
near the mouth of the Elbe. As they, however, consisted of three
tribes--namely, the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons--they probably,
at a former period, stretched over a much larger surface of country,
the boundaries of which it is now difficult to define. As early as the
time of Ptolemy, a branch of this ancient Scythian race was denominated
the Saxons. They claimed their descent from Odin, probably some old and
celebrated warrior, whose deeds grew up under magnified traditions,
until at last he was dignified with the title of their god. Like the
Britons, they were a brave and fearless race, delighting in plunder
and slaughter, ever choosing the most dangerous and perilous paths,
loving the roll of the wave, and the roar of the storm, and generally
landing under a gloomy and tempestuous sky, to surprise and attack the
enemy. Their arms were a sharp sword, a keen-pointed dagger, a tall
spear, and a ponderous battle-axe, all made of good iron. But the most
dreaded weapon they wielded seems to have been a large heavy hammer,
from which projected a number of sharp-pointed spikes. This fearful
instrument was the terror of their enemies, and no helmet was proof
against its blows. Their chiefs wore a kind of scaly armour, which
appears to have been formed of iron rings, locked together upon a
tight-fitting coat, or leathern doublet. The rims and bosses of their
shields were of iron, while the body was sometimes formed of wood,
and covered with leather. Many of these shields were large enough to
protect the whole form, and as they were convex, no doubt the point of
the enemy's weapon would glide off, unless it was struck firmly into
the centre; thus they formed a kind of moveable bulwark, behind which
the warrior sheltered himself in battle. They believed that the souls
of those who bravely perished on the hard-fought field were at once
wafted into the halls of Valhalla, and the terrible heaven which they
pictured in a future state consisted in those dreadful delights so
congenial to their brutal natures while on earth--being made up of a
succession of conflicts and struggles, cleaving of helmets and hacking
of limbs; and that when the twilight deepened over those awful halls,
every warrior was again healed of his wounds; that they then sat down
to their grim and hideous banquet, where they fed upon a great boar,
whose flesh never diminished, however much they ate, and when they had
satiated themselves with these savoury morsels, which they cut off with
their daggers, they washed them down with deep draughts of mead, which
they drank out of the skulls of their cowardly enemies. Into those
halls the brave alone were admitted--the craven, and the coward, and
those who fell not in the red and reeking ranks of battle, were doomed
to dwell in the dark regions of Niflheim, where Hela, the terrible,
reigned; where gaunt Famine stalked like a shadow beneath the vaulted
dome; where Anguish ever writhed upon her hard bed, and dark Delay
kept watch against the sombre doors which she never opened. Such were
the eternal abodes those barbarians believed they should enter after
death--the realms which their stormy spirits would soar into, when they
could no longer guide their barks over the shadows of the overhanging
rocks--when the tempestuous sea no longer bore them upon the thunder
of its billows, and cast them upon some distant coast, to revel in
carnage and slaughter;--it was then that they turned their dying eyes
to the coveted halls of Valhalla, and that huge banquet-table on which
the grisly boar lay stretched, surrounded by drinking-cups formed of
human skulls.
Those who had not courage enough to win an entrance into these envied
realms by their own bravery, put one of their slaves to death,
considering that such a sacrifice was acceptable to Odin, and a sure
passport into this ideal world. They, however, believed that Valhalla
would at last pass away; Odin himself perish; that the good and the
brave would inhabit another heaven, called Gimle; and the evil and the
cowardly be consigned to a more awful place of punishment than that
over which Hela reigned; that the gods would sit in judgment; that
Surtur, the black one, would appear; and an evil spirit be liberated
from the dark cave in which he had been for ages bound with chains of
iron. That for three years increasing snow would fall from all quarters
of the world, and during this long winter there would be no interim
of summer, neither would any green thing grow, but all mankind would
perish by each other's hands. That two huge monsters would appear; one
of which would devour the sun, the other, the moon; that mountains
and trees would be torn up, and the earth shaken to its deepest
foundations. That the stars would be blotted out of heaven, and one
wide shoreless sea cover the whole world, over which a solitary ship
would float, built of the nails of dead men, and steered by the tall
giant Hrymer. Then would the huge wolf Fenris open his enormous mouth,
the lower jaw of which would touch the earth, the upper the heaven,
over which a serpent would breathe poison, while the sons of Muspell
rode forward, led by the black Surtur. A blazing fire, spreading out
its myriad tongues of flame, would burn before and behind him; his
sword would glitter like the sun, and the bridge which spanned across
heaven, be broken. Towards a large plain would these terrible forces
move, followed by Fenris, the wolf. The brazen trumpet of Heimdal would
ring out such a startling peal, as would awaken the gods, and cause the
mighty ash of Ygdrasil to tremble. Odin would put on his golden helmet,
and all the gods rise up in arms, and after the wolf had devoured him,
and its jaws had been rent asunder by Vidar, the whole universe would
be destroyed.
Such a creed as this was calculated to nourish and keep alive the
most benighted superstitions amongst its believers. Thus we find them
drawing omens from the flight and singing of birds, placing their trust
in good and evil days, and considering the full or new moon as the most
favourable seasons in which to put into operation any important plan.
They were influenced by the moving of the clouds, and directed by the
course of the winds; and from the entrails of the victims sacrificed,
they drew their auguries. The breastplates they wore were imperfect,
unless the smith who forged them muttered a charm while he wielded his
ponderous hammer. Even the graves of dead men were frequented, and
those who slept their last sleep were intreated to answer them. They
judged of the fate of a battle by seizing an enemy, and compelling
him to fight with one of their own race. From the branches of the oak
they cut short twigs, marked them, then scattered them at random upon
a white garment, and while the priest looked upward, he took those on
which his hand chanced to alight, and if they proved to be those on
which the favourite mark was impressed, it was considered a good omen.
They rode out the perilous tempest on the deep with better heart if,
on the departure of their bark from the stormy beach, some priestess,
with her hair blown back, stood upon the giddy headland, and chaunted
the mystic rhyme which they believed would waft them, more safely than
the most favourable breeze, to the distant shore. Even through the
long night of time we can picture her standing upon the dizzy edge of
the rock, while the white-winged sea-gull wheeled and screamed above
her head; with the subdued thunder of the hoarse waves ever rolling at
her feet--her drapery blown aside, and her wan thin lips moving; while
they, tugging at the long oar with their brawny arms and bowed heads,
sent up a silent prayer to the god of the storm.
Such were our forefathers--men who would startle at the stirring of
a leaf, or the shooting of a star, yet brave enough to rush upon the
point of a spear with a flushed cheek and a bright eye, and who could
look death full in the face without a feeling of fear. Nor would it be
difficult to point out, even in our own day, numbers of superstitious
signs and omens, which are as implicitly believed in by the peasantry
of the present age, as they were by the ancient Saxons during this
dark period of our history. The chattering of a magpie, the croaking
of a raven, the howling of a dog in the night, a winding-sheet in the
candle, or a hollow cinder leaping out of the fire upon the hearth,
are even now held amongst our superstitious countrymen as ominous of
ill-luck, sickness, or death. Scarcely an obscure English province
is without its wise-man, or cunning fortune-teller, those lingering
remains of the Wicca of the Saxons, which have descended to us through
the long lapse of nearly two thousand years, in spite of the burnings
and other executions which were so common in our country only two or
three centuries ago, when not to believe in witchcraft would have
been held a crime equal to Atheism, by our more enlightened and
comparatively modern forefathers.
The temple erected to their war-god, in their own country, appears
to have been spacious and magnificent. On the top of a marble column
stood this idol, in the figure of a tall, armed warrior, bearing a
banner in his right hand, on which a red rose was emblazoned, while
in his left he held a balance. His helmet was surmounted with a cock;
on his breastplate a bear was engraven, while on the shield which was
suspended from his shoulder was the image of a lion, upon a ground of
flowers. Here, women divined, and men sacrificed, and into the battle
was this warlike image borne by the priest; for as they could not trust
themselves upon the sea without a charm being first muttered, so in
the field did they require the image of their idol to countenance the
contest. To this grim deity did they offer up their captives, and even
those of their own tribe who had fled, and turned their backs upon the
fight, for they looked upon cowardice as the greatest of crimes amongst
their men, and wantonness in their women they punished with death.
Some of their idols are surrounded by a wild poetry, and an air of
almost classic beauty, recalling to the mind the divinities worshipped
by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Of such was their goddess, called
the Mother of Earth, who was held so sacred, that only the priest
was permitted to touch her. Her temple stood amid the solemn shadows
of a silent grove; her figure was always covered by a white garment,
which was washed in a secret lake; in those waters the slaves who
administered at her shrine were drowned--no one, saving the priest,
was allowed to go abroad, who were once entrusted with her mysteries.
On holy days her image was borne in procession, on the backs of
beautifully marked cows. Nothing but joy and peace then reigned
throughout the whole length and breadth of the land: the bark was
moored upon the beach; the spear and battle-axe hung upon the beam
above the hearth, and Odin himself seemed to sleep. But this lasted
no longer than the days allotted to these processions: when they had
passed, the keel was again launched, the weapons taken from their
resting-place, while "grim-visaged war resumed his wrinkled front."
Even the cattle that fed upon the island where this temple stood were
held so sacred, that it was a crime to touch them, and he who drew
water from the fountain that flowed beside the grove, dared not, even
by a whisper, disturb the surrounding silence. We might almost fancy,
while reading the description of the idol they named Crodus, that we
saw before us the embodiment of one of Spenser's beautiful stanzas, or
that he himself had but turned into verse some old record, in which he
found pictured this image of one of the ancient Saxon gods. It was of
the figure of an old man, stooping through very age: he was clothed
in a white garment; a girdle of linen, the ends of which hung loose,
encircled his waist; his head was grey, and bare. He held in his right
hand a vessel, in which flowers floated in water; his left hand rested
upon a wheel, while he stood with his naked feet upon the back of a
prickly perch. How like Spenser's description is the above, of his "Old
January wrapped well in many weeds, to keep the cold away--of February,
with the old waggon-wheels and fish--of the hand cold through holding
all the day the hatchet keen." Such a resemblance would the eye of a
poet trace, and so would he transform old Crodus, the Saxon idol, into
the personification of one of his months.
Whoever broke into one of their temples, and stole the sacred vessels,
was punished with a slow, lingering, and terrible death. To the very
edge of the sands of the sea-shore was he dragged, when the tide was
low, and there made fast--his ears were cut off, and other parts of his
body mutilated--then he was left alone. Wave after wave came and went,
and washed around him, as the tide came in; he felt the sea rising
every minute, inch by inch--higher still, higher it came--every ripple
that made a murmur on the shore rang his death-knell, until the last
wave came that washed over him--then vengeance was satisfied. A more
awful death can scarcely be imagined.
They were a tall, big-boned, blue-eyed race of men, and it appears
from an old law made to punish a man who seized another by the hair,
that they at one period wore it so long as to fall upon the shoulders.
The females wore ornaments on their arms and necks. The government
was generally vested in the hands of the aged, and they appear to
have elected their ruler in war by the chiefs assembling and drawing
lots. He on whom it fell, they followed and obeyed; but when the war
was over, they were again all equal. They were divided into four
orders--the Etheling, or noble, who never married below his own rank;
the Free-man, who shared in the offices of government; the Freed-man,
or he who, either by purchase or merit, had obtained his liberty; and
the Serf, or slave. They reckoned their time by the number of nights,
and counted their years by the winters. April they named Easter-month,
after their goddess, Eostre. Thus we still retain a name which, though
commemorating the worship of an ancient idol, has now become endeared
to us by the Resurrection of Christ--a holy time which we can never
forget, for at every return it seems to bring back a spirit of beauty
into the world, whose pathway is strown with the sweetest and earliest
flowers of spring. Bright spots of light every way break through this
age of barbarism, and May, which again hangs the snow-white blossoms
upon the hawthorn, they called milk-month; nor can we now repeat the
name without images of lowing cattle and pleasant pastures springing up
before us, and we marvel how so warlike a race ever came to make use of
such poetical and pastoral names. The sun they worshipped as a goddess;
the moon as a god. A Saxon poet would have called the former, "The
golden lady of the day."
Although they appear to have been ignorant of the use of letters, yet
there is but little doubt that they used certain signs, or characters,
which they were able to interpret. Some of these Runic hieroglyphics
seem to have been engraven upon their swords. Their war-songs were
committed to memory, and it is probable that many a one ranked high
amongst their minstrels, who possessed no other talent than that of
remembering and repeating these ancient lays. It might be that they
were just enabled to form characters clear enough in their resemblance
to some natural object, which, when inscribed upon the rugged
monumental stone, bore some allusion to the name or bravery of the
chief whose memory it perpetuated. Their only books seem to have been
the bark of trees; the rind of the beech their favourite register;
a tablet on which the rustic chronicler of the present day still
makes the mark of his fair one's name, in characters only legible to
himself. In point of civilization, they were at this time centuries
behind the Britons, and an old author, describing them about the fifth
century, says, "You see amongst them as many piratical leaders as you
behold rowers, for they all command, obey, teach, and learn the art
of pillage. Hence, after your greatest caution, still greater care is
requisite. This enemy is fiercer than any other; if you be unguarded,
they attack; if prepared, they elude you. They despise the opposing,
and destroy the unwary; if they pursue, they overtake; if they fly,
they escape. Shipwrecks discipline them, not deter; they do not merely
know, they are familiar with, all the dangers of the sea; a tempest
gives them security and success, for it divests the meditated land of
the apprehension of a descent. In the midst of waves and threatening
rocks they rejoice at their peril, because they hope to surprise."
"Dispersed into many bodies," adds Zosimus, "they plundered by night,
and when day appeared, they concealed themselves in the woods, feasting
on the booty they had gained."[2]
When the Saxons first approached the British coast, they issued out
from the mouth of the Elbe, in wicker boats covered with leather,
which seem to have been but little better than the coracles used by
the ancient Britons. These were so light, that they found but little
difficulty in carrying them overland, from one river or creek to
another, then paddling their way under cover of the banks, wherever
sufficient water was to be found, until at last they came unaware upon
the natives. The chiules or keels which they possessed at the time they
were called upon to aid Vortigern, were capable of containing above
a hundred men each, a wonderful improvement on the frail barks with
which they first ventured into the British seas. Such as we have here
described them, were the tribe destined to overthrow an ancient race,
whom the Romans never wholly subjugated.
CHAPTER IX.
HENGIST--HORSA--ROWENA AND VORTIGERN.
"They bargained for Thanet with Hengist and Horsa,
Their aggrandizement was to us disgraceful,
After the destroying secret with the slaves at the confluent stream,
Conceive the intoxication at the great banquet of Mead,
Conceive the deaths in the great hour of necessity;
Conceive the fierce wounds--the tears of the women--
The grief that was excited by the weak chief (Vortigern);
Conceive the sadness that will be revolving to us,
When the brawlers of Thanet shall be our princes."
ANCIENT WELSH POEM--SEVENTH CENTURY.
We have no account of the preliminary arrangements between the British
king, and the Saxon chiefs, when the latter arrived with three ships,
and landed at Ebbs-fleet, a spot which now lies far inland, though at
that period the Wanstum was navigable for large vessels, and formed a
broad barrier between the Island of Thanet and the mainland of Kent.
Vortigern and his chieftains were assembled in council when the Saxons
appeared, and Hengist and Horsa were summoned before them. The Saxon
ships, which contained about three hundred soldiers, were drawn up
beside the shore, where the adventurers anxiously awaited the issue
of the interview between their leaders and the British king. Such
a meeting as this could scarcely result from chance; the time of
landing--the assembled council--the attendance of Hengist and Horsa,
all bear evidence of some previous understanding between the parties,
similar to what we have before alluded to. Vortigern first interrogated
the Saxons as to the nature of their creed; Hengist enumerated the
names of the gods they worshipped, and further added, that they also
dedicated the fourth and sixth days in the week to Woden and Frea.
Inference might be drawn from the reply of Vortigern, that the Britons
were already Christians, though such a conclusion ought, doubtless, to
be limited in its application to the inhabitants of our island, for we
have evidence that all were not.
It was agreed that the Saxons were to assist the Britons, to drive the
Scots and Picts out of the island--that for such service they were to
receive food and clothing, and when not engaged in war they were to be
stationed in Ruithina, for by that name was the Isle of Thanet called
by the ancient Britons. There is no evidence that Vortigern intended to
give up this is
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