anglo saxon britain the recovery of the north

8/8/2019 Anglo Saxon Britain the Recovery of the North

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ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.

CHAPTER XV.THE RECOVERY OF THE NORTH.

THE history of the tenth century and the first halfof the eleventh consists entirely of the continuedcontest between the West Saxons and the Scandinavians. I t falls naturally into three periods. The firstis that c{ the English reaction, when the West Saxonkings, Eadward and .!Ethelstan, gradually reconquered -.\je Danish North by inches at a time. The secondis that of the Augustan age, when Dunstan andEadgar held together the whole of Britain for a whilein the hands of a single West Saxon over-lord. Thethird is that of the decadence, when, under .!Ethelred,the ill-welded empire fell asunder, and the Danishkings, Cnut, Harold, and Harthacnut, ruled overall England, including even the unconquered Wessexof .!Elfred himself.

At .!Elfred's death, his dominions comprised thelarger Wessex, from Kent to the Cornish border atExeter, together with the portion of Mercia southwest of Watling Street. The former kingdom passedinto the hands of his son Eadward; the latter wasstill held by the ealdorman .!Ethelred, who had married .!Elfrcd's daughter .!Ethelflred. The departureof the Danish host, led by Hresten, -left the English


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ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.time to breathe and to recruit their strength. Henceforth, for nearly a century, the direct wicking incursions cease, and the war is confined to a long strugglewith the N orthmen already settled in England. Fouryears later, the east Anglian Danes broke the peaceand harried Mercia and Wessex j but Eadward overran their lands in return, and the Kentish men, in aseparate battle, attacked and slew Eric their king withseveral of his earls. In 9 I 2, LEthelred the Merciandied, and Eadward at once incorporated London andOxford with 'his own dominions, leaving his sisteri Ethelflaod only the northern half of her husband'sprincipality. Thenceforth LEthelflaod, "the Lady ofthe Mercians," turned deliberately to the conquest ofthe North. She adopted a fresh kind of tactics,which mark again a new departure in the Englishpolicy. Instead of keeping to the old plan ofalternate harryings on either side, and precarioustenure of lands from time to time, LEthelflaodbegan building regular fortresses or bur/Is all alongher north-eastern frontiers, using these afterwardsas bases for fresh operations against the enemy.The spade went hand in hand with the sword: theEnglish were becoming engineers as well as fighters.In the year of her husband's death, the Lady builtbur/Is at Sarrat and Bridgnorth. The next year "shewent with all the Mercians to Tamworth, and builtthe burh there in early summer j and ere Lammas,that at Stafford." In the two succeeding years sheset up other strongholds at Eddesbury, Warwick,Cherbury, Wardbury, and Runcorn. By 917, she


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THE RECOVERY OF THE NORTH. 143. found herself strong enough to attack Derby, one ofthe chief cities in the Danish confederacy of the Five

Burgs, which she captured after a hard siege. Thenceshe turned on Leicester, which capitulated on herapproach, the Da nish host going over quietly to herside. She was in communication with the Danes ofYork for the surrender of that city, too, when shedied suddenly in her royal town of Tamworth, in theyear 918.Meanwhile Eadward had been pushing forward hisown boundary in the east, building burhs at Hertfordand Witham, and endeavourrng to subjugate theDanish league in Bedford, Huntingdon, and North-ampton. In 915, Thurke tel, the jarI of Bedford," sought him for lord," and Eadward afterwards built aburlz there also. On his sister's death, he annexed allher territories, and then, in a fierce and long doubtfulstruggle, reconquered not only Huntingdon andNorthampton but East Anglia as well. The ChristianEnglish hailed him as a deliverer. Next, he turnedon Stamford, the Danish capital of the Fens, and onNottingham, the stronghold of the Southumbrianhost. In both towns he erected burlzs. These suc-cesses once more placed the West Saxon king in theforemost position amongst the many rulers of Britain.The smaller principalities, unable to hold their ownagainst the Scandinavians, began spontaneously torally round Eadward as their leader and suzerain.In the same year with the conquest of Stamford, " thekings of the North Welsh, Howel, and Cledauc, andJeothwel, and all the North Welsh kin, sought him


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[ 44 ANGLO-SA XON BRITAIN .for lord." In 923, Eadward pushed further northward, and sent a Mercian host to conquer" Manchester in Northumbria," and fortify and man it.A line of twenty fortresses now girdled the Englishfrontier, from Colchester, through Bedford and Nottingham, to Manchester and Chester. Next year,Eadward himself, now immediate king of all Englandsouth of Humber, attacked the last remaining Danishkingdom, Northumbria, throwing a bridge across theTrent at Nottingham, anq marching against Bakewellin Peakland, where again he built a burh. The newtactics were too fine for the rough and ready Danishleaders. Before Eadward reached York, the entire:-l'orth submitted without a blow. "The king of Scots,and all the Scottish kin, and Ragnald [Danish kingof York], and the sons of Eadulf [English kings ofI3amborough], and all who dwell in Northumbria, aswell English as Danes and Northmen and others, andalso the king of the Strathclyde Welsh and all theStrathclyde Welsh, sought him for father and forlord." This was in 924. Next year, Eadward "rexinvictus" died, over-lord of all Britain from sea to sea,while the whole country south of the Humber, saveonly Wales and Cornwall, was now practically unitedinto a single kingdom of England.But the seeming submission of the North was fallaCIOUS. The Danes had reintroduced into Britain afresh mass of incoherent barbarism, which could notthus readily coalesce. The Scandinavian leaven inthe population had put back the shadow on the dialof England some three centuries. iEthelstan, Ead-


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THE RECOVERY OF THE NORTH 145

ward's son, found himself obliged to give his sister in'marriage to Sihtric or Sigtrig, Danish king of the Yorkshire Northumbrians, which probably marks a recognition of i-iis vassal's equality_ Soon after, however,Sihtric died, and ~ t h e l s t a n made himself first king ofall England by adding Northumbria to his own immediate dominions. Then" he bowed to himself allthe kings who were in this island; first, Howel, kingof the West Welsh; and Constantine, king of Scots;and Owen, king of Gwent [South Wales]; andEaldred, son of Ealdulf of Bamborough; and withpledge and with oaths sware they peace, and forsookevery kind of heathendom." In the West, he drovethe Welsh from Exeter, which they had till thenoccupied in common with the English, and fixedtheir boundary at the Tamar. But once more thepretended vassals rebelled. Constantine, king ofScots, threw off his allegiance, and ~ t h e l s t a n thereupon "went into Scotland, both with a land hostand a ship host, and harried a mickle deal of it."In 937, the feudatories made a final and united effortto throw off the West Saxon yoke. The Scots, theStrathc1yde Welsh, the people of Wales and Cornwall,the lords of Bamborough, and the Danes throughoutthe North and East, all rose together in a great leagueagainst their over-lord. Anlaf; king of the DublinDanes, came over from Ireland to aid them, with alarge body ofwickings. The confederates met the WestSaxon fyrd or levy at an unknown spot named Brunanburh, where ~ t h e l s t a n overthrew them in a crushingdefeat, which forms the subject of a fine war-song,

L


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ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN .inserted in full in the English Chronicle.! Threeyears later .lEthelstan died, as his father had diedbefore him, undisputed over-lord of all Britain, andimmediate king of the whole Teutonic portion.Yet once more the feeble unity of the countrybroke hopelessly asunder. Eadmund, who succeededhis brother, found the Danes of the North and theMidlands again insubordinate. The year after hisaccession" the Northumbrians belied their oath, andchose Anlaf of Ireland for king." The Five Burgswent too, and the old boundary ofWatling Street wasonce more made the frontier of the Danish possessions. In 944, however, Eadmund subdued allN orthumbria, and expelled its Danish kings. Hisrecovery of the Five Burgs, and the joy of the Christian English inhabitants, are vividly set forth in a frag-mentary ballad embedded in the Chronicle. The nextyear he harried Strathclyde or Cumberland, the Welshkingdom between Clyde and Morecambe, and handedit over to Malcolm, king of Scots, as a pledge of hisfidelity. At Eadmund's death in 946-when he wasstabbed in his royal hall by an outlaw-his kingdomfell to his brother Eadred. Two years later N orthumbria again revolted, and chose Eric for its king.Eadred harried and burnt the province, which hethen handed over to an earl of his own creation, oneof the Bamborough family. The king himself diedin 955, and was succeeded by his nephew Eadwig.But N orthumbria and Mercia revolted once more,

J See chapter xx.


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THE RECl)VERY OF THE NORTH. 147.and chose Eadwig's brother, Eadgar, instead.of theirown Danish princes. Eadwig died in 958, andEadgar then became king of all three provinces;thus finally uniting the whole of Teutonic EnglandInto one kingdom.Eadgar's reign forms the climax of the West Saxonpower. I t was, in fact, the only period when Englandcan be said to have enjoyed any national unity underthe Anglo-Saxon dynasties. The strong hand of apriest gave peace for some years to the ill-organisedmass. Dunstan was probably the first Englishmanwho seriously deserves tht: name of statesman. Hewas born in the half-Celtic region of Somerset, besidethe great abbey of Glastonbury, which held the bonesof Arthur, and a good deal of the imaginative Celtictemper ran probably with the blood in his veins. 1But he was above all the representative of the Romancivilisation in the barbarised, half-Danish England ofthe tenth century. He was a mUSICian, a painter, areader, and a scholar, in a world of fierce warriors

1 It is impossible to avoid noticing the increased importanceof semi-Celtic Britain under Dunstan's administration. Hewas himself at first an abbot of the old West Welsh monasteryof Glastonbury: he promoted West countrymen to the principalposts in tht kingdom: and he had Eadgar hallowed king at theancient West Welsh royal city of Bath, married to a Devonshire lady, and buried at Glastonbury. Indeed, that monasterywas under Dunstan what \Vestminster was under the laterkings. Florence uses the strange expression that Eadgar waschosen "by the Anglo-Britons:" and the meeting with theWelsh and Scotch princes in the semi-Welsh town of Chesterconveys a like implication.

L 2


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I48 ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.and ignorant nobles. Eadmund made him abbot ofGlastonbury. Eadgar appointed him first bishop ofLondon, and then, on Eadwig's death, Archbishop ofCanterbury. I t was Dunstan who really ruledEngland throughout the remainder of his life. Essentially an organiser and administrator, he was ableto weld the unwieldy empire into a rough unity,which lasted as long as its author lived, and nolonger. He appea.ied the discontent of Northumbria and the Five Burgs' by permitting them a certainamount of local independence, with the enjoyment oftheir own laws and their own lawmen. He kept afleet of boats cruising in the Irish Sea to check theDanish hosts at Dublin and Waterford. He putforward a code, known as the laws of Eadgar, for thebetter government of Wessex and the South. Hemade the over-lordship of the West Saxons overtheir British vassals more real than it had ever beenbefore; and a tale, preserved by Florence, tells usthat eight tributary kings rowed Eadgar in his royalbarge on the Dee, in token of their complete subjection. Internally, Dunstan revived the decliningspirit of monasticism, which had died down duringthe long struggle with the Danes, and attempted toreintroduce some tinge of southern civilisation intothe barbarised and half-paganised country in whichhe lived. Wherever it was possible, he "drove out thepriests, and set monks," and he endeavoured to makethe monasteries, which had degenerated during thelong war into mere landowning communities, regainonce more their old position as centres of culture


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THE RECOVERY O F THE NORTH . r49and learning. During his own time his efforts weresuccessful, and even after his death the movementwhich he had begun continued in this direction tomake itself felt, though in a feebler and less intelligentform.One act of Dunstan's policy, however, had far-reaching results, of a kind which he himself couldnever have anticipated. He handed over all Northumbria beyond the Tweed-the region now known asthe Lothians-as a fi ef to Kenneth, king of Scots.This accession of territory wholly changed thecharacter of the Scottish kingdom, and largely promoted the Teutonisation of the Celtic North. TheScottish princes now took up their residence in theEnglish town of Edinburgh, and learned to speak theEnglish language as their mother-tongue. AlreadyEadmund had made over Strathclyde or Cumberlandto Malcolm; and thus the dominions of the Scottishkings extended over the whole of the country nowknown as Scotland, save only the Scandinavian jarldoms of Caithness, Sutherland, and the Isles.Strathclyde rapidly adopted the tongue of its masters,and grew as English in language (though not in blood)as the Lothians themselves. Fife, in turn, wasquickly Anglicised, as was also the whole region southof the Highland line. Thus a new and powerful kingdom arose in the North; and at the same time thecession of an English district to the Scottish kingshad the curious result of thoroughly Anglicising twolarge and important Celtic regions, which had hithertoresisted every effort of the N orthunibrian or West


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IS ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN .Saxon over-lords . - There is no reason to believehowever, that this introduction of the English tongueand English manners was connected with any considerable immigration of Teutonic settlers into theAnglicised tracts. The population of Ayrshire, ofFife, of Perthshire, and of Aberdeen, still showsevery sign of Celtic descent, alike in physique, intemperament, and in habit of thought. The changewas, in all probability, exactly analogous to that whichwe ourselves have seen taking place in Wales, inIreland, and in the Celtic north of Scotland at thepresent day.

anglo saxon britain the recovery of the north

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