APPENDIX I.
AUTHORITIES.
All that portion of archæological science which deals with prehistoric man is of recent origin, and the conclusions arrived at as to our own island, even by the most careful inquirers, must be accepted provisionally, as liable to much modification by the labours of future students. Meanwhile the results generally accepted by scholars may be found well stated by Professor Boyd Dawkins (Early Man in Britain, 1880), by Dr. John Beddoe (The Races of Britain, 1885), and by the Rev. Canon Greenwell and Geo. Rolleston (British Barrows, 1877). All these authors deal chiefly with the results of excavation in the caves and sepulchral barrows of Britain. The measurement of the skulls disinterred from thence and the character of the vessels found in proximity to the bodies, are the chief criteria by which they decide on the racial character of the occupants. Professor John Rhys (The Early Ethnology of the British Isles, 1890, and Celtic Britain, 2nd edit., 1884) approaches the subject of British ethnology rather from the side of early traditions and the evidence, somewhat meagre and unsatisfactory, of Celtic annalists, but with much help from philology.
Passing from the consideration of prehistoric man to the notices of Britain furnished by the writers of classical antiquity we come first to the Greek and Roman geographers. The chief Greek writers are Strabo and Ptolemy. Strabo, who was a native of Asia Minor, lived at the Christian era, and may be considered a slightly younger contemporary of Augustus. His colossal work on geography was written in his old age, and was probably finished about A.D. 19. Though he was an extensive traveller, he never visited Britain: his knowledge of our island seems to be chiefly derived from Cæsar, and he is altogether wrong as to its geographical position, believing it to lie alongside of the coast of Gaul from the Pyrenees to the mouths of the Rhine. He imagined Ireland to be entirely north of Britain.
Ptolemy, who was a native of Egypt, was a contemporary of the Antonine emperors, and probably wrote about A.D. 150. He was essentially an astronomical geographer, whose object was to fix the latitude and longitude of every place of which he took note. His industry was extraordinary, and his scientific conceptions were somewhat in advance of his age; but owing to the inaccurate information upon which he had often to rely, his results are sometimes very far from correct. Thus, though he gets England and Ireland almost into their true position, correcting the errors of Strabo concerning them, he pulls Scotland so far round to the east that it is at right angles to England, and its northernmost point almost touches Denmark.
Pliny, who was born in A.D. 23 and perished in the great eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, is the only Latin geographer who tells us much about Britain, and his descriptions do not add much to our knowledge, but relate chiefly to natural history and to the cultivation of the soil.
For the Roman conquest of Britain our chief authorities are, of course, Cæsar and Tacitus. The former, in the fourth and fifth books of his history of the Gallic War, describes in a few brief, soldier-like sentences the incidents of his two invasions, hardly attempting to conceal their ill-success. The latter, in the fourteenth book of his Annals, gives us the story of the insurrection of the Britons under Boudicca and its suppression by Suetonius Paulinus. An earlier book in the same series undoubtedly gave the history of the conquest of Britain under Claudius, but this is unfortunately lost. He gives us, however, in his Life of Agricola, a pretty full account of the events which signalised the command of his father-in-law, Julius Agricola (A.D. 78–84), and a slight notice of some events which occurred under his predecessors. Unfortunately Tacitus, superb as he is in delineation of character and scornful summaries of palace intrigues, fails grievously as a military historian, which happens to be his chief function when he is concerned with the history of Britain. Mommsen (bk. viii., chap. 5) says: “A worse narrative than that of Tacitus concerning this war (Paulinus against Boudicca) is hardly to be found even in this most unmilitary of authors”.
To make up for the loss of the earlier books of Tacitus’s Annals we have the history of Dion Cassius, a Greek rhetorician who wrote his Roman History about A.D. 222. Though a useful compiler, Dion is, of course, no contemporary authority for the conquest of Britain under Claudius. Such as he is, however, we have to depend on him almost entirely for our knowledge of that event.
After we lose the guidance of Tacitus, our information as to Roman Britain becomes excessively meagre. Even the work of Dion Cassius after A.D. 54 is lost in the original, and only exists for us in an epitome—a tolerably full one, it must be admitted—made in the twelfth century by Xiphilinus, an ignorant and careless monk of Constantinople. In addition to this, however, we receive a feeble and flickering light from the collection of memoirs called the Historia Augusta. This book, the result of the joint labours of some five or six authors whose very names are a subject of controversy, relates in clumsy and uncritical fashion the chief events in the lives of the Roman emperors during the second and third centuries. Poor as is the performance of these authors, and though they were probably separated by an interval of one or two centuries from the events which they record, we have reason to be grateful to them for the information which they supply to us, especially as to our two most illustrious conquerors, Hadrian and Severus. For the reign of the latter emperor we may also glean a few facts from the work of the Greek historian Herodian.
The story of the imperial pretenders, Carausius and Allectus, and of the suppression of their independent royalty, is told in a certain fashion by two panegyrists, called Mamertinus and Eumenius, in their orations before the triumphant emperors; but it is hard to extract solid history out of their windy rhetoric.
A historian to whom we owe much, and should doubtless owe far more if a perverse literary fate had not deprived us of nearly half of his work, is the life-guardsman Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the latter half of the fourth century and wrote the history of the Roman empire from A.D. 99 to 378. As it is, possessing only those books which tell of the years from 353 to 378, we derive from him some valuable information as to the British campaigns of the elder Theodosius. If we possessed the earlier books of his history, we should almost certainly know much more than we do as to the appearance of Roman Britain in the second century and the mode of life of its native inhabitants, for Ammianus is fond of showing off his geographical knowledge, and resembles Herodotus in the interest which he takes in the manners and customs of half-civilised races. His Latin style—he was a Syrian Greek by birth—is extraordinarily affected and often obscure, but for all that, few literary events could be more gratifying to the historical student than the recovery of the lost books of Ammianus.
For the social, military and religious life of the Romans in Britain an invaluable source of information is contained in the inscriptions which are collected in the seventh volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin, 1873). Many of the most important will be found in the Lapidarium Septentrionale, edited by Dr. Bruce (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1875). Inscriptions discovered more recently must be looked for in the volumes of the Ephemeris Epigraphica, published by the Academie der Wissenschaften at Berlin, or in the Archæological Journal and the proceedings of local antiquarian societies.
Orosius, a disciple of St. Augustine, has done something to lighten the darkness which hangs over the end of Roman rule in Britain. In the last book of his Histories, which were meant to show that the calamities of the empire were not due to the introduction of Christianity, he tells us with some little detail the story of the military revolt of the year 406, of which we also learn some details from the Greek historian Zosimus. A chronicler who generally bears the name of another friend of St. Augustine’s, Prosper Tiro, but who was evidently a theological opponent of that saint, and whose personality is really unknown, inserts in his Chronicle two all-important dates for the Roman evacuation of Britain and for the Saxon invasions. The contemporary poet, Claudian, writing in 403, also gives us in a few lines some important information as to the former event. This is practically the last trustworthy notice as to our island that we find in the works of any classical writer. Henceforth our history for many centuries is written for us entirely by ecclesiastics, and this must be the modern historian’s excuse for the strongly ecclesiastical colour which he is obliged to give even to a political narrative. One such ecclesiastical authority is The Life of Germanus by the presbyter Constantius, as has been previously said. This Life has suffered much from later interpolations. See an elaborate analysis of it by Levison in the Neues Archiv, vol. xxix.
The next writer who lifts any portion of the pall which hides the history of our island in the fifth and sixth centuries is Gildas, the author of the Liber Querulus “concerning the ruin of Britain”. Rightly is the book called querulous, for it is one long drawn out lamentation over the barbarities of the Saxon invaders and the irreligion of the Britons which had brought this ruin upon them. If Gildas, who wrote probably between 540 and 560, had chosen to tell us simply all that he had seen or heard from men of the preceding generation concerning Saxon raids and Cymric resistance, his work would have been one of the corner-stones of English history. As it is, we have to be thankful for the few facts that he imparts to us between sob and sob over the wickedness of the world. A critical edition of this author by Mommsen will be found in vol. xiii. of the Auctores Antiquissimi in the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica. An excellent edition with notes by the Rev. Hugh Williams, Professor of Church History at the Theological College, Bala, is now in course of publication for the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion.
More perplexing, but fuller of matter, good, bad and indifferent, is the work of the much later Welsh ecclesiastic, Nennius, who lived about two centuries and a half after Gildas. This author exhibits a degree of ignorance and puzzle-headedness which gives one a very unfavourable idea of the intellectual condition of a Welsh monastery about the year 800. His chronology is wildly incorrect, and he intermingles with solemn history stories of dragons and enchanters worthy of the Arabian Nights; but he has inserted into the middle of his book extracts from the work of a much earlier author (probably a Northumbrian Celt living under Anglian rule) who described the contests of English and Welsh between 547 and 679. This part of the book (to be found in chapters 57 to 65 of Nennius) has probably a real historic value. It is important to note that it is in this portion that the name of King Arthur is found. As already mentioned (p. 100) we are much indebted to the labours of Prof. Zimmer (Nennius Vindicatus) with reference to this important but most provoking writer.
Turning from the Welsh to the English authorities we come to the illustrious name of Bede, the greatest scholar of his age and the best historian whom any European country produced in the early Middle Ages. His main work, the Historia Ecclesiastica, was finished in the year 731, about four years before his death. There is an excellent edition of this book and of some of the smaller historical works of Bede by the Rev. Charles Plummer (2 vols.: Oxford, 1896). The historical importance of this work begins with its account of the conversion of England to Christianity; and, for all the events of the seventh century and the early part of the eighth, it is priceless. As to the events which marked the Roman occupation of Britain, Bede probably had no other sources of information than those which we also possess. For the two centuries of darkness between the departure of the last Roman soldier and the arrival of the first Roman missionary he had evidently very scanty sources to draw from, and in fact he springs, almost at one bound, from the year 450 to 596.
For the closing years of the seventh century we have another valuable authority in the Life of Wilfrid, written by his contemporary, Eddius (Historians of the Church of York, edited by J. Raine, Rolls Series): and this is the more important as, for some reason or other, Bede shows sometimes a curious reticence as to Wilfrid’s career. There is a very careful comparison of the two narratives, that of Bede and that of Eddius, by Mr. B. W. Wells in the sixth volume of the English Historical Review (1891), pp. 535–50. His conclusions are not favourable to Eddius’s veracity.
In the eighth century, after we have lost the invaluable guidance of Bede, we may derive some help from the letters of two great Churchmen, Boniface and Alcuin, both published in Monumenta Germaniæ Historica (Epistolae, vols. iii. and iv., 1892 and 1895).
For the whole period from the Saxon invasion onwards we rely with increasing confidence on the great historical document, or collection of documents, which is sometimes called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but which, following Freeman’s example, we generally designate by the simple but sufficient name of The Chronicle (Plummer, 2 vols., 1892). The reason for introducing the notice of it here is that, according to the opinion of its latest editor, we arrive, in the ninth century, at the time of the first compilation of this work, so all-important for the students of our national history. If he is right in thinking that the impulse toward the commencement of this great undertaking was given by King Alfred—a belief which seems to be shared by Mr. Stevenson, the editor of Asser—it cannot have begun to assume its present shape till near the year 900. Some materials, however, for the building of such an edifice must have been gradually accumulating for at least two centuries; in what shape, of what kind, of what degree of historical trustworthiness, we shall, perhaps, never be able to determine. There were probably rhythmical pedigrees of the kings and some stories of their exploits handed down through generations of minstrels; and, at any rate since the introduction of Christianity, some simple annals such as that to which Bede alludes when he says that 634, the year of the reign of two apostate Northumbrian kings, was, “by those who compute the times of kings,” taken away from them and included in the reign of their pious successor Oswald. This hypothesis, however, will not help us much when we come to consider how Alfred’s literary friends could recover accurate dates and details of events during the preceding 150 years of darkness, and we must probably admit that for that period there may have been a good deal of imaginative chronology of the kind suggested by Lappenberg, as already stated on p. 87. Thus all this earlier portion of the Chronicle has to be used with caution, and we dare not lay any great stress upon the historical character of its statements; only let not its authority be unduly decried, seeing that for a good part of the road it is the only light that we have.
Even after we emerge into the fuller light of the seventh century, and when we have no reason to doubt the truly historical character of the Chronicle, we cannot award it the praise of minute accuracy in matters of chronology. Continually historians have found it necessary to correct its dates by one, two, or three years; and even the foundation date of Egbert’s accession, which used to be given on the authority of the Chronicle to 800, has had to be shifted to 802.
The Chronicle, if begun under the influence of Alfred (probably at Winchester), was continued in various monasteries on somewhat independent lines, and thus, as its latest editor points out, “instead of saying that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is contained in seven MSS., it would be truer to say that those MSS. contain four Anglo-Saxon Chronicles”. These are represented by the four chief MSS. which are now known to scholars by the four letters A, C, D, E. The first of these MSS. is at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, the second and third in the British Museum, and the fourth in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Very briefly stated, the distinguishing characteristics of these four MSS. are as follows:—
A (sometimes marked by an Anglo-Saxon letter in order to distinguish it from a later and unimportant manuscript to which also that initial has been given) is also called, from its former owner, Archbishop Parker’s manuscript, or the Winchester Chronicle. There can be little doubt that this manuscript was originally a native of Winchester, and began to be compiled there in Alfred’s reign. A Winchester book it continued till the year 1001, after which it seems to have been transferred to Christ Church, Canterbury, where it was probably lying at the time of the suppression of the monasteries. This manuscript, in many respects the most valuable of all, ends with the year 1070.
C is associated on good authority with the monastery of Abingdon. “Its language [says Professor Earle] is of the most ripe and polished kind, marking the culmination of Saxon literature.” It closes in 1066, but a short postscript has been added in the Northumbrian dialect. One important feature in this manuscript is its inclusion of what is called “The Mercian Register,” describing the great deeds of the Lady of Mercia from 902 to 924. In the next century it is distinguished by the hostile tone which it adopts towards Earl Godwine and his family.
D, which is generally called the Worcester Chronicle, but which seems to have a closer connexion with Evesham, is, in its present shape, a late compilation, none of it probably being of earlier date than 1100. It seems to be closely allied to C, but differs from that manuscript by its friendlier attitude towards Godwine. It is the only version which gives us any account of the battle of Hastings. It ends thirteen years after the Conquest.
E, the Laud manuscript or Peterborough Chronicle, is of great importance, inasmuch as it alone continues the history down to so late a date as 1154, and its great variety of style makes it a leading authority for the history of the English language. In its present shape it is emphatically a book of the Abbey of Peterborough, and loses no opportunity of glorifying that religious house. It probably owes its origin to a disastrous fire which happened at Peterborough in 1116, in which all the muniments of the abbey perished. A manuscript akin to D seems to have been then brought thither from some other monastery, and this copy of it, with sundry interpolations, has been made to replace the perished Chronicle. A and E are the two Chronicles which Plummer and his predecessor Earle have chosen as the corner-stones of their editions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, but passages are inserted from C and D where these authorities give us important variations.
For the personal history of Alfred the Great and some information as to the events of his reign, we have the very important treatise by his contemporary, Asser, De Rebus Gestis Aelfredi (Stevenson, 1904). Asser was a Welsh ecclesiastic, belonging to the diocese of St. Davids, who came about the year 880 to the court of King Alfred, seeking protection from the tyranny of his native sovereigns, sons of Rhodri Mawr. That protection was freely accorded, and the king, perceiving Asser to be a learned man, stipulated that he should spend at least half of every year in the land of the Saxons. Eventually he became bishop of Sherborne, and no doubt ceased altogether to reside in Wales. He died apparently in 910, about ten years after his patron. Asser’s Life of King Alfred which ends practically with the year 887, giving no account of the last thirteen years of his reign, is a very inartistic work, containing annalistic notices, taken apparently from the Chronicle, strangely jumbled up with those interesting personal details as to the character and habits of the great king which give it in our eyes all its value. It has been singularly unfortunate in its transmission, since the only copy of which we have any certain knowledge perished in the great fire at the Cottonian Library in 1731. Happily, it had been already printed three times, but unfortunately those three editions all contained several large interpolations made by its first editor, Archbishop Parker, from a mistaken desire to round off its information by extracts from other authors. Partly owing to these interpolations, its genuineness has been subjected to severe attacks, which have sometimes seemed likely to be successful. Its character, however, has been triumphantly vindicated by its latest editor, Mr. W. H. Stevenson, who has succeeded in separating the original text of the Life from the interpolations of its editors, and thus presenting it with all its naïve charm, often also, it must be admitted, with all its provoking verbiage and obscurity, to the lovers of the greatest Anglo-Saxon king. In the same volume Mr. Stevenson has printed the Annals of St. Neot’s, which were formerly, without justification, ascribed to Asser, and from which some of the worst interpolations into his real work were derived. It is an important testimony to the authentic character of Asser’s work that large extracts have been made from it by so judicious a compiler as Florence of Worcester.
For the reconstruction of English history in the tenth century our materials are very unsatisfactory. The impulse given by Alfred to the composition of the Chronicle seems to have soon exhausted itself, and for fifty years after the death of his son (925 to 975) it is, as Earle has said, “wonderfully meagre: a charge which is often unreasonably alleged against these Chronicles in the most undiscriminating manner, but which may be justified here by a comparison with the historical literature of two earlier generations”. Its aridity is in some degree atoned for by the ballads, such as that on the battle of Brunanburh, which are inserted at intervals in its pages; but with all the poetic interest attaching to these pieces they can hardly be considered a satisfactory substitute for history. In these circumstances we have to be thankful for such help as can be derived from biographies of the saints; especially from the nearly contemporary Life of Dunstan, by an anonymous Saxon priest who is known only by his initial B. (Memorials of St. Dunstan, edited by Stubbs, Rolls Series), and the similar anonymous but contemporary Life of Oswald, Archbishop of York (Historians of the Church of York, edited by J. Raine, Rolls Series). The later lives of Dunstan, by Adelard, Osbern and Eadmer (all included in Stubbs’s Memorials of St. Dunstan), soon fade off into legend, and must be used with caution.
We ought to have been greatly helped at this period by the work of Ethelweard the historian (Monumenta Historica Britannica, Petrie, 1848), who was of royal descent, was apparently for a time Ealdorman of Wessex, and wrote near the end of the tenth century. Unfortunately the basis of his work seems to have been the Chronicle itself, and when he has any additional facts to communicate, his style is so pompously obscure that it is difficult to make out what he means. In default, therefore, of adequate contemporary authorities, the historian is obliged to lean more than he has yet done on the compiling historians who wrote in the century which followed the Norman Conquest. Of these, happily, there is a goodly number, and they are on the whole very favourable specimens of their class.
(1) Florence of Worcester (edited by B. Thorpe, English Historical Society, 1848–49), a monk of whom we know nothing save that he died in 1118, having earned a high reputation for acuteness and industry, took as the staple of his narrative the work of an Irish monk named Marianus Scotus, who was settled at Mainz and composed a World-Chronicle reaching down to the year 1082. With the material thus furnished him Florence interwove extracts specially relating to English history from Bede, Asser and the Chroniclers, bringing down his recital to 1117, the year preceding his death. His work was almost entirely that of a compiler, but it was conscientiously and thoroughly done, and its chief value for us is that though his story approaches most nearly to that told in the Worcester Chronicle (D), it is not a mere transcript of that work, and he evidently had access to some manuscript of the Chronicle which is now lost. The important position which he holds in relation to Asser has already been described.
(2) Some important facts concerning Northumbrian history may be gleaned from the ill-arranged pages of Symeon of Durham (edited by T. Arnold, Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1882–85). This author, who was born a few years before the Conquest, became a monk at Durham about the year 1085, and spent probably the rest of his life by the tomb of St. Cuthbert. Soon after 1104 he wrote a History of the Church of Durham, which supplies some valuable information not to be found elsewhere, as to the history of events in the north of England during the thirty years following the Danish invasion of 875. In his old age Symeon began, but apparently did not finish, a History of the Kings, which in its present state is a piece of patchwork put together from various sources, and in its chaotic condition corresponds only too closely with the reality of Northumbrian history during that dismal period. Its chief value for the historian is that it incorporates an old Northumbrian Chronicle by an anonymous writer (perhaps called Gesta veterum Northanhymbrorum) describing the chief events which happened in that part of the country from the end of Bede’s history to the accession of Egbert (731–802). For a full discussion of the materials used by Symeon in this work the reader is referred to Mr. Arnold’s preface and to Stubbs’s preface to Roger Hoveden. It cannot be said that even his explanations make the matter very clear. An interesting tract, De Obsessione Dunelmi, which has been attributed on insufficient evidence to this author, is bound up with his works.
(3) Henry of Huntingdon (edited by T. Arnold, Rolls Series, 1879) was born about eighteen years after the Conquest and died soon after the accession of Henry II. He was an archdeacon in the diocese of Lincoln, and composed at the request of his bishop a History of the English, of which various editions were published in his lifetime, the first probably about 1130, and the last soon after 1154. Henry relies chiefly on the Peterborough Chronicle, but he seems also to have possessed some other manuscript, of which he occasionally gives indications. Unfortunately he relies not only on manuscripts and Chronicles, but also to a large extent on his own imagination. From materials not much ampler than those which we possess, he is fond of constructing a rhetorical narrative with many details, for which it is almost certain that he had no authority. Occasionally there seems reason to believe that he is repeating popular traditions or fragments of popular songs, but upon the whole it is safer not to rely greatly on his facts, where these are not corroborated by other historians.
(4) A much greater historian than Henry was his slightly younger contemporary, William of Malmesbury (edited by Stubbs, Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1887–89), who was probably born about 1095 and died, or at any rate discontinued his literary labours, soon after 1142. For an elaborate discussion of these dates see Bishop Stubbs’s preface. As he remarks, William “deliberately set himself forward as the successor of the Venerable Bede: and it is seldom that an aspirant of this sort came so near as he did to the realisation of his pretensions”. His most important work for our purpose is the Gesta Regum, but from his Gesta Pontificum (Hamilton, Rolls Series, 1870) some facts relating to civil history may be gleaned. He is especially minute in all points connected with his own monastery of Malmesbury and with that of Glastonbury, in which he seems to have been for some time a guest. He has a wide outlook over continental affairs, and though he has been convicted of many inaccuracies and is unfortunately not sufficiently careful as to the authenticity of the documents quoted by him, we must admit his claim to be considered a really great historian. The Gesta Regum became at once a popular and standard history, and was the source from which a crowd of followers made abundant quotations.
(5) A great patron of learned men, and especially of historians, was Robert, Earl of Gloucester, natural son of Henry I. To him William of Malmesbury dedicated his chief historical works, and it was from materials contained in his library that Geoffrey Gaimar (edited by Hardy and Martin, Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1888–89) wrote his Estorie des Engles. Scarcely anything is known about the author, except that he wrote before 1147, the date of the Earl of Gloucester’s death, and that he was probably an ecclesiastic and a Norman. His history is a rhymed chronicle in early French, and is to a large extent based on the English Chronicle; a proof that he understood Anglo-Saxon, though it was not his native tongue. He evidently, however, had access to other sources of information now closed to us, and this gives his Estorie a certain value, notwithstanding the author’s occasional tendency to glide off into unhistorical romance, as for instance in the long and legendary story which he tells about Edgar’s marriage with Elgiva. His geographical indications are sometimes worthy of special notice.
For sixty years after 982 the fortunes of England were so closely intertwined with those of Denmark and Norway that it is impossible wholly to overlook the contributions which Scandinavian authors have made to our national history. These consist chiefly of the great collection of Icelandic Sagas popularly known as the Heimskringla, and formerly made accessible to the English reader only by Laing’s Sea-Kings of Norway, now in much completer form in the Saga Library of Morris and Magnusson. Three volumes of the Heimskringla have been published: the fourth is still to appear. For a full and exhaustive account, however, of the rich Dano-Icelandic literature of which the so-called Heimskringla is only a portion, we must turn to the noble work of Vigfusson and Powell, the Corpus Poeticum Boreale (two vols., Oxford, 1883), and to Vigfusson’s Prolegomena to the Sturlunga Saga (Oxford, 1879). It is shown by these authors that while the name of Snorri Sturlason is rightly venerated as that of the chief literary preserver of these sagas, an earlier Icelandic scholar named Ari, born in the year after the Norman Conquest, was the first to bring them into some sort of relation with exact chronological history. The narratives seem to be wonderfully true in feeling but often false in fact. Probably a good deal of rather tedious critical work has yet to be done before the Heimskringla can be definitely and safely correlated with the Saxon Chronicle, but we may safely go to that collection of sagas and to the literature of which it forms part, the true Iliad and Odyssey of the Scandinavian peoples, for a picture of the manner of life, the characters and the ideals of those Danish and Norwegian sea-rovers who were the terror of Angle and Saxon, but from whom we ourselves are largely descended.
For the reign of Canute and his sons we are sometimes placed under obligation by the author of the Encomium Emmæ (Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, vol. xix., 1866), a panegyric on the widow of Ethelred and Canute, written apparently by an ecclesiastic of Bruges, who had shared her bounty when she was living in exile. The author sometimes deviates in the most extraordinary way from historic truth, but he seems to have been well acquainted with the facts, though he dishonestly concealed them to please his patroness.
With the extinction of the Danish dynasty and the revival of West Saxon royalty we enter upon a new period, in which our historical literature assumes a controversial character which it has not hitherto possessed. In previous centuries there has been no practical danger in speaking of The Chronicle, the amount of matter common to the various copies being so large and the divergencies between them so comparatively unimportant. Now, however, it is necessary to speak of The Chronicles in the plural, since they often give us absolutely different versions of the same event. The Abingdon Chronicle, as before remarked, is hostile to Godwine, while Worcester (or Evesham) and Peterborough generally favour his cause. Winchester is almost silent for this period. There is a nearly contemporary Life of Edward the Confessor in Latin by an unknown author (printed at the end of the volume, Lives of Edward the Confessor, in the Rolls Series, 1858), from which some noteworthy facts may be collected, but the value of the work is lessened by the writer’s evident determination to praise to the uttermost Godwine and all his family, in order to recommend himself to Edward’s widow Edith, daughter of Godwine, to whom this Vita Edwardi Regis is dedicated. In comparison with his wife’s family the king himself comes off rather poorly.
The life of the Confessor was soon caught up into the region of hagiological romance, and loses historical value accordingly. It does not seem possible to build any solid conclusions on the Vita Edwardi Regis by Aelred, itself borrowed from the twelfth-century biographer Osbert, still less on the curious and interesting Estoire de Seint Ædward le Rei, a French poem written about 1245 and dedicated to Eleanor, queen of Henry III. (Lives of Edward the Confessor).
The Norman historians, who now of course become of first-rate importance for the history, are fully described in the second volume. It will be sufficient here to mention the names of the most important: William of Poitiers, William of Jumièges (both contemporaries of the Conqueror), Ordericus Vitalis (a generation later) and William Wace, author of two French metrical Chronicles, the Roman de Brut and the Roman de Rou. The latter poem describes with much detail and some poetic power the events of the Norman invasion of England, but its author wrote about a century after the event, and the degree of reliance which may be placed on his statements, where not supported by more strictly contemporary authority, is still a subject of debate among historians. Editions by Pluquet (1826) and Andresen (1877–79) are mentioned with commendation, but the most convenient edition for an English student is that prepared by Sir Alexander Malet with a tolerably close translation of Pluquet’s text into English rhyme (London, 1860).
The other all-important document for the story of the Conquest, the Bayeux Tapestry, has been reproduced in facsimile, with a valuable illustrative commentary, by F. R. Fowke (London, 1875, reprinted in abridged form in the Ex Libris Series, 1898). Discussing the date and origin of this celebrated work, he rejects the traditional connexion of the Tapestry with Queen Matilda, but believes it to be strictly contemporary with the Conquest, having been “probably ordered for his cathedral by Bishop Odo and made by Norman work-people at Bayeux”. Refer also to Freeman’s Norman Conquest, vol. iii., note A, for a discussion of the authority of the Tapestry.
Of the Welsh authorities for this period contained in this volume the present writer cannot speak with confidence. The chief appear to be (1) the Annales Cambriæ, supposed to have been compiled in the year 954 and afterwards continued to 1288.
(2) The Brut y Tywysogion, or Chronicle of the Princes, which begins in 680 and ends with 1282. It is thought to be based on a Latin chronicle written in the middle of the twelfth century by a Pembrokeshire monk named Caradog of Llancarvan.
(3) The Brut y Saesson, or Chronicle of the Saxons (800–1382), seems to be chiefly founded on the last-named work, but with some additions from English sources; of no great value, at any rate for pre-Conquest history.
It is to be wished that some scholar would carefully sift the Welsh chronicles and poems, and tell us what are the solid historical facts that may be gathered from their pages.
Without attempting to give a list, however imperfect, of modern books dealing with the early history of England, it may be permitted to mention a few of the chief land-marks.
The history of Roman Britain has yet to be written. Every year excavations, inscriptions, coins add a little to our knowledge of these tantalisingly obscure centuries. Perhaps the best short sketches to which the student can be referred are the chapter on Britain in Mommsen’s Provinces of the Roman Empire (translated by Dickson: London, 1886), and a similar chapter in Emil Hübner’s Römische Herrschaft in West Europa (Berlin, 1890). Both these scholars are complete masters of all that epigraphy has to tell concerning the Roman occupation of Britain. In the early chapters of various volumes of the Victoria County History of England, Mr. F. Haverfield is bringing the Roman archæology of the counties there described thoroughly up to date. It is to be hoped that these may all before long be combined by him into one great work on Britannia Romana.
For Anglo-Saxon history perhaps Lappenberg’s Geschichte von England (translated by B. Thorpe: London, 1881) is still the most trustworthy guide; but the Making of England and the Conquest of England by John Richard Green have all the characteristic charm of that author’s historical work; perhaps also it should be said, his characteristic tendency to translate a brilliant hypothesis into historical fact. The truly monumental history of The Norman Conquest by E. A. Freeman will assuredly always remain the great quarry from which all later builders will hew their blocks for building. Even those who differ most strongly from his conclusions must bear witness to his unwearied industry and single-minded desire for historical accuracy, whether he always compassed it or not. One of Freeman’s antagonists, C. H. Pearson, offers some useful suggestions in his History of England during the Early and Middle Ages; and the same author’s Historical Maps of England during the First Thirteen Centuries contain an immense amount of carefully collected geographical material, and deserve to be more widely known than they are at the present time. Another doughty combatant, J. H. Round, in Feudal England (London, 1895), has set himself to demolish Professor Freeman’s theories as to the battle of Hastings and some other matters.
Sir James Ramsay’s Foundations of England (1898) is an extremely careful digest of all the authorities bearing on the subject.
W. Bright’s Early English Church History, C. F. Keary’s Vikings in Western Christendom and C. Plummer’s Life and Times of Alfred the Great are all helpful books.
Where English and Scottish history touch one another the works of E. W. Robertson, Scotland under Her Early Kings and Historical Essays; W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland, and Andrew Lang, History of Scotland, will be found useful, and should be consulted in order to see the arguments of the champions of Scottish independence.
For the history of institutions reference should be made to Bishop Stubbs (Constitutional History); F. W. Maitland (Domesday Book and Beyond); H. M. Chadwick (Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions); J. M. Kemble (The Saxons in England); F. Palgrave (The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth); H. C. Coote (The Romans of Britain—worth studying, with distrust, as an extreme statement of the survival of Roman customs in Britain); F. Seebohm (The English Village Community); and P. Vinogradoff (Villainage in England, The Growth of the Manor and an essay on “Folkland” in the English Historical Review for 1893, which has been generally accepted as containing the true explanation of that much-discussed term of Anglo-Saxon law).
A good edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws was prepared in 1840 by Benjamin Thorpe and published by the Record Commission. A more complete edition, with full commentary, was made by Reinhold Schmid and published in Leipzig in 1858. Even this is now being surpassed by the work of Felix Liebermann (Halle, 1898–1903), who has published an excellent text, but whose commentary on the laws has yet to appear. For the charters and other similar documents of the Anglo-Saxon kings we may refer to Kemble’s Codex Diplomaticus (6 vols., 1839–48); Birch’s Cartularium Saxonicum (3 vols., 1885–93), and Haddan and Stubbs’s Councils (3 vols., 1869–78), which are splendid collections of this kind of material for the historical student. As convenient manuals, Diplomatarium Anglicum Aevi Saxonici by Benjamin Thorpe (1845); Stubbs’s Select Charters (1895), and Earle’s Handbook to the Land Charters, will be found useful.
For a much more detailed list of authorities than can here be given the reader is referred to the excellent manual on The Sources and Literature of English History by Dr. Charles Gross of Harvard University (1900).