In 901 died Alfred, King of the West Saxons, and Edward, his son, succeeded him, to be succeeded in turn by his son Aethelstan in the year 925. King Alfred had, it will be remembered, agreed with Guthrum the Dane to divide England into two parts, one of which each of them should rule.

But Alfred’s son Edward enlarged his power so greatly that he was in 924 ‘chosen to father and lord by the Scots King and all the Scots people, by all the men of Northumbria—both English and Danes and Northmen—and by the King of the Strathclyde Welsh.’ To Aethelstan was accorded still greater honour, for it fell to his lot to be the first king crowned as ‘King of England.’

Now in the reign of Aethelstan there took place the greatest battle that had yet been fought between the English and the Northmen. The compact of Edward’s reign was short-lived; for in 937 the Danes of Northumbria entered into a league with Constantine, King of the Scots, and Owen, King of the Strathclyde Britons, against the King of England. Their league was joined also by two Norse Kings from Ireland, named Anlaf, one of whom had married the daughter of Constantine. To meet these disturbers of the peace Aethelstan marched north, and at a place known as Brunanburh the famous battle between them was fought.

So great was the victory here won by King Aethelstan that the chronicler who records it bursts into song when he tells how

All day, from the rising of ‘God’s candle’ until its setting, went on the fight; so that the battlefield streamed with blood, and many a Northman lay on the ground struck down with spears. Weary and sated with the fight fled the Scots, pursued by the West Saxons with swords new-sharpened on the grindstone. To none of those who, doomed to death, accompanied Anlaf over the sea did the Mercians refuse the hard hand-play. On the battlefield there lay five young kings put to sleep by the sword, with seven of Anlaf’s jarls and an uncounted host of shipmen and of Scots. Then fled the Northmen to the shore of the yellow flood; and so also fled Constantine, who had left behind his son, borne down with many wounds.

Thus departed in their nailed ships those of the Northmen whom the spears had left alive, and the King and his brother sought again the West Saxon land, exulting in victory. Behind them they left the dusky-coated kite, the swart, horny-beaked raven, the white-tailed eagle, and the grey wolf—all eager to feast upon the corpses of the slain.

Such is the picture of the battlefield painted in words by the Saxon chronicler. And when we read it we wonder to ourselves: ‘Where was Brunanburh, at which this great battle was fought?’ But the question is one to which no certain answer can be given. The name ‘Brunanburh’ is lost, and the nearest approach to it among the village names of to-day is Bromborough, on the Cheshire shore of the Mersey.

This may possibly be the site of the battle; but it is curious that two writers of old chronicles, both living within two hundred years of the actual date of the battle, agree in saying that the Norse fleet invaded England by the Humber. So also said the Bridlington monk, Peter of Langtoft, who certainly ought to know; and a Lincolnshire hermit, who translated Peter’s Norman-French into English, is very definite about it:—

If Brunanburh did lie ‘on Humber,’ on which side of the river was it? Some claim that the battle took place at Kirkburn near Driffield, and others put it at Little Weighton, nearer the river.

But one thing is certain. King Aethelstan and his men must have marched north by either the Watling Street or the Ermin Street. If the Norse fleet did come into the Humber, he must have come north by the Ermin Street, and his army could hardly have crossed the river under the circumstances. However much, therefore, we should like to assert that the greatest battle of olden times was fought in the East Riding of Yorkshire, it would be wiser not to do so, but to let our somewhat despised sister-county of Lincolnshire have the benefit of the doubt.

A glance at the map given at the end of this book will show about four miles from the Humber, on the road from Barton to Caistor, a village named Burnham. At this village there are still to be seen the remains of an ancient entrenchment enclosing a space of about 64 acres. One of the half-dozen ancient spellings of the name of the manor of Burnham is Brunan, and the suffix burh means ‘a fortified place.’

Further, men’s bones, Saxon coins, and a Saxon sword have been ploughed up on the adjoining fields; while just south of Burnham there was in the eighteenth century a road known as ‘Bloody Gate’ and just north of it there is still a ‘Dead Man Dale.’ So we shall have to concede that the southern bank of the ‘yellow flood’ has some considerable claims to the possession of the site of the famous battle of Brunanburh.

Let us pass on to the middle of the next century. For twenty-eight years England had been ruled by Danish Kings, when, in 1042, the Saxons came into their own again and the third Saxon Edward began to rule in London.

But Danish jarls still ruled at Jorvik^[19] and Jarl Siward, the eighth of these, was the greatest of them all. In 1054 he took a large army and a fleet into Scotland, where he fought against the Scots in Aberdeenshire, and slew their king Macbeth. Siward’s son Osbern was also slain in the battle, and when news of his son’s death was brought to the old jarl, he rejoiced that his son had died a worthy death. In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth it is put thus. Ross, a Scots nobleman, has just broken to Siward the news that his son ‘has paid a soldier’s debt’:—

One year later Siward’s own death took place, and these were his words when he felt that he was fated to die not on the battlefield but in his bed:—

‘I feel shame not to have fallen in one of the many battles that I have fought, and to have been preserved to die like a cow. Close me in my mail of proof, gird my sword on me, fit the helmet on my head, and put a shield in my left hand and a gilded axe in my right, that I may die like a soldier.’

So died the lord of the manors of Barmston and Holmpton, and the greatest of the Anglo-Danes of Northumbria. After his death his earldom was given by King Edward to Tostig, the son of Earl Godwin the West Saxon; and if one-half of the stories told about him by the old chroniclers are true, the Northumbrians must have felt the change acutely.

One of Tostig’s little jokes was played at his half-brother Harold’s hall at Hereford. The two had quarrelled at Windsor in the presence of King Edward, and Tostig, expelled from the Court in disgrace, had ridden to Hereford, where he found his brother’s servants busily making ready for a visit from the King. To vent his anger on his brother he killed the servants—so the story goes—chopped up their bodies, threw the legs, arms and trunks into hogsheads of wine and barrels of cider, and gaily sent word to the King that ‘he had provided against his coming plenty of salt meat.’

Small wonder that the proud Anglo-Danes of the north refused to submit for long to such a one of the despised West Saxons. In 1064 they rebelled against their unpopular jarl, outlawed him, slew his servants, both English and Danes, seized all his weapons and his gold and silver in Jorvik, and sent for Morcar, the son of Jarl Aelfgar, to be their jarl. Tostig fled to Baldwin, Count of Flanders, vowing vengeance on his half-brother Harold, who had advised the King to fall in with the wishes of the Northumbrians.

Two years passed away. Edward had died and Harold, Tostig’s half-brother, had been chosen by the Witena-gemōt to be King of England. Now was the time for Tostig to have his revenge. So he enlisted the aid of another Harold—Harold Hardrada, King of Norway, a warrior huge of stature and dauntless in courage, who had, when an exile from Norway, won fame in Sicily, Greece and Africa, and who had formed at Constantinople a bodyguard to the Emperor, consisting of five hundred Northmen. Together they would conquer England, and Harold of Norway should be its king, as Cnut, King of Denmark, had been before him.

With a fleet of 240 warships Harold of Norway set out for the conquest of England, his royal banner, the ‘Land-Waster’ proudly flying aloft. But omens of misfortune to come were not wanting; for he and his men had bad dreams at night—dreams of the English host marching down to the sea-shore led by a wolf on whose back was seated a ‘witch-wife.’ Moreover, the witch-wife fed the wolf with the corpses of Northmen; and as fast as one was eaten, another was ready.

To a superstitious people, such as the Northmen were, these omens must have seemed to bode terrible ill-luck. But Harold had never yet turned back from an expedition, and he did not mean to start turning back now. So over the sea to the Shetlands and the Orkneys his fleet sailed, then down the eastern coast of the mainland till they reached the mouth of the Tyne. Here they were joined by Tostig, and soon afterwards the ‘Land-Waster’ was unfurled in the North Riding of Yorkshire.

So far Harold of Norway had met with no resistance. But the fisherfolk of Scarborough did withstand the attack made upon their little town; whereupon, so the old Norse account of Harold’s invasion tells us—

He went up on a high rock near the town, and set fire to a large pile which he made. They took large poles and lifted it up and threw it down into the town; soon one house after the other began to burn, and the whole town was destroyed. The Northmen slew many people, and took all the property they could get.

Then southward along the coast the fleet sailed, until they reached a place called by the Northmen Hellornes, which was probably our Hornsea. Here a pitched battle was fought; but the men of the East Riding were no match for the invaders, and Harold and his Northmen got the victory.

Next the mouth of the Humber was reached. Sailing up this and up the Ouse they cast anchor at Riccall. Here one-third of the Norwegian host was left to guard the ships while the remainder set out on a march to Jorvik.

But at Fulford, two miles from the city, they were met by the forces of Morcar and his brother, Edwin of Mercia. The ensuing battle was fought on a strip of land lying between the river Ouse and a ditch which was ‘deep, broad, and full of water.’ As at Hellornes, victory lay with the North men; and so great was the slaughter of the Northumbrian and the Mercians that the Northmen walked across the ditch ‘with dry feet on human bodies.’ Four days later—September 24th—Jorvik surrendered, and the Northmen moved their forces along the Roman road leading to the Derwent, and took up their quarters at Stanfordbrycg.

Meanwhile news of the invasion had reached Harold of England. Gathering together what forces he could muster, Harold hurried north. Up the Ermin Street, and round by Doncaster, Castleford and Tadcaster, he marched. On the day on which York surrendered he was at Tadcaster; the next day he had passed through York and had surprised the Northmen at Stamford Bridge.

The battle that took place between the two Harolds was preceded by negotiations. To his half-brother, Tostig, Harold of England sent envoys offering peace:—

‘Harold thy brother sends thee greeting, and the message that thou shalt have peace and get Northumberland; and rather than that thou shouldst not join him he will give thee one-third of all his realm.’

‘Then something else is offered than the enmity and disgrace of last winter,’ answered Tostig. ‘If this had been offered then, many who are now dead would be alive, and the realm of the King of England would stand more firm. Now if I accept these terms, what will my brother Harold offer to the King of Norway for his trouble?’

‘He has said what he will grant King Harold of Norway. It is a space of seven feet, and it is so long because he is taller than most other men.’

Tostig’s reply to his half-brother’s terms was a noble one:

‘Go and tell my brother, King Harold, to prepare for battle. It shall not be said among Northmen that Jarl Tostig left Harold, King of Norway, and went into the host of his foes when he made warfare in England. Rather will we all resolve to die with honour, or win England with a victory.’

After the failure of these negotiations, both sides made ready for battle. And then happened another omen boding ill-luck for the Northmen; for their King, who was riding a black horse with a white mark on its forehead, was thrown to the ground by the stumbling of his horse.

In Roman times the passage across the Derwent at the spot where the battle took place had been made by a stone-paved ford; but this had, in later times, been replaced by a wooden bridge, whence the name it then bore—‘Stone-ford-bridge.’

At the outbreak of hostilities some of the Northmen were on the right bank of the river, and were gradually forced back over the bridge by Harold of England’s men. The last of them to cross was a second Horatius, for he kept the bridge against the whole English army. Wielding his huge battle-axe, he had slain no fewer than forty of his enemies before he was himself slain by a soldier in Harold’s army, who floated down the river in a tub and stabbed him with his spear through one of the spaces between the wooden planks of the bridge.

The old Norse account of the battle reads very much like the accounts of the battle of Hastings, which was so shortly to follow. Harold of Norway ordered his men to take up their positions with shield against shield on all sides. The outer rank were to press the spikes of their spears into the ground and to point the heads against the breasts of the attacking horsemen; the next rank were to point their spear heads against the breasts of the horses. If all of them stood firm and took care not to break away, Harold of England’s onset might be completely checked.

But what the English would be unable to do in the battle to come, the Northmen were unable to do at Stamford Bridge. They broke their lines in pursuit of the English, and the battle was lost. Harold Hardrada rushed hither and thither dealing such blows with his battle-axe that ‘neither helmet nor coat of mail could withstand him; he went through the ranks of his foes as if he were walking through air, for all who came near him fell back.’ But to no purpose, and an arrow which struck him in the throat brought him his death-wound. Soon afterwards fell Jarl Tostig, and though the Northmen who had been left in charge of the fleet at Riccall hurried to the battle, they were not able to prevent the ‘Land-Waster’ from falling into the hands of Harold of England.

When darkness had set in, the victorious army was on its way back to York. Thither came Olaf, the son of Harold Hardrada, and the Jarls of Orkney to swear peace and give hostages. And thither also came at full speed a messenger who brought news that William of Normandy had landed with his army on the southern coast of Harold’s kingdom.