With the death of Alfred and the accession of his son Edward (called in later times “the Elder,” to distinguish him from his descendants, “the Martyr” and “the Confessor”) we enter upon a new century. Like its predecessor, the tenth century was for Europe generally a time of gloom, dismay and depression. The break-up of the empire of Charlemagne went on with increasing rapidity, the imperial title itself becoming the prize of obscure Italian princes until, about the middle of the century, the great Otto I. of Saxony (962–73) did something to restore its lustre and to bring back the Italian peninsula within the sphere of the imperial unity. In some measure, too, he succeeded in rehabilitating the office of the papacy, cruelly discredited by the intrigues of two profligate women, Theodora and Marozia, who had placed their lovers, their husbands and their young and licentious sons on the most venerated throne in Christendom. In France the Carolingian line was yielding to the same process of decay which had destroyed its Merovingian predecessor; and thirteen years before the end of the century Hugh Capet followed the example of Pippin and, thrusting the descendants of Charlemagne into the background, became the acknowledged king of the diminished territory of France; a position in which he was somewhat overshadowed by the greatness of his nominal vassals, the Norman dukes descended from Rollo. For France and Germany it is true that the invasions of the Northmen had practically ceased, but the ravages of the Hungarians during the first half of the century were a terror to Europe. In England, however, this age was not nearly so dark a time as many of its predecessors. In fact the tenth century saw the Anglo-Saxon monarchy attain its highest point of power and prosperity, though it also before its close saw it sink to the lowest depths of misery and degradation.

The first five years of Edward’s reign155 were disturbed by the rebellion of his cousin Ethelwald, son of Ethelred. According to the theories of strict hereditary succession which have since prevailed, Ethelwald’s title as representative of an elder son was incontestable, and in fact Alfred himself according to these theories was but a usurper, yet it need hardly be said that these theories had no place in the Anglo-Saxon polity. The son, if a minor, or for any other reason unsuitable, had no indefeasible right to wear his dead father’s crown. Among the Saxons, as with most of the other Teutonic nations, the two principles of inheritance and election were closely, we are inclined to say illogically, blended. The new king must be of the royal race; in the case of Wessex his line must “go unto Cerdic”; but he must also be “chosen and raised to be king” by the witan, the wise men or senators of the kingdom. This ceremony had been duly complied with at Edward’s accession, and therefore he was rightful king though sprung from a younger branch of the royal house. Moreover it was a matter of reproach against Ethelwald that he had “without the king’s leave and against the bishop’s ordinance married or cohabited with a woman who had before been hallowed as a nun”. Yet for all this he did not lack adherents, some of whom probably held that he was wrongfully excluded from the throne.

Ethelwald’s rebellion was announced to the world by his occupation of a royal vill at Badbury in Dorsetshire, near his father’s sepulchre at Wimborne. Thither rode the new king with a portion of the local fyrd, but found all the approaches to the place blocked by order of the insurgent Etheling. It was rumoured that Ethelwald had said to his followers, “Here will I die or here will I lie”: nevertheless his heart failed him when it came to the pinch, and he stole away by night to Northumbria, vainly pursued by the men of King Edward. The Danish army in the northern realm accepted him for their king; the men of East Anglia joined them, and after three years all marched through Mercia, ravaging as they went, as far as Cricklade in Wiltshire. At the approach of Edward with his fyrd, the insurgents moved rapidly northwards with the spoil which they had gathered. Edward pursued, and ravaged all their land between the Cambridgeshire dykes and the river Ouse, as far northward as the fens. He then sounded a retreat, but the men of Kent, eager for the fight, though seven times ordered to withdraw, continued to face the enemy. The battle which ensued was evidently a defeat of the Saxons, and cost the lives of two ealdormen and many distinguished nobles of Kent. Practically however it was as good as a victory, since Ethelwald, “who enticed the Danes to that breach of the peace,” lay dead upon the field. Peace seems naturally to have followed upon his death, and thus was ended in 905 what might have been a dangerous civil war.

The chief work of Edward’s reign was the conquest of the new Danish kingdoms of East Anglia, Essex and the remainder of Mercia. The settlement which followed the Peace of Wedmore, a wise and statesmanlike compromise at the time, had ceased to be applicable to the existing state of affairs. At every serious crisis of the West Saxon state the Danes beyond Watling Street at once broke the frith, and their dreaded “army” crossed the Saxon border. It was time that this intolerable state of things should be brought to an end, and to its termination Edward, himself “a man of war from his youth,” and with an army of Saxon veterans at his back, now successfully devoted himself. We hear of him in 910 beating the Danes at Tettenhall in Staffordshire; in 911, at some place unnamed, winning a great victory over the Northumbrian Danes—a victory in which two kings, many jarls and holds (earls and chief captains) and thousands of soldiers of meaner rank were slain. Then, in 912, he “took possession of London and Oxford, and all the lands thereto belonging”. This however was apparently no fresh conquest, but only a peaceful resumption of territories previously appertaining to Mercia. In 913 he fortified Hertford, encamped at Maldon in Essex, and received the submission of the greater part of that kingdom. In 914 and 915 the chief victories seem to have been won not by the king in person, but by the warlike energies of the local militia. In the former year they defeated a plundering host of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire Danes at Leighton Buzzard, and stripped them of their accumulated spoil. In the latter, operations after a long interval were begun anew by marauders from beyond sea. A scip-here, or naval armament, from the coast of Brittany, made its unwelcome appearance at the mouth of the Severn and captured a Welsh bishop whom Edward ransomed for forty pounds (of silver); and then the men of Hereford, of Gloucester and of all the nearest burhs came out against them, slew one of the two jarls who commanded them and the brother of his colleague, and drove them into a “park” or enclosed space, which the men of the fyrd beset so closely that the Danes were forced to give hostages for their peaceable departure from the country. Apparently, however, they broke their promises, stole away by night and made two hostile descents on the coast of Somerset, one at Watchet and one at Porlock, both of which were successfully repulsed. After betaking themselves to the two islands of Flatholme and Steepholme, in the middle of the Bristol Channel, and seeing many of their number die of sheer starvation on those desolate islands, the remnant departed, first to South Wales and then to Ireland, and were heard of no more.

The largest share of the credit for the conquest of Danish Mercia must be given to Edward’s manlike sister, Ethelfled, “lady of the Mercians”. Daughter herself of a Mercian princess and married to a husband (Ethelred) who was probably related to the royal line of Offa, she seems after her husband’s death in 911 to have still commanded, to an extraordinary degree, the love and loyalty of the Mercian people, and to have wielded the warlike resources of the Midland kingdom with wonderful energy and success. Each year she struck a heavy blow either at the men of the Danelaw, on her right, or at the Welsh of Gwynedd—now no longer friendly to the Saxon—on her left. With her, as with her brother, the plan of campaign, generally centred round some burh which the English ruler built in the hostile territory and defended against all comers. After Chester had been repaired, probably by Ethelred, the chief fortresses built and defended by his widow were Bromesberrow, near Ledbury in Herefordshire, Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth, Stafford, Eddisbury in the forest of Delamere, Warwick, Chirk in Denbighshire, Warburton and Runcorn in the south of Lancashire. While some of these forts were within, most of them were decidedly beyond the Watling Street line, and their erection betokened the recovery for the English of an important portion of the Danelaw. The Denbighshire fort is evidence of the determination of the high-hearted “lady of the Mercians” to reduce her Welsh neighbours to obedience; a determination which was shown still more plainly when in June 19, 916, she sent the Mercian fyrd into South Wales, took Brecon by storm and captured the wife of the Welsh king with thirty-four other persons, probably nobles of his court.

By this time, however, the conquering career of Ethelfled was drawing to a close. Towards the end of July, 917, she “with the aid of God obtained the burh which is called Derby, with all pertaining thereto”. The victory, however, was not bloodless. “There were slain within the gates four of her thegns, of those who were dearest unto her.” The next year by the same Divine aid “she gained peaceable possession of the burh of Leicester and subdued to herself the largest part of the here that owned allegiance thereto. Also the men of York promised obedience, and some gave bail, while others confirmed with oaths their covenant to be under her rule.” Apparently the Lady of Mercia was destined to become also Lady of Northumbria. Not so, however. “Very swiftly after this covenant was made, twelve nights before midsummer (918) she died at Tamworth, in the eighth year that she had held power with right lordship over the Mercians. And her body lieth at Gloucester in the east porch of St. Peter’s Church.” From this entry it appears probable that Tamworth was the favourite residence of the Lady of the Mercians as it had been of her royal predecessors.156 What was the precise nature of the political relation between Ethelfled and her royal brother, it is perhaps impossible to discover. Clearly the status of Ethelred and his wife was not kingly. He is correctly spoken of as ealdorman and as hlaford (lord), while she is described as hlæfdige (lady); yet in all her actions, in her military movements, her sieges and her treaties, she seems to act as independently as Penda or Offa. Probably the term which is sometimes used in the Chronicle, mund-bora (protector), most fittingly expresses the relation which during Ethelfled’s lifetime Edward held toward his sister. She is not absolutely independent, yet she governs her subjects, marches her armies about, and promotes her well-beloved thegns to honour, as seems meet to her. She is a subject-ally, most faithful and most valiant of all allies, and he, should she ever need to call upon him for help, will not fail as her “protector”.

Whatever may have been the precise nature of the peculiar relation between Wessex and Mercia, it came to an end soon after the death of Ethelfled. She left, indeed, a daughter named Elfwyn, who seems for about eighteen months to have wielded her mother’s authority, but in 919, “three weeks before mid-winter,” she was deprived of all power over the Mercians and led away into Wessex. There are some slight indications in the Chronicle that this obliteration of Mercia as a semi-independent state was not altogether acceptable to the people of the middle kingdom. However this may have been, Edward, now sending forth into the field the united armies of Wessex and Mercia, carried forward with irresistible might the process of the unification of the kingdom. The burhs which he erected between 913 and 924 rounded off the work of Ethelfled. These were Hertford, Bedford, Huntingdon and Towcester in the East Midlands, Maldon and Colchester in Essex, Stamford in Lincolnshire, Nottingham and Bakewell in the country of the Peak, Thelwall in Cheshire, and Manchester, the last being expressly stated to have been “in Northumbria”. The work of subduing and over-aweing the Welsh was not forgotten. In 921 Edward built a burh at Wigmore in Herefordshire, in sight of the long range of Radnor Forest, and another at the mouth of the Cleddau in Pembrokeshire, a proof that his arms had penetrated as far as to Milford Haven.

Round all these newly built burhs the tide of battle fiercely ebbed and flowed ere the people whom they were meant to hold down patiently submitted to their domination. Thus we hear of an unsuccessful assault by “the army” of East Anglia and Mercia on the burh at Wigmore; of “the army” breaking the frith and marching against Towcester. “And they fought against it all day and thought to carry it by storm, but the folk that were therein defended it till help came, whereupon they departed ravaging as they went.” In consequence of this attack, unsuccessful as it was, Edward surrounded Towcester with a stone wall which it had not previously possessed. The enemy vainly endeavoured to imitate Edward’s castle-building policy. The Danes of Huntingdon and East Anglia built a great fort at Tempsford on the river Ouse (a little south of St. Neots), “and thought that they should therefrom with battle and un-peace win back to themselves more of this land”. But they were disappointed, for the people from the nearest burhs having gathered themselves together, fought against Tempsford and overthrew it, slaying the Danish king and two of his jarls, and all who were found fighting therein.

The year which is marked in the chief manuscript of the Chronicle as 921 but which probably was in truth 918, saw the full tide of English successes, and in consequence we now hear of the complete submission of East Anglia and Essex to the rule of Edward. “To him submitted much folk both of the East Angles and the East Saxons, who had been erewhile under the Danish power, and all the ‘army’ in East Anglia swore to oneness with him, that they would all will that which he willed, and be at peace with those with whom he was at peace, whether by sea or land. And the here that belonged to Cambridge chose him specially for lord and protector (mund-bora) and confirmed this by oaths as he commanded them.” In 919, the year after the death of Ethelfled, three kings of North Wales and all the North Welsh kin sought Edward to be their lord. His conquest of Nottingham followed, and here we observe with interest that he garrisoned the newly captured fort with Danes as well as with Englishmen; also that all the folk that were in Mercia submitted to his rule, whether they were Danes or Englishmen.

Thus then we now have Edward not wielding the shadowy power of a Bretwalda, but actual king, personally ruling over all the lands south of the Humber, acknowledged as over-lord by North Wales, probably also by Northumbria. Did his overlordship extend yet farther north? Did Scotland recognise him as supreme king? That question seems to be answered decisively in the affirmative by the celebrated entry in the Chronicle for the year 924 which probably should be corrected to 921. After describing Edward’s operations in the midlands, his building a bridge over the Trent between the two burhs of Nottingham, his going from thence into the Peak country and ordering a burh to be built as near as possible to Bakewell, the chronicler thus proceeds: “Him chose as father and lord the Scottish king and all the Scottish people; and Raegnald, Eadulf’s son [king of Northumbria], and all the dwellers in Northumbria whether they were Englishmen or Danes or Northmen or any others, and eke the king of the Welsh of Strathclyde and all his people [did the like]”. The facts here related, as far as they concern the men of Strathclyde and Northumbria, are not seriously disputed, though one may note in passing the distinction now first met with between “Danes” and “Northmen” or Norwegians. But how as to Edward’s over-lordship of Scotland, which seems to be vouched for by the beginning of the sentence, and which was made, four centuries later by his namesake, Edward Plantagenet, the basis of a claim to exercise the rights of lord paramount? The answer to that question has involved historians on both sides of the Border in fierce debate. It is, of course, impossible here to do more than sketch the bare outline of the controversy, but so much as this must be attempted.

The champions of the English claim to supremacy over Scotland157 maintain that “in 921 Edward received—what no West Saxon king had ever before received—the submission of the Scots and the Strathclyde Welsh.... In the Latin phrase they commended themselves to him; they promised him fidelity and put themselves under his protection.” “There was nothing strange or degrading in this relation; it was the relation in which in theory all other princes stood to the Emperor.”158 “From this time to the fourteenth century the vassalage of Scotland was an essential part of the public law of the isle of Britain. No doubt many attempts were made to cast off the dependent relation which had been voluntarily incurred; but when a king of the English had once been chosen ‘to father and to lord,’ his successors never willingly gave up the position which had thus been bestowed upon them.”159 On the other side, Scottish historians160 naturally point to the fact that it is a Saxon chronicler who makes the statement from which such mighty consequences are deduced. The law does not allow a suitor to make evidence for himself; but here is an alleged “commendation” of which we have no hint in the records of the king and the nation by whom it is alleged to have been made; only in the chronicles of the pretended receiver. They further throw doubt on the genuineness of the passage and suggest that it may be a late interpolation. One argument against its genuineness is that it seems to represent the “commendation” as taking place in the heart of Derbyshire, whereas such a transaction would naturally have been performed on the boundary of the two kingdoms. Another and more serious objection is that Raegnald of Northumbria is here named as taking part in the “commendation” in the year 924, whereas “in the Irish annals, at this period most accurate and trustworthy authorities for all that relates to the family of Raegnald,”161 the death of this chieftain is assigned to a date three years earlier, 921.

The question at issue, now merely academic but once of vital importance to the two countries, has been much complicated by subsequent transactions, alleged cessions of Lothian and Strathclyde on terms of feudal dependence, homage rendered by Scottish kings for possessions in England and so forth. The allegation of fact made by the English chronicler seems entirely worthy of credit. Doubtless for polemical purposes such a statement if made by a Scottish authority would have been more valuable; but the writer of the Chronicle was a contemporary; his work though not very luminous and often careless of strict chronological accuracy, certainly impresses one’s mind with a general feeling of its honesty and good faith; there is no trace of interpolation in the manuscripts (which are all long antecedent to the reign of Edward I.); nor is there any very obvious reason why a monastic scribe writing at Winchester or Canterbury should have invented the transactions here detailed if they never happened. When the entry is carefully examined and compared with similar passages in the same Chronicle, it is seen that the writer is not committed to the statement that the interview took place at Bakewell. Nor will the objection drawn from the date of Raegnald’s death appear formidable to any one who knows how loose is the chronology of the Chronicle everywhere, but especially in this part of it, in which, for reasons quite unconnected with this controversy, its latest editor considers that all the events are post-dated by three years.

If then we accept as probably true the statement that “the Scottish king [Constantine II.] and all the Scottish people chose Edward as father and as lord,” what does that statement imply? It is perhaps a mistake to introduce the word “commendation,” though that word may pretty nearly describe the nature of the transaction. But the word itself, though known to the Franks and occurring in the Bavarian law-book, does not seem to have been ever used by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. The Teutonic word mund-byrd (protection), which most nearly corresponds to it, is not used of the transactions of 921, though it is used shortly before concerning the men of Huntingdon who “bowed to King Edward and sought his frith (peace) and his mund-byrd”. In such a difficult and obscure discussion, it is surely better to keep quite close to the original words of the historian, avoiding all mention of “commendation” and far more of “vassalage,” which last term, as all agree, does not correctly represent any relation established in Britain early in the tenth century. Let us repeat simply that the King of Scots “chose Edward as father and as lord”.

What then was the meaning of that choice? Did it make “the vassalage of Scotland an essential part of the public law of the isle of Britain”? The word “vassalage” no one would insist upon; but may we not also demur to the expression “the public law of the isle of Britain” at this period of its history? Where is there a trace in that age of such a refined juristic conception? Is not everything in the relation between the races and kingdoms of Britain vague, ill-defined, anarchic? The Danes make a frith and break it; the West Saxons establish some kind of supremacy over the Mercians; Edward’s personal rule is advanced as far as the Humber; he becomes thereby undoubtedly the most powerful man in Britain; Scots, Northumbrians and Britons of Strathclyde take note of the fact and desire to become allies—we may safely say subject-allies—of so mighty a prince, whom they accordingly take “as father and as lord”. That is all that has yet happened. There was something here which on the one hand, as the current of the age swept on towards feudalism, might have been developed into lordship and vassalage, or, on the other, might have utterly disappeared. In the next reign the very districts which have thus acknowledged the superiority of Edward are found fighting against his son. Under such a weak king as Ethelred the germ involved in the transaction of 921 must have disappeared altogether. No one can suppose that the Redeless King, who could not defend his own throne against the attacks of the Danes, was in any sense “father and lord” of Scotland. Thus the question, which is academic to us now, was or should have been equally academic in the thirteenth century. Whatever other grounds Edward I. might have for claiming high-lordship over Scotland, the dead and buried rights or duties or courtesies of 921 ought not to have been imported into the controversy.

Shortly after the events last described, at the end of 924 or the beginning of 925, King Edward died at Farndon162 in Mercia. Only sixteen days after his death his son Elfweard died also, and father and son were both buried in the New Minster at Winchester. Edward, though one of the noblest of his race, was a man much less richly endowed with intellectual gifts than his father. We cease to hear of works undertaken for the instruction of his subjects, and the great Chronicle begins to languish in his reign. His character also seems to lack some of the beauty of his father’s; one can hardly imagine Alfred dealing with Ethelwald or with Elfwyn exactly in the same manner as his son. But he was essentially a soldier, probably a strict disciplinarian, and he, with the help of that Amazon, his sister, carried strongly and steadily forward the great work which their father had begun, the recovery of England for the English.

Athelstan, who now succeeded to the throne, and who reigned, probably, from 924 to 940, was much the eldest of the remaining sons of Edward. The others were but children, while he was thirty years of age at his father’s death. Although he cannot have been more than six years old when Alfred died, we are told that his comely face and winning ways so endeared him to his grandfather that the latter made him “a premature soldier,” robing him in a scarlet mantle and girding him with a little sword, golden-scabbarded, and hung round his neck by a jewelled baldric. Moreover, Alfred is said to have prayed that the royal child might one day have a prosperous reign. It is not very easy to reconcile these stories with the fact, alleged by William of Malmesbury, that the stain of illegitimacy rested on his birth. The same authority tells us that he was the son of Egwinna, a noble lady, and then in another place describes her as the daughter of a shepherd, marked out by a dream for high destiny, and introduced to Edward by his old nurse, at whose cottage he was visiting. It is difficult entirely to reject the statement that there was something irregular about Athelstan’s birth which caused difficulties about his accession even in that age, not fastidious about the strict principles of legitimacy. There is also something slightly suspicious about the emphasis which the chroniclers lay on the premature death of his half-brother, Elfweard, as if, had that event not occurred, he would have been at least a partner in the throne, if not its sole occupant. We need not, perhaps, greatly concern ourselves with William of Malmesbury’s story of a certain Alfred, the rival of Athelstan, who opposed his elevation to the throne on the ground of his illegitimacy, went to Rome to state his case before the Pope and died in the act of taking an oath, presumably a false oath, in its support. All this, though it raises a suspicion that for some reason or other the accession of Athelstan was not wholly unopposed, is too doubtful and legendary to be made the ground-work of serious history. We can only say that Athelstan’s day was a glorious one, if there were some clouds which hung round its sunrise. It should, perhaps, also be mentioned that Athelstan when a boy had been entrusted by his grandfather to the care of Ethelred and Ethelfled, and seems before his accession to the West Saxon throne to have been specially connected with Mercia.

The coronation of Athelstan took place at Kingston-on-Thames, which for the rest of this century was the chief crowning place of English kings. In the new king, whatever may have been the clouds overhanging his birth, or the difficulties attending his accession, we have a more splendid type of English royalty than has yet been displayed even by the great kings of Northumbria. By his family alliances, by the renown which he inherited from his father, and by that which he achieved for himself as the successful champion of his people, he obtained a commanding position among the rulers of western Europe, and he early assumed and not doubtfully vindicated for himself the proud title of “lord of the whole of Britain”.

By the marriages of his half-sisters, the daughters of Edward, Athelstan was brought into close connexion with the most powerful rulers of France and Germany. Not powerful it is true, though highly placed, was his brother-in-law, the unfortunate Charles the Simple, King of France (893–929), who married Edgiva, was dethroned and died in a dungeon; but his son, Louis IV. (“d’outre mer”), after having been smuggled out of Laon in a truss of straw, was brought to England by his devoted mother; was reared at the court of Athelstan; recalled to his native country and played the part of the king of France not altogether unsuccessfully for eighteen years (936–54). A too powerful subject of these Carolingian kings, one whose greatness overshadowed their throne and whose son eventually succeeded in winning it for himself, was Hugh the Great, Duke of France. This nobleman sought another of Athelstan’s sisters in marriage, even the Lady Eadhilda, in whom as a chronicler says “all the elements of beauty which other women have in part, naturally flowed together in one”. The messenger who came to urge this suit, and who was himself Athelstan’s first cousin,163 brought with him gorgeous gifts, precious relics, consecrated swords, lances and banners. Among the presents may be specially noted an onyx vase (surely of antique workmanship) so skilfully carved that on it you seemed to see the corn waving, the vines putting forth their shoots, the figures of men moving, and swift horses prancing in their golden trappings. The pleadings of the ambassador or the splendour of the gifts prevailed. The lovely Eadhilda became the wife of Hugh the Great, though not for her but for a successor was reserved the honour of being the mother of the new line of kings of France. When German Otto, the future Roman emperor, wished to wed one of the same royal sisterhood, he seems not to have proffered so humble a request, but in lordly fashion to have signified his pleasure that a princess should be sent unto him. Thereupon, Athelstan sent two of his sisters, Edgitha and Elfgiva, that Otto might choose between them. He chose Edgitha, whose marriage seems to have been a happy one, and who was much loved by the German people. Elfgiva, who remained on the continent, had to be satisfied with the humbler position of wife of a sub-Alpine prince.

A striking feature of Athelstan’s policy was his friendship for the Scandinavian powers. He probably saw that notwithstanding all that England had suffered at the hands of the Danes, the Northmen were tending towards the condition of an organised state, and that it would be wise for “the lord of all Britain” to cultivate their friendship. His reign coincided with the last years of the long reign of Harold the Fair-haired, the first king of Norway, and the legend of the dealings of the two kings with one another, though probably untrue in the letter, may well illustrate the relations between the two kings as remembered by the people.

“One day a messenger of Athelstan appeared at the court of Haarfager (the Fair-haired one) bearing a sword whose hilt was enwrought with gold and silver and set with most precious gems. The messenger said: ‘Here is a sword which King Athelstan sendeth thee, bidding thee take it withal’. Harold grasped the sword, and the envoy completed his message thus: ‘Now hast thou taken the sword according to our king’s bidding. Henceforth thou must needs be his thegn.’ Harold dissembled his vexation and next year sent a ship to England under the command of his favourite champion, Hawk High-breech, into whose keeping he gave the little Hakon, the son of his old age by his bondwoman, Thora. Norseman Hawk was hospitably entertained by the king and bidden to a right worthy feast in the city of London. After due greetings interchanged, the old captain took the boy and set him on Athelstan’s knee. ‘Why dost thou do that?’ said the king. ‘Because King Harold thus ordereth thee to foster the child of his bondwoman,’ was the reply. The king was angry and began to feel for his sword, but the messenger said: ‘Thou hast set him on thy knee, and now thou mayest murder him if thou wilt, but not so wilt thou make an end of the sons of King Harold’.”164 These sons were in truth an almost countless throng, and the wars and tumults of them, their sons and grandsons, kept Norway in an uproar for a century. The little lad, however, who sat on Athelstan’s knee at the great London banquet was actually reared at the English court and grew up to be King of Norway, being known as Hakon the Good, and endeavouring with no great success to convert his people to Christianity.

The determination of Athelstan to be “lord of all Britain” naturally urged him northwards, since all the region south of the Humber was, or seemed to be, securely resting under the dominion of Wessex. Into the extremely difficult and obscure history of the Kings of Northumbria after the death of Guthred, the friend of the monks of St. Cuthbert, it is not necessary here to enter. A variety of Sihtrics, Anlafs and Godfreys flit across the scene, and the confusion is increased by the fact that there are generally two contemporaneous princes bearing the same name. It may be remarked in passing, however, that this is the period of Danish pre-eminence in Ireland (whose capital, Dublin, is a memorial of Danish rule), and that the fortunes of the two sets of invaders in Northumbria and in Ireland were almost inextricably intertwined. Also that we have traces of an Anglian dynasty still existing at Bamburgh, though probably owning the overlordship of Danish kings.

Almost immediately after his father’s death, Athelstan had an interview at the Mercian capital, Tamworth, with Sihtric the Dane, King of the Northumbrians. Sihtric received Athelstan’s sister (his only sister of the full blood) in marriage, and probably agreed, as part of the compact, to embrace Christianity. Next year, however, he died, after having, according to some of the chroniclers, repudiated both his new wife and his new religion. Hereupon Athelstan marched northward (probably in 926), expelled Sihtric’s successor, Guthfred, and his son, Anlaf, from the country, and “assumed the kingdom of the Northumbrians,” thus for a time—it was only a short time—governing directly and not as overlord the whole of what is now England except Strathclyde.165 The Chronicle adds that he subjugated all the kings who were in this island—Howel, King of the West Welsh (Cornishmen); Constantine, King of Scots; Owen, King of Gwent (North Wales); and Ealdred, son of Eardulf of Bamburgh. One of the conditions of the peace which was ratified (probably at Emmet in Holderness) on July 12, 926, was that all idolatry should be strictly forbidden. Possibly we have here a combination of the Christian powers in Britain; Saxon, Anglian and Celtic against the heathen Danes.

If such a combination were formed, it did not long endure, for eight years later, in 934, we find Athelstan again moving northward to fight against the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde. The monk of Durham who records this fact takes care to mention that on his journey Athelstan presented the church of St. Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street with many costly ornaments and no fewer than twelve vills, and that he charged his brother, Edmund, in the event of his falling in battle, to bring his body back to St. Cuthbert’s minster and bury it there. “Having defeated the two kings both by sea and land, he subdued Scotland to himself,” says the same chronicler. This was certainly a most precarious subjugation if it ever took place, for after the lapse of three years, in 937, Athelstan had to face the mightiest combination of his foes that any English king had yet had to encounter; and the very soul and centre of that combination was the hoary Scottish king, Constantine, who had chosen Edward “to father and to lord,” and whom in this entry he is represented as having utterly subdued.

The chief factors in this combination were besides Constantine, his son-in-law, Anlaf (son of the Northumbrian Sihtric), king of the Danes settled in Ireland; another Anlaf, cousin of the former, and also king of the Irish Danes; and Eugenius, king of Strathclyde. Such a formidable combination between two pagan and two Christian kings is in itself a proof of the fear inspired by the growing power of Athelstan. King Anlaf is said166 to have owned 615 ships with which he sailed to join his allies of Scotland and Cumberland.167

The great battle of Brunanburh, in which Athelstan defeated the confederate army, has been celebrated in a war-song which is in some respects the most interesting relic that has been preserved of Anglo-Saxon literature. Unfortunately a tantalising obscurity rests upon the site of the battle. Numerous identifications have been suggested, but without discussing or criticising these it may be allowable here to mention one, of which it may at least be said that it has not been proved to be impossible. On the coast of Dumfriesshire in Scotland rises a range of mountains which look across the sandy Solway to the mountains in Cumberland, and according to popular tradition have strange weather-sympathy with their Cumbrian brethren. Here is the high hill of Criffel, which whenever Skiddaw is wrapped in cloud, wears his cloud-cap likewise, and here is the long, flat-topped, altar-shaped hill of Burnswark which overlooks Annandale and once dominated the old Roman road, the northern continuation of the Watling Street. This road led in the second century from the wall of Hadrian to the wall of Antoninus, from Carlisle to the neighbourhood of Glasgow. The multitude of Roman camps which skirt this hill or are to be found in its near vicinity, show that it was once a most important military position, and such in some measure it may well have continued to be far on into Anglo-Saxon times; the Roman roads still, after the lapse of so many centuries, being the best, often the only, roads available for the march of armies.

One of these Roman camps bears, and apparently has always borne since the Anglian occupation, the name of Birrens, which is evidently connected with the name Birrenswork or Burnswark given to the altar-shaped hill above it. Now the scene of the great battle was evidently close to some great hill-fortress. This is testified by the varying forms of the name, which is called by Ethelweard Brunandune, by Florence of Worcester Brunanburgh, by Symeon of Durham Weondune or Etbrunnanwerc or Brunanbyrig, and by Geoffrey Gaimar (a twelfth century writer, but one who often gives us curious little scraps of valuable information) Bruneswerce or Burneweste. It is evident that in these last forms the name approaches very near to the local form, Burnswark, which has finally prevailed. It seems probable that Athelstan, marching rapidly northward to meet the confederate hostile armies, met them in the great north-western road in Annandale, near the point where Anlaf Sihtricson had just landed his troops; that the battle raged, as the ballad tells us, ymbe Brunnanburh, all round the camp-scarred hill of Burnswark, and that when Anlaf fled “over the yellow sea” (on fealene flod) it was the sand-laden waters of the shallow Solway Firth that witnessed his ignominious flight.

The ballad which is here inserted in the Chronicle, lightening up its dull pages with a gleam of Homeric brilliance, is familiar to every English student,168 and it will therefore not be necessary to do more than to gather up the information—not very copious or minute—which is vouchsafed to us by the minstrel in his rushing career of song. The two chief English heroes were King Athelstan himself, “liberal bestower of bracelets,” and his half-brother Edmund Atheling, a youth about seventeen years old. Under their guidance the men of Wessex and Mercia broke down the stubborn shield-wall of the confederate army. The battle began at sunrise and lasted as long as the daylight.

The Danish leader was hard pressed by the victorious army; with few followers he escaped to his warship and saved his life by a scurrying voyage “over the fallow flood”. Especially does the minstrel triumph over the humiliation of the old Scottish king, Constantine, the same who thirteen years before had chosen Athelstan’s sire “to father and to lord”.

The Anglo-Saxon Tyrtaeus in this shrill song of triumph naturally makes no mention of the losses on his own side, but we learn from another source169 that two of Athelstan’s cousins, Elwin and Ethelwin, fell “in the war against Anlaf,” which probably means at Brunanburh. However, one-sided as all our information is about the great battle, it cannot be doubted that it was a real and important victory for the English.

The campaigns in Northumbria were apparently the most memorable events in the reign of Athelstan, but we hear also of his forcing the king of Wales to pay him tribute, of his visiting Cornwall, probably in hostile guise, of his expelling the “West Welsh” from Exeter and turning it into a purely Saxon city. He thus fixed the Tamar as the limit against the old British population in the south of England, as the Wye had been fixed further north.170 It is clear that he came somewhat nearer than any of his predecessors to the position which would have been described in feudal times as lord paramount over the whole island. It is not only that he is generally described in the charters, which he granted with lavish hand to the monasteries, as rex totius Britanniæ, sometimes substituting for Britannia the half-mythical word Albion, which he must have learned from his ecclesiastical friends. Nor is it only that he first uses of himself the Greek word Basileus, which was regarded with awe throughout Western Europe as expressing the mysterious majesty of the Cæsars at Constantinople. These titles might be regarded as only the ornaments of style affected by the clerks of this period, or as the pompous assumptions of regal vanity; but when we find the meetings of the witan attended, and Athelstan’s charters signed, by Welsh kings (Howel, Juthwal and Morcant) who are styled sub-reguli; when we find, even at a meeting of the witan held as far south as Buckingham (in 934), the attesting signature of “Ego Constantinus subregulus,” and when we know that this is Constantine II., King of Scots (900–43), we feel that there was something real in Athelstan’s claim to be lord of all Britain; and the story of Constantine’s commendation of himself to Edward the Elder becomes decidedly more probable, even though “that old deceiver” did afterwards break his frith and stand in arms against his patron on the field of Brunanburh.

Athelstan does not seem to have ever married, and we may perhaps conjecture that he purposely abstained from leaving issue who might contest the claims of the legitimate descendants of his father. With one doubtful exception his relations with all his half-brothers and sisters seem to have been not only friendly but affectionate. That exception relates to his half-brother Edwin, as to whom the Chronicle for the year 933 simply asserts: “Now the Etheling Edwin was drowned in the sea”. Symeon of Durham, however, or rather the Cuthbertine annalist from whom he quotes,171 has this ugly entry under the same date: “King Athelstan ordered his brother Edwin to be drowned in the sea”. This annal grew by the time of William of Malmesbury into a long and fanciful narrative, which William himself only half believed, and which connected the death of Edwin with some opposition to Athelstan at the time of his accession to the throne, on the ground of his illegitimacy. This evidently legendary story need not weigh greatly with us, and is at least balanced by the statement of Henry of Huntingdon, that Athelstan “was moved to tears by the news of the drowning of his brother, a youth of great vigour and of fine disposition”.172

The person and character of Athelstan are painted in bright colours by later historians; his manly stature, his yellow hair interwoven with threads of gold, his free and easy manner of joking with laymen, while meek and reverent towards ecclesiastics, his majestic deportment towards the nobles of his realm, and his condescension to the poor; qualities all of which so endeared him to his subjects that we should probably not err in calling him the most popular of all the West Saxon kings. He was a most generous giver to the Church, and his martial piety, as displayed in the curious document173 called the Prayer of Athelstan, breathes a spirit not unworthy of a David or a Joshua. He died in the prime and vigour of his life, in the forty-seventh year of his age, October 27, 940, three years after the battle of Brunanburh, and he was succeeded by his half-brother Edmund. He was buried in the abbey of Malmesbury, where, by his order, the bodies of his two young cousins who fell at Brunanburh had already been laid.

Athelstan was succeeded by Edmund, who reigned from 940 to 946, and he by Edred, who reigned from 946 to 955. The reigns of these two young kings, sons of Edward the Elder, will be best considered together, as they make but one act in the drama, the struggle with Danish revolts in the northern kingdoms. The personal history of the two brothers, as far as we know it, is soon told. Edmund, “the dear deed-doer” of Anglo-Saxon minstrelsy, who had already fought well at Brunanburh, was eighteen years old when he came to the throne. He was twice married: his first wife, Elgiva, who after her death was recognised as a saint, bore him two sons, Edwy and Edgar, both of whom reigned after him. His second marriage was childless. Edmund was evidently a man of much force of character, and if his policy in some respects differed from that of his predecessor—the Heimskringla, contrasting him with Athelstan, says that “he could not away with Northmen”—still, had his reign been prolonged for the thirty or forty years which might reasonably have been expected, he might have rivalled the glories of Edward or of Athelstan. In fact, however, it was prematurely cut short by a felon stroke, the story of which gives us a strange picture of life in the West Saxon court. It was the feast of St. Augustine, May 26, 946; the king and his thegns were banqueting at the royal vill at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire. A robber named Liofa, who six years before had been banished for his crimes, entered the hall, and striding up to an ealdorman to whom the king had just sent a dish from the royal table, sat himself down beside him. The guests, deeply drinking, did not notice the intrusion, but the king’s dish-thegn bade him begone and was at once assaulted by the robber. Enraged at the man’s insolence the king leaped up from his seat, grasped Liofa by the hair and hurled him to the ground. Hereupon the robber unsheathed a dagger and drove it with all his force into the king’s heart. The royal servants rushed upon him, and after receiving many wounds, succeeded in tearing him limb from limb. But the robber had dealt a mortal stroke. The valiant deed-doer, Edmund, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, was laid in the tomb at Glastonbury, near the flowering thorn of St. Joseph of Arimathea, and Edred, his brother, reigned in his stead.

Edred, who was probably about twenty-three when he was solemnly crowned at Kingston-on-Thames, suffered from chronic dyspepsia and died when but little over thirty. Thus his reign, like that of his great ancestor, Alfred, was one long battle with disease, but he seems to have followed that ancestor’s example and not to have neglected his kingly duties for all his sufferings. He came much under the influence of the rising churchman Dunstan, and was also in some measure guided by the counsels of his mother, the widowed Edgiva. Faint as are the colours of Edred’s portrait, he seems to have been not the least deserving of the princes of his line. The attitude of these two brothers towards the other rulers of Britain is somewhat less lordly than that of Athelstan. The proud claim to be “King of all Britain” disappears almost entirely from their charters, and is generally replaced by the more modest title “King of the English,” to which, however, is often added “governor and ruler of the other nations round about”. Thus the claim to predominance in Britain is not wholly dropped, but it is put in a somewhat less offensive form than by the victor of Brunanburh. The Greek word “Basileus,” doubtless attractive by reason of its very strangeness, still sometimes makes its appearance; but Edmund’s favourite epithet for himself is “Industrious,” probably a translation of the Saxon “daed-fruma” (deed-doer), by which the minstrels of the people sang his praises. In a world which had seen, not long before, the degenerate race of the fainéant kings of France, deed-doer was an epithet full of meaning.

Let us pass to the history of Danish revolts and their suppression. From the short and often obscure statements of the chroniclers, it is hard to discover what amount of permanent success resulted from the victories of even the most prosperous kings. It certainly seemed as if Athelstan had made himself undisputed King of Mercia and overlord of Northumbria, yet, if we may trust Symeon of Durham, Edmund at the very outset of his reign had once more to accept the Watling Street as the boundary between himself and a Danish ruler, that ruler being apparently Anlaf Sihtricson who had been defeated at Brunanburh, but who now reappeared in Northumbria and fixed his capital at York. In the next year (942) a fragment of ballad assigns to “the dear deed-doer” the deliverance of the Five Boroughs (Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford and Derby) from Danish thraldom. But these very five boroughs, though undoubtedly containing a large Danish population, were expressly or by implication included in the conquests of Edward and Ethelfled. Evidently much is left unwritten of this portion of English history. It seems probable that at the coming of Anlaf there had been a general rising of the Danelaw, and that the suppression of this revolt, being more complete than the earlier conquest, took a stronger hold on the popular imagination. Hence it was that the poet chronicler of Edmund’s reign attributes to him, not to his predecessors, the deliverance of the native population:—