Imperator (see Ducange, in voc.) seems to have been used by several Kings of Castile, on precisely the same ground on which it was used in England, namely that they were Emperors, independent of Rome or Byzantium, but holding an Imperial power over princes within their own peninsula. So Robert de Monte, 1153 (Pertz, vi. 503), “Quia principatur regulis Arragonum et Galliciæ, Imperatorem Hispaniarum appellant.” The West-Frankish and French instances which Ducange quotes seem very doubtful. Charles the Bald, it must be remembered, really was Emperor in his last years. The oddest thing of all is the fact that the Saxon Kings Henry and Otto were saluted Imperator by their soldiers in the sense of the days of the Roman Republic. See Widukind, i. 39; iii. 49. Henry was “pater patriæ, rerum dominus et Imperator ab exercitu appellatus;” Otto “triumpho celebri rex factus gloriosus, ab exercitu pater patriæ Imperatorque appellatus est.” (See p. 143.) In this sense not only Cæsar, but Cicero also was Emperor. Perhaps the strangest description of all is that of Charles the Fat in Will. Malms. ii. 111, “Ego Karolus imperator, gratuito Dei dono rex Germanorum et patricius Romanorum, atque imperator Francorum.”
It is worth noticing that, though some of the most distinctly Imperial descriptions are found in charters whose genuineness is undoubted, yet the proportion of them which are found in doubtful or spurious charters is remarkably large. This fact in no way tells against the Imperial theory, but rather in its favour. A forger will naturally reproduce whatever he thinks most characteristic of the class of documents which he is imitating; but, in so doing, he is likely somewhat to overdo matters. A forger, thus attempting to copy the style of a charter of Eadgar or Æthelred, perhaps actually reproducing a genuine charter from memory, would naturally fill his composition with the most high-sounding of all the titles that he had ever seen in any genuine charter. The most purely Imperial style would thus find its way into forgeries in greater abundance than into genuine charters. Still the spurious documents are, in this way, evidence just as much as the genuine ones. The doubtful and spurious charters have therefore a certain value; their formulæ are part of the case, and I have not scrupled to add them to my list.
With regard to the assertion of the Imperial character of English royalty in later times, the doubtful title of “monarcha” or “monarches” still goes on. Thus in the charter of William Rufus to John of Tours, preserved in manuscript at Wells, the King is described as “Willelmus Willelmi regis filius, Dei dispositione monarches Britanniæ.” So, long after, in a letter from Henry the Sixth to James the Second of Scotland (correspondence of Thomas Bekynton, ii. 141), the English King is made to say, “verum et notorium est supremum jus et directum dominium regni Scotiæ ad regem Angliæ utpote totius Britanniæ monarcham de jure pertinere.” So in i. 119 of the same collection, where Henry the Sixth petitions Pope Eugenius the Fourth for the canonization of Ælfred, the West-Saxon King is described as “Sanctus et Deo devotissimus rex Aluredus, qui incliti regni Angliæ primus monarcha erat.” It was also held necessary at various times to deny any superiority of the continental Emperors over England. Thus it was declared in Edward the Second’s reign (1330), “Quod regnum Angliæ ab omni subjectione Imperiali sit liberrimum” (Selden, Titles of Honour, p. 21. b. i. c. 2). And in 1416 a renunciation of all supremacy was required from Sigismund, King of the Romans, before he was allowed to land in England (see Selden, u. s.; Lingard, iii. 505; Bryce, 207. But the account in Redman, p. 49, and Elmham, Liber. Metr. p. 133, is much less explicit). So late as Elizabeth’s reign, Sir Thomas Smith, in his Commonwealth of England (10), describing the union of the English kingdoms into one, goes on to explain that “neither anyone of those Kings, neither he who first had all, tooke any investiture at the hands of the Emperor of Rome, or of any other superiour or forraine Prince, but held of God to himselfe, and by his sword, his people, and crowne, acknowledging no Prince in earth his superiour, and so it is kept and holden at this day.” But beside this denial of all Imperial supremacy anywhere else, we also find the Imperial character of our sovereigns from Edward the First to Elizabeth from time to time directly asserted. Thus there are two cases in which the title of Emperor is given to Edward the First, in both cases with distinct reference to his supremacy over Scotland. The elder Robert Bruce (Palgrave, Documents, p. 29) claimed the kingdom from Edward the First as Emperor. “Sire Robert de Brus ... prie a nostre Seignur le Rey, come son sovereyn Seigneur e son Empeur.” So when the question is raised whether the controversy between the candidates for the Scottish crown should be judged by the Imperial law or by any other, one of the Prelates consulted (“episcopus Bibliensis,” perhaps a Bishop of Byblos in partibus) answers that the King of England must follow the law of his own realm because “he is Emperor here” (Rishanger, Riley, p. 255). “Dixit quod dominus rex secundum leges per quas judicat subjectos suos debet procedere in casu isto, quia hic censetur Imperator.” So Professor Stubbs (Const. Hist. ii. 491) quotes a statute of 1397 in which Richard the Second is described as “entier emperour de son roialme.” The title is also challenged for Henry the Fifth in a negociation at the siege of Rouen. In the riming Chronicle of John Page (Historical Collections of a Citizen of London, Camden Society, 1876) an English knight is made to say of his own King,
In Henry the Eighth’s time the words “Empire” and “Imperial Crown” are constantly used in a way which cannot fail to be of set purpose. The Statute of Appeals of 1537, in renouncing all jurisdiction on the part of the Roman Pontiff, clothed the renunciation in words whose force can hardly be misunderstood, and which seem designed expressly to exclude the supremacy of the Roman Cæsar as well. The emphatic words run thus; “Whereas by divers and sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world; governed by one supreme head and King, having the dignity and royal estate of the Imperial Crown of the same ... without restraint, or provocation to any foreign prince or potentate of the world.” So again, “to keep it from the annoyance as well of the See of Rome as from the authority of other foreign potentates attempting the diminution or violation thereof” (Selden, p. 18; Froude, Hist. Eng. i. 410–412). In an Irish Act of the same reign a further step is taken, and the King is distinctly spoken of as Emperor. As Selden (u. s.) puts it, “The Crown of England in other Parliaments of later times is titled the Imperial Crown; the Kings of England being also in the express words of an Irish Parliament titled Kings and Emperours of the Realm of England and of the Land of Ireland, and that before the title of Lord of Ireland was allied with King.” As for Elizabeth, at her coronation her herald formally proclaimed her as “most worthy Empress from the Orcade isles to the mountains Pyrenee.” (See Strickland’s Life of Elizabeth, p. 166, where a very strange interpretation is put on the words.) “The mountains Pyrenee” are a flourish which seems to have come from the days of Henry the Second, when Gilbert Foliot (Ralph of Diss, X Scriptt. 542) speaks of “dominationis suæ loca quæ ab boreali oceano Pirenæum usque porrecta sunt.” (So William of Newburgh, i. 94.) And the special mention of the “Orcade isles” might seem to come out of a charter of Æthelred (Cod. Dipl. iii. 346); “Angligenum, Orcadarum necne in gyro jacentium monarchus.” So in 1559, in the debate on restoring to the Crown the ecclesiastical jurisdiction surrendered under Mary, those who opposed Elizabeth’s spiritual claims still pointedly admitted her Imperial position in temporal matters. Archbishop Heath says, “She being our Sovereign Lord and Lady, our King and Queen, our Emperor and Empress, other Kings and Princes of duty ought to pay tribute unto her, she being free from them all” (Strype’s Annals, I. Append. No. 6). And in the first English translation of Camden’s Britannia (London, 1625), the title of the book is given as “The true and Royall history of the famous Empresse Elizabeth, Queen of England.”
Lastly, a pamphlet was published in 1706, when the Union with Scotland was under debate, headed, “The Queen an Empress, and her three kingdoms an Empire,” proposing a curious scheme for a British Empire, with subordinate Kings, Princes, and a Patriarch of London. It is of course an imitation of the constitution of the Empire, but the writer refers once or twice to the days of Eadgar for precedents.
The Imperial position of the English King seemed naturally (see p. 134) to carry with it the Papal position of the English Primate. Britain is another world, a world beyond the sea, distinct from the “orbis Romanus.” On this head I have collected a good many extracts in Comparative Politics, 351. So Eumenius Constantio, Pan. Vet. v. 11; “Quam Cæsar, ille auctor vestri nominis, eum Romanorum primus intrasset, alium se orbem terrarum scripsit reperisse, tantæ magnitudinis arbitratus, ut non circumfusa oceano sed complexa ipsum oceanum videretur.” (Cf. R. de Diceto, i. 438, ed. Stubbs.) As another world then, Britain is entitled to its own Cæsar, “mundi dominus” within his own four seas, and no less to its own Pontiff. As Florence (see above, p. 559) calls Eadgar “Anglici orbis Basileus,” and as in No. 12 of our extracts we heard of “totius Britanniæ orbis,” evidently in this sense, so Pope Urban (Eadmer, Vit. Ans. ii. c. 4) salutes Anselm with an analogous title, as “comparem vel ut alterius orbis apostolicum et patriarcham jure venerandum,” or as William of Malmesbury (Gest. Pont. ap. Scriptt. p. Bed. 127) puts it still more strongly, “Includamus hunc in orbe nostro, quasi alterius orbis papam.” The same idea, one degree less strongly expressed, is found in William of Jumièges’ (vi. 9) description of Lanfranc as “gentium transmarinarum summus pontifex.” This of course connects itself with the not uncommon description of England and the English King as “partes transmarinæ,” “rex transmarinus,” &c. See for instance Flodoard, A. 945. So, on the other side, in the Fulda Annals, 876 (Pertz, i. 389), “Karolus ... ablato regis nomine, se Imperatorem et Augustum omnium regem cis mare consistentium appellare præcepit.”
I have thus, I trust, brought together quite evidence enough to show what was the meaning and purpose of the Imperial style which was anciently adopted by our Kings, and distinct traces of which still survive in more than one familiar expression to this day. I do not doubt that other scholars, in their several lines of study, must often light on other passages bearing on the subject. I will wind up with one more, not the least remarkable of the number, that in which Abbot Baldric, the poetical panegyrist of the great men of his day, describes (Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. iv. 257) the great William as one
The notices of Britain between the time of the English Conquest and the conversion of the English to Christianity are indeed few and far between. They are chiefly to be found in an episode of Prokopios (Bell. Goth. iv. 20), from which I have made two quotations in the text (pp. 22, 30). That the Brittia of Prokopios is Britain, and not, as Dr. Latham (Dict. Geog., art. Britannicæ Insulæ) fancies, Heligoland, Rugen, or some other island, I have no kind of doubt, and Mr. Kemble seems not to have entertained any. The difficulty is what his Brettania is. It strikes me that he had heard both of the continental and the insular Britannia, and that he fancied them to be two islands. His Brittia therefore is Britain and his Brettania is Britanny. (Cf. Zeuss, Die Deutschen, 362; “Βριττία, Britannia, und Βριταννία, Hibernia, wahrscheinlich durch Vermengung mit Britannia cismarina, Bretagne.”) John Kinnamos (ii. 12, p. 67 ed. Bonn), ranks Βρίττιοι καὶ Βρετανοί among the Crusaders. Allowing for the primary error of fancying Britanny to be an island, his geographical description is really not so monstrous as might be thought. His well-known story about the souls of the dead being ferried over to Brittia, and his confused and marvellous account of the Roman wall, show how strange and mysterious a land Britain had already become. But the two passages which I have quoted are distinct and intelligible. For an island inhabited by Angles, Frisians, and Britons we need not go far afield.
Prokopios tells us nothing of the process by which these three nations came into the island. There is, as far as I know, only one foreign notice of the English Conquest, which is however probably contemporary with one stage or another of it. This is in the Chronicon Imperiale of Prosper (see Dict. Biog. and Potthast’s Wegweiser in Prosper), written either in the fifth or in the sixth century. Here we have two entries (Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. i. 198, 199; M. H. B. lxxxii.); the former saying that “hac tempestate [the time of Constantine the Tyrant, 407–411; cf. Zôsimos, vi. 5], præ valitudine Romanorum, vires funditus attenuatæ Britanniæ.” The other says that, some time before the death of Aëtius in 454, “Britanniæ usque ad hoc tempus variis cladibus eventibusque laceratæ, in ditionem Saxonum rediguntur.” I am however not sure that Prokopios has not a dark and confused allusion to the Armorican migration when he speaks of vast numbers of people coming from Britain to settle in the land of the Franks, on the strength of which it was that the Frankish Kings claimed the dominion of the island (τοσαύτη ἡ τῶνδε τῶν ἐθνῶν πολυανθρωπία φαίνεται οὖσα ὥστε ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος κατὰ πολλοὺς ἐνθένδε μετανιστάμενοι ξὺν γυναιξὶ καὶ παισὶν ἐς Φράγγους χωροῦσιν. οἱ δὲ αὐτοὺς ἐνοικίζουσιν ἐν γῆς τῆς σφετέρας τὴν ἐρημοτέραν δοκοῦσαν εἶναι, καὶ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν νῆσον προσποιεῖσθαί φασιν). In an earlier passage Prokopios makes Belisarios (ii. 6) make the Goths the offer of Bretannia as an island much larger than Sicily. This is evidently in mockery, and it seems to imply that both Britain and Britanny were looked on as lands which had quite passed out of all practical reckoning on the part of the Empire.
Prokopios goes on, in the same chapter, to tell a long story, which is discussed by Mr. Kemble (Saxons in England, i. 23; cf. Zeuss, Die Deutschen, 362), of an English princess (παρθένου κόρης, γένους Βριττίας ... ἧσπερ ἀδελφὸς βασιλεὺς ἦν τότε Ἀγγίλων τοῦ ἔθνους), who was betrothed to Radiger, son of the King of the Varni, who, on his father’s death, instead of fulfilling his engagement, married his father’s widow, a sister of Theodberht, King of the Franks, who reigned from 534 to 537. The incestuous marriage, which was repeated in after days by Eadbald of Kent and Æthelbald of Wessex, is expressly said to have been contracted in obedience to the dying commands of Radiger’s father (cf. Soph. Trach. 1199–1207), by the advice of his chief men, and in conformity with the custom of the nation (καθάπερ ὁ πάτριος ἡμῖν ἐφίησι νόμος). The English princess however gathers a vast fleet and army, takes with her one of her brothers, not the King, as its commander, sails to the mouth of the Rhine, fights a battle, defeats Radiger, and compels him to send away his step-mother and marry her. The tale, which is told in great detail, is doubtless mythical in its details; but we may, with Mr. Kemble, accept it as pointing to the possibility of some intercourse, both peaceful and warlike, between the insular and the continental Teutons. But I cannot follow Mr. Kemble when he goes on (i. 25) to build up, on the expressions of a German ecclesiastical writer, a theory of insular Saxons aiding the Frank Theodoric in a war with the Thuringians. The author of the Translation of Saint Alexander (Pertz, ii. 674) is not speaking of any particular detachment of Saxons from Britain coming over to Germany to take a part in a particular war. By a strange perversion, this writer of the ninth century derives the continental Saxons, as a nation, from the English in Britain; “Saxonum gens, sicut tradit antiquitas, ab Anglis Britanniæ incolis egressa, per Oceanum navigans Germaniæ litoribus studio et necessitate quærendarum sedium appulsa est.” On this the editor remarks, “More solito traditio res gestas invertit, ita ut Saxones non e Saxonia Britanniam, sed ex Britannia Saxoniam appulisse dicantur.” The legend is no doubt a corruption of the legendary origin of the Saxons given by Widukind, i. 3–6. On the sense in which the English had a better right to the name of “Old-Saxons” than the Saxons on the continent, see Zeuss, Die Deutschen, 188.
It is worth remarking that Jordanes, though he devotes his second chapter to a description of Britain, simply gives an account patched up from Cæsar, Livy, Strabo, and Dio, and seems to describe the Britons as still the inhabitants of the island, without any reference to the settlement of the English. He makes another reference to Britain in his fifth chapter, but it is of a purely mythical kind.
I doubt whether there is any mention of England in Gregory of Tours, except in the two passages where he records the marriage of Æthelberht with the daughter of Chariberht. He does not use the words Saxon, Angle, or Britain, but he speaks of Kent as if the name were familiarly known. “Charibertus ... filiam habuit quæ postea in Cantiam, virum accipiens, est deducta” (iv. 26). So afterwards (ix. 26) he speaks of “filiam unicam quam in Cantia regis cujusdam filius matrimonio copulavit.”
Coming down later among continental writers, there is a well known passage in the Annals of Einhard (A. 786) in which he speaks of the English Conquest and of the Armorican migration as its consequence. Charles leads his army “in Brittanniam cismarinam,” and the Annalist goes on to explain; “Nam quum ab Anglis ac Saxonibus Brittannia insula fuisset invasa, magna pars incolarum ejus mare trajiciens in ultimis Galliæ finibus Venetorum et Coriosolitarum regiones occupavit.” There is another mention of the Armorican migration in Ermoldus Nigellus, iii. 11 (Pertz, ii. 490). Lantpreht (Lambert), whose command lies in Britanny, is thus described;
On the whole it would seem that a certain amount of intercourse was kept up between the Franks in Gaul and the Southern English states, but that to the world in general Britain had become an unknown land about which any fables might be put forth.
All the passages bearing on the relations of Charles the Great with Mercia, Northumberland, and Scotland are collected by Sir Francis Palgrave, English Commonwealth, i. 484 et seqq. The cream of the matter is contained in the account given by Einhard, A. 808; “Interea rex Nordanhumbrorum de Brittania insula, nomine Eardulf, regno et patria pulsus, ad Imperatorem dum adhuc Noviomagi moraretur venit, et patefacto adventûs sui negotio, Romam proficiscitur Romaque rediens, per legatos Romani pontificis et domni Imperatoris in regnum suum reducitur.” One of the legates was “Aldulfus diaconus de ipsa Brittania, natione Saxo,” spoken of in p. 534. That Eardwulf became the man of Charles there seems no doubt. Pope Leo says “vester semper fidelis exstitit.” The submission of the Scots is also mentioned by Einhard in the Life of Charles, c. 16; “Scotorum quoque reges sic habuit ad suam voluntatem per munificentiam inclinatos, ut eum numquam aliter nisi dominum, seque subditos et servos ejus, pronunciarent.” One would suppose that the Scots both of Ireland and of Britain are included. This mention of the Scots comes between the dealings of Charles with Alfonso of Gallicia and those with Haroun al Rashid. The relation both of the Scots and of the Northumbrians seems to have been a relation of commendation, a term on which I shall presently have much to say. The Scots doing homage to Charles on account of his gifts is not unlike the homage which we shall find done by certain French princes to Eadward the Confessor.
The relations between Charles and Offa, and their temporary difference, are also fully explained in the passages collected by Sir Francis Palgrave. A number of important letters will be found in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, iii. 486 et seqq.; Jaffé, Monumenta Alcuiniana, 155, 167, 290, et al. There is a long mythical account of it in the Vita Offæ Secundi, pp. 13 et seqq. From thence Sir F. Palgrave quotes the story that Archbishop Janberht had promised to admit a Frankish army into England (Vita Offæ, 21). This is doubtless a good deal exaggerated, but notice should be taken of a very remarkable expression in the account given in Cod. Dipl. i. 281 of the relations between Offa’s successor Cenwulf and Archbishop Wulfred. It is plain that a deep impression had been made on the minds of Englishmen by the dealings of Charles in the matters of Eardwulf, Ealhwine, and Janberht; “Tunc in eodem concilio cum maxima districtione illi episcopo mandavit quod omnibus rebus quæ illius dominationis sunt dispoliatus debuisset fieri, omnique de patria ista esse profugus, et numquam nec verbis domni Papæ nec Cæsaris seu alterius alicujus gradu huc in patriam iterum recipisse.” Cenwulf clearly held that neither the Bishop of Rome nor the Emperor of Rome either had any jurisdiction in his realm of Mercia. The odd description of Offa as the Western and Charles as the Eastern potentate comes from a very suspicious source, namely the Life of Offa, p. 21; “Ego Karolus regum Christianorum orientalium potentissimus, vos, O Offane, regum occidentalium Christianorum potentissime, cupio lætificare,” &c. But the expression is singular enough to be worth quoting, if only on account of its very singularity, as it is the sort of thing which one can hardly fancy a forger inventing.
The influence of Charles in English affairs is strangely exaggerated in a passage of John of Wallingford (Gale, 529); “Rex Pipinus obiit regni ejus anno xii. Successitque Karolus filius ejus anno ab Incarnatione Domini DCCLXIX. Porro iste, sicut alia regna, sic et Angliam tempore hujus regis Offæ sibi subegit.”
The description of Offa in the Chronicle of Saint Wandrille (Pertz, ii. 291) as “Rex Anglorum sive Merciorum potentissimus” should be noticed.
Mr. Kemble has gone (Saxons in England, i. 77–84) very minutely into the subject of the old divisions of England, and he has collected a great number of names, some of which can be easily identified, while others can only be guessed at and some are quite hopeless. But it is plain (see Kemble, i. 78, 79) that the West-Saxon names, Wilsætas, Sumorsætas, Dornsætas, are all older than Ælfred’s time, while the names of the present Mercian shires are later than Ælfred, and have supplanted earlier names, as appears from Mr. Kemble’s list of old Mercian shires (i. 81), some of which are quite unintelligible. One or two very obvious instances will be enough for my purpose. Thus the principality of the Hwiccas has long formed two whole shires, Worcester and Gloucester, and part of another, Warwick. The Magesætas seem to be divided between Herefordshire and Shropshire. Lincolnshire contains several principalities, Gainas, Lindisfaras, &c., but the traces of their original independence are not wholly lost even at the present day.
In Wessex most of the shires, Berkshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devonshire, are clearly not called from towns. Somerset and Dorset have cognate towns in Somerton and Dorchester; but they are merely cognate; the shire is not called after the town. But Hampshire, the County of Southampton, is simply Hamtunscír, from the town of Hampton. Hampshire was the first conquest; no doubt it had originally no local name like the other shires, but was simply Westseaxe or Westseaxnarice. When therefore it became a mere shire, it had to take a new name, and was named from the town. It may be asked why the shire which contained the capital was called from the town of Hampton and not from the royal city of Winchester. I can only suggest that some prerogative of the crown or some privilege of the citizens may have kept the capital more distant from the body of the shire than Hampton was.
Wiltshire is a case intermediate between Hampshire and Somerset. The Wilsætas are a tribe, and have their chief town Wilton. But the form Wiltunscír shows that the shire is immediately called from the town, whence the t in the modern form Wiltshire.
In Mercia, on the other hand, all the shires are now called from towns with one, perhaps two exceptions. Shropshire seems to be rather cognate with Shrewsbury than directly derived from it, and alongside of Scrobbesbyrigscír the Scrobsœtas continue to be heard of. Rutland, at once the smallest and the most modern of Mercian shires, is, oddly enough, the only one which has a distinct territorial name, not even cognate with that of any town. Rutland, as a distinct shire, is later than Domesday, where it appears, strangely enough, as a kind of appendage to Nottingham. How it gained the rank of a shire, while the adjoining and larger district of Holland did not, would be an interesting question for local antiquaries.
I have no doubt that the Mercian shires were mapped out afresh after the reconquest. That the redistribution was not made by the Danish invaders is plain from the fact that the boundary laid down between Guthrum and Ælfred is not attended to in marking out the divisions of the shires. We may conceive that the work was begun by Ælfred, or rather perhaps by Æthelred and Æthelflæd in that part of Mercia which was assigned to them by the peace with Guthrum, and that it was further carried on by Eadward the Elder after the recovery of Danish Mercia. In this we may see the groundwork of the legendary belief that Ælfred first divided England into shires and hundreds. With the shires within his own kingdom there was no need to meddle. Gneist (Englische Verwaltungsrecht, i. 56) enlarges on the share of Ælfred in this matter, but leaves out Eadward.
As for the nomenclature of towns and villages, it would seem that places were more commonly named directly after individuals in the course of the Danish Conquest than they had been by the earlier English occupiers. At least, among the names given during the English occupation, those which are formed from the proper name itself are less common than those which are formed from the patronymic ending in -ing. These last again raise the question, how far they are called after historical individuals and how far they are tribe-names called after some mythical patriarch. This last view will be found discussed at length by Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 59 and Appendix A. (See also Comparative Politics, 395.) Names like Tooting, Bensington, Gillingham, give the typical forms. On the other hand (see Kemble’s note, p. 60), it should be remembered that this familiar form ing, being so familiar, has often swallowed up others; thus Ethandún, Æbbandún, Huntandún, forms of quite different origin, have been corrupted into Edington, Abingdon, Huntingdon. Birmingham again has been thought to to be a corruption of Bromicham, but Mr. Kemble (i. 457) admits it as a genuine patronymic from the Beormingas. On the other hand, Glæstingabyrig, a genuine patronymic, has been corrupted into Glastonbury, and a wrong derivation given to the name.
An exact parallel to the Danish system of nomenclature is supplied by a later and less known, though very remarkable, settlement of the same kind, the Flemish occupation of Pembrokeshire in the twelfth century. The villages in the Teutonic part of that county bear names exactly analogous to those of Lincolnshire, only ending in the English ton instead of the Danish by. Such are Johnston, Williamston, Herbrandston, and a crowd of others.
The Chronicles speak of Æthelred as Ealdorman of that part of Mercia which was kept by Ælfred, in 886, when London was entrusted to his keeping. See also the extract from Asser in Florence, where he is described as “Merciorum comes.” He married Ælfred’s daughter Æthelflæd, and he appears, even in the older state of things in Mercia, to have held a special position under Burhred, as in a charter in Cod. Dipl. ii. 99, confirmed by “Burhred rex Merciorum,” he describes himself as “Æðelred Deo adjuvante Merciorum dux,” a title which suggests those of “Francorum” and “Anglorum dux.” His reappointment by Ælfred must have been one of the King’s first acts after the peace with Guthrum, as we find a charter of his of the year 880 in Cod. Dipl. ii. 107, in which his style runs thus; “Ego Æðelred, gratia Domini largiflua concedente, dux et patricius gentis Merciorum cum licentia et impositione manûs Ælfredi regis, una cum testimonio et consensu seniorum ejusdem gentis episcoporum vel principum, pro redemptione animarum nostrarum et pro sospitate necnon et stabilitate regni Merciorum.” So in a charter of 883 (Cod. Dipl. ii. 110), which begins in Latin and goes on in English, and which even in the English part comes nearer than usual to the inflated style of the Latin documents; “Ic Æðelræd ealdorman inbyrdendre Godes gefe gewelegod and gewlenced mid sume dæle Mercna rices ... mid Ælfredes cyninges leafe and gewitnesse, and mid ealra Myrcna witena godcundra hada and woroldcundra.” The words “sume dæle” seem to mark Æthelred as holding a smaller territorial jurisdiction under Ælfred than he had held under Burhred, and the formula reminds one of Cnut’s style (Florence 1031); “Rex totius Angliæ et Denemarciæ et Norreganorum et partis Suanorum.” Mercia however is still a kingdom, like Ireland up to 1801, and Æthelred looks very like a Lord Lieutenant holding an Irish Parliament. Heming’s Worcester Cartulary (93) records another Mercian Gemót held by Æthelred; “Þa ðe gere gebeon Æðelred alderman alle Mercna weotan to somne to Gleaweceastre biscopas and aldermen and all his duguðe, and þæt dyde be Ælfredes cyninges gewitnesse and leafe.”
The position of Æthelred in Mercia is thus described by William of Malmesbury (ii. 125); “Ille [Elfredus] duo regna Merciorum et West-Saxonum conjunxerit, Merciorum nomine tenus, quippe commendatum duci Etheredo, tenens.” He had already said (ii. 121), “Londoniam, caput regni Merciorum [“caput regni, Merciorum”?] cuidam primario Etheredo in fidelitatem suam cum filia Ethelflædi concessit.” This use of “regnum” is like the use of the same word as applied to Bavaria under the Agilolfing Dukes. (See Waitz, iii. 302.)
It may perhaps be thought that Æthelred and the Lady felt themselves more nearly on an equality with their brother than they had done with their father; at least in a charter of 901 (Cod. Dipl. ii. 136) they seem to assume a more royal style; “Æðelred Æð[elflædque o]pitulante gratuita Dei gratia monarchiam Merciorum tenentes honorificeque gubernantes et defendentes.” And it may be a sign of a higher rank that Æthelred, who in Ælfred’s time (as in 886) is called only Ealdorman, in Eadward’s reign is twice called “Myrcna hlaford” in the Chronicles. One time is in 911, when his death is recorded (though he is called “Ealdorman” in other entries of the same event), and again in 919, when his daughter Ælfwyn is spoken of. Florence too in 912 calls him “dux et patricius, dominus et subregulus Merciorum;” and again in 919, “subregulus.” This last title he also gives him in Ælfred’s time in 894, but in 886 he is only “comes.” However this may be, in another charter of 904 (Cod. Dipl. ii. 148), granted to a subordinate Ealdorman Æthelfrith, the supremacy of Eadward is distinctly recognized; “prædictus dux rogavit Eaduuardum regem et Æðelredum quoque et Æðelflædam qui tunc principatum et potestatem gentis Merciorum sub prædicto rege tenuerunt, omnes etiam senatores Merciorum.”
As Æthelred is “Myrcna hlaford,” so Æthelflæd always appears in the Chronicles as “Myrcna hlæfdige,” and in Florence as “Merciorum domina.” Lady, I need hardly say, was in Wessex the highest female title, being reserved for the King’s wife. But in Mercia, as not being affected by the crime and punishment of Eadburh, the title of Queen seems to have gone on. In the Chronicles (888) we read of Ælfred’s sister, the widow of Burhred, as “Æðelswið cwén.” “Hlæfdige” therefore may perhaps have been meant as a title less distinctly royal; but in the Annales Cambriæ (917) we read, “Ælfled regina obiit.”
On the whole it seems plain that the position of Æthelred, and still more the position of his widow, was something above that of an ordinary Ealdorman. It should be remembered that he was the first Ealdorman of what had not long before been a mighty kingdom, and this quasi-royal position was a natural stage in the process of incorporation.
My narrative of the relations between England and Scotland, and my view of the dependence of the Scottish crown on the English Empire from 924 to 1328, are grounded on what I believe to be the sure witness of ancient authorities, read to a great extent under the guidance of Sir Francis Palgrave. All notion of any legal or permanent dependence such as I assert is cast aside by the late Mr. E. W. Robertson in his book entitled “Scotland under Early Kings.” That book is one which, though I hold many of its views to be erroneous, cannot be passed by without notice. It is a work of deep research and ability, and Mr. Robertson has the advantage of an acquaintance with Celtic literature to which I can make no pretensions. And I find with especial pleasure that, on several points where our theories do not clash, Mr. Robertson and myself have come independently to the same conclusions. Still on the points at issue I confess that, after reading Mr. Robertson’s arguments, I remain of the same opinion as I was before. He has thrown a certain amount of doubt on a few details which are not absolutely essential, but I think that he has utterly failed to upset those clear passages of the Chronicles on which the belief which I share with Sir Francis Palgrave mainly rests. Unluckily the scheme of my work does not allow me to grapple in detail with all Mr. Robertson’s arguments as to the earliest stages of the question. But I confess that I feel strongly inclined to enter minutely into them in some other shape. The subject is one excellently suited for a monograph. I have myself dealt with some parts of it somewhat more fully in my Historical Essays (First Series, p. 56). But I feel that the question is very far from being exhausted, and I trust that some other champion of the rights of Eadward and Æthelstan may be forthcoming.
The point which forms the immediate subject of this Note is the Commendation of Scotland to Eadward in 924, the most important point in the whole dispute. The choosing of Eadward as Father and Lord by the King of Scots and the whole people of the Scots is, both in the thirteenth and in the nineteenth century, the primary fact from which the English controversialist starts. William of Malmesbury, or even Florence of Worcester, may have blundered or exaggerated about Eadgar’s triumph at Chester or about any other point of detail, but, as long as the fact of the great Commendation is admitted, the case of the West-Saxon Emperors of Britain stands firm. That Commendation is recorded, as clearly as words can record it, not in a ballad or in a saga, not in the inflated rhetoric of a Latin charter, but in the honest English of the Winchester Chronicle. Than its words no words can be plainer; “And hine geces þa to fæder and to hlaforde Scotta cyning and eall Scotta þeod, and Rægnald and Eadulfes suna and ealle þa þe on Norþhymbrum, bugeaþ, ægþer ge Englisce, ge Denisce, ge Norþmen, ge oþre, and eac Stræcled Weala cyning, and ealle Stræcled Wealas.” I add the translation of Florence, who places the event in 921, not however as holding that it adds anything to the authority of the original record; “Eo tempore rex Scottorum cum tota gente sua, Reignoldus rex Danorum cum Anglis et Danis Northhymbriam incolentibus, rex etiam Streatcledwalorum cum suis, regem Eadwardum seniorem sibi in patrem et dominum elegerunt, firmumque cum eo fœdus pepigerunt.” Now if we are not to believe a fact on such evidence as this, there is nothing in those times which we can believe. It is strange that, in the obvious place for treating of the subject, in the text of his history at vol. i. p. 59, Mr. Robertson has not a word to say about the matter, but passes over the year 924 as if it were bare of events. But in an Appendix (vol. ii. p. 394) he discusses the matter at some length. To the truth of the famous record which I have quoted at pp. 58, 119 of my own text Mr. Robertson makes several objections.
First, he alleges that the Northumbrian Danes did not submit to Eadward. It is almost enough to answer that this passage is evidence that they did. If we are not to accept the distinct statements of the Chronicles, we are altogether at sea in the history of these times. Mr. Robertson’s reason for doubting the truth of the statement is that it is inconsistent with certain passages in other English writers—he might have added in the Chronicles themselves—which attribute the first annexation of Northumberland to Æthelstan in 926. But there is nothing irreconcileable in the two statements. I gave the explanation in the text of my first edition without having heard of Mr. Robertson’s objections; “Eadward’s immediate kingdom reached to the Humber, and his over-lordship extended over the whole island” (p. 58). But, from 926 onwards, the object of Æthelstan and his successors was to extend, not their over-lordship but their immediate sovereignty, over the whole of Northumberland. “Æthelstan cyning feng to Norðhymbra rice.” He became the immediate King of the country, whereas Eadward had been only Father and Lord to its Kings and people. After 926 Northumbrian Kings were often set up, but, except the lords of Bamburgh, of whom I shall speak in another Note, no Northumbrian prince was admitted by Æthelstan to vassalage. He asserted and maintained an immediate dominion over the country. This system was followed by his successors, except during the momentary recognition of Olaf and Rægnald by Eadmund in 943. There is therefore no contradiction. Eadward introduced one state of things in Northumberland and Æthelstan introduced another.
Secondly, Mr. Robertson objects that the Chronicles represent the Commendation to have been made at Bakewell in the Peakland, and that this is inconsistent “with the words which Simeon and Florence place in the mouth of Malcolm Ceanmore” in 1092 (it should be 1093), which “show that, in the opinion of that age, no Scottish King had ever met an Anglo-Saxon sovereign except upon their mutual [sic] frontiers.” Now, if there were any real inconsistency between the two statements, the direct statement of the Chronicle under the year 924 is surely much better authority for the events of the year 924 than an inference made by Mr. Robertson from a speech attributed to Malcolm in 1093. If Malcolm’s speech contradicts the facts of history, so much the worse for Malcolm and his speech. But there is really no inconsistency at all. The Chronicle in no way implies that the Commendation was made at Bakewell, and Malcolm in no way implies that it was not made at Bakewell. The Chronicler puts the Commendation of the King of Scots and the other princes in the same year as the building of the fortress of Bakewell; he may even imply that Eadward’s progress towards the North, of which the fortification of Bakewell was a part, had a share in bringing about the submission of all these Northern Kings. But he does not say that any of them came to Bakewell to make the Commendation. Malcolm says only that the Kings of Scots had been used to “do their duty” (rectitudinem facere) to the Kings of the English only on the confines of their dominions. The assertion may be true or false; but it is quite another thing from asserting that no King of Scots had ever met an English King anywhere but on the frontier. The first place of meeting need not have been the same as that which was usual 169 years later. There is in short nothing to show whether the Commendation took place at Bakewell or anywhere else.
Lastly, Mr. Robertson objects that Rægnald or Regenwald, who is described as one of the princes who submitted in 924, died in 921. I presume that, along with the Commendation of Rægnald in 924, Mr. Robertson sets aside his taking of York, which the Chronicles place in 923. This is asking us to give up a good deal out of deference to his Irish guides. But here again there is no necessary inconsistency. Mr. Robertson refers to the Annals of Ulster. Those Annals (Ant. Celt. Norm. p. 66) undoubtedly kill “Reginald O’Ivar,” not in 921 but in 920; but the name was a common one, and I see no evidence that the two Rægnalds need be the same. The Annals of Ulster themselves show that there was another person of the same name, “Reginald Mac Beolach,” living in the same part of the world in 917, and it would be worth inquiring whether any of these Rægnalds—the name is spelt in endless ways—can be the same as the Rægnald who figures at this time in the history of Gaul (see p. 163). I will not rely on the signatures of two charters of 930 by Regenwald or Reinwald (Cod. Dipl. ii. 168–171), because Mr. Kemble marks them as doubtful. Anyhow I see no proof of error in our Chronicles. There is no real contradiction between the English and Irish authorities; and if there be, I really do not see why the Englishman must needs go to the wall. But granting that Rægnald’s name was wrongly inserted, such a mistake would not touch the main fact of the Commendation. Such a fact as the Commendation of Scotland and Strathclyde is a thing about which there could be no mistake. It is either an historical truth or a barefaced lie. But in mentioning several minor princes who commended themselves at the same time, a wrong name might easily slip in without any evil intention. Several Northumbrian chiefs commended themselves; Rægnald was a famous Northumbrian name; a scribe might easily put Rægnald instead of some other name. The blunder would not be so bad as when Thietmar calls Ælfheah Dunstan (see Appendix OO), or as the utter confusion which the Scandinavian writers make of the names and order both of English Kings and of Norman Dukes.
I have examined this question in full, because it is the root of the whole matter. Other questions raised by Mr. Robertson I must pass by, or reserve for some other opportunity for discussion. I certainly think that the Commendation of 924 is in no way touched by Mr. Robertson’s objections, and I feel sure, from the acuteness which Mr. Robertson displays in other parts of his work, that he would never have satisfied himself with such futile arguments except under the influence of strong national partiality.
Another point, which I have briefly mentioned at pp. 131, 451, is worth notice. The fact that the people, as well as the King, choose Eadward as their lord does not seem to me to imply that he became lord to each particular man. In cases where the relation was much closer than between Scotland and England, the arrière vassal was not the man of the over-lord. Thus John of Joinville, as a vassal of the Count of Champagne, refused to do homage to the King of the French, because he was not his man. When Henry the Second exacted an oath of fealty from the vassals of William the Lion, the claim was a novelty, and it was given up by Richard the First, a renunciation which has been perverted into a renunciation of all superiority over Scotland.
But when we reach the final quarrel between Edward the First and John of Balliol, it turns on a question which looks very like a claim on the part of the King of England to jurisdiction in internal Scottish affairs. That is to say, Edward the First, as a feudal superior, received appeals from the courts of the King of Scots, exactly as the King of the French, Edward’s own feudal superior for the duchy of Aquitaine, received appeals from Edward’s courts in that duchy. We can hardly suppose that any such right was contemplated in the original Commendation; it is a notion essentially belonging to a later time. But it was no arbitrary invention of Edward; he did but receive the appeals which Scottish suitors brought before him of their own accord. The truth is that, when the commendatory relation had, in the ideas of both sides, changed into a strictly feudal one, the right of appeal would seem to follow as a matter of course, and neither side would stop to ask whether such a right was really implied in the ancient Commendation.
Nothing can be plainer than the entry on this head in the Chronicles (945), “Her Eadmund cyning ofer hergode eal Cumbraland, and hit let eal to Malculme Scotta cyninge on þæt gerad þæt he wære his midwyrhta ægþer ge on sæ ge on lande.”
Florence simply translates, except that a slight tinge of the later feudalism is perhaps thrown in when he expresses the word “midwyrhta” by “fidelis.” Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 746 C), though bringing in some rather vague matter, is more literal in his version on this point; “Sequenti vero anno totam Cumberland, quia gentem provinciæ illius perfidam et legibus insolitam ad plenum domare nequibat, prædavit et contrivit et commendavit eam Malculmo regi Scotiæ hoc pacto, quod in auxilio sibi foret terra et mari.” William of Malmesbury (ii. 141) merely says, “Provincia quæ vocatur Cumberland regi Scottorum Malcolmo, sub fidelitate jurisjurandi commendata.” Roger of Wendover (ii. 398) adds the two important details, which he could hardly have invented, that Eadmund was helped in his expedition by Llywelyn of Dyfed, and that the sons of Dummail or Donald were blinded; “Eodem anno rex Eadmundus, adjutorio Leolini regis Demetiæ fretus, Cumbriam totam cunctis opibus spoliavit, ac duobus filiis Dummail, ejusdem provinciæ regis, oculorum luce privatis, regnum illud Malcolmo, Scotorum regi, de se tenendum concessit, ut aquilonales Angliæ partes terra marique ab hostium adventantium incursione tueretur.”
The Scottish writers, as I have said in the text, in no way deny the fact of the grant; they are indeed rather inclined, for obvious reasons, to make too much rather than too little of it. Fordun (iv. 24) is more explicit than any of the English writers, and uses the most distinctly feudal language; “Provinciam, quæ vocatur Cumbreland, regi Scotorum Malcolmo rex sub fidelitate jurisjurandi commendavit, hæc ille. Postmodum vero statim inter eos concordatum est, et amborum consilio decretum, ut in futurum, pro bono continuandæ pacis utriusque regni, Malcolmi regis proximus hæres Indulfus, cæterorumque regum Scotorum hæredes qui pro tempore fuerint, Edmundo regi suisque successoribus Anglis regibus homagium pro Cumbria facerent, ac fidelitatis sacramentum.” He goes on to say, in language which seems to come from the same source as the words of Henry of Huntingdon, that neither King was ever to take the Cumbrians, “barbaram aquilonis et perfidam gentem,” into his direct favour or homage, a promise which was afterwards broken on both sides.
The fact of the grant is also admitted in the book called “Extracta ex Cronicis Scocie,” pp. 49, 50, though the compiler vigorously asserts a former Scottish possession which was lost through the Scottish defeat at Brunanburh. Of King Gregory (875–892) we read (p. 46), “Hic etiam strenue totam subjugavit Hiberniam et pene totam Angliam.” Of Constantine (p. 47), “Hic rex xl annis regnavit, et quamvis contra eum bellabant reges Anglorum, Eadwinus [sic] et filius suus nothus Adelstanus successive regnantes, et contra Scotos cum Danis pactum et pacem inierunt, qui post iv annos rumpitur, et Angli a Scotis veniam precantes iterum Scotos sibi reconciliarunt. Quo toto tempore rex Constantinus Cumbriam et ceteras terras in Anglia possedit, et regni sui anno xvi dedit Eugenio filio Dovenaldi sperato successori dimidium regni Cumbri hereditarie possidendum.” It is curious to see the frame of mind in which he approaches the mention of Brunanburh; “Infaustus ille dies Scotis, nam quæque dominia temporibus Gregorii et hactenus conquesta, necnon liv annis possessa, quidam scribunt Constantinum regem hoc bello perdidisse.”
So we find it also in Hector Boece (218 b), by whose time the story had got further confused, and the grant, or rather treaty, is now attributed to Æthelstan instead of Eadmund; “Secundum legationem omnibus consentientibus fœdus inter Anglos Scotosque veteribus conditionibus est ictum, hac unica adjecta, ut Anglis Northumbria, Danico tum sanguine pene referto, cederent; Cumbria ac Vestmaria Scotis; ea lege, ut Scotorum princeps (ita eum qui secundum regem vita functum summum obiturus est magistratum, uti est significatum antea, vocant nostrates) in verba Anglorum regis ea pro regione juraret.” This passage is worth notice, as showing that the modern use of the word Prince, as equivalent to Ætheling, was coming into use in Boece’s time, but that it still needed explanation.
As to the fact and the nature of the grant to Malcolm there can, I think, be no doubt. It was probably the earliest instance in Britain of a fief in the strictest sense, as opposed to a case of commendation. But I wish to keep myself as clear as possible from all mazes as to the ever fluctuating boundaries of Strathclyde or Cumberland. On the whole matter, I would refer to Palgrave, English Commonwealth, i. 440 et seqq.
The question with regard to Lothian is briefly this. Was the cession of that part of Northumberland to the Scottish crown a grant from Eadgar to his faithful vassal Kenneth? Or was the district wrung by Malcolm from the fears of Eadwulf Cutel, or won by force of arms after the battle of Carham in 1018?
Mr. Robertson (Scotland under Early Kings, i. 96; ii. 390 et seqq., 426 et seqq.), consistently with his theory, strongly adopts the latter view, and maintains the former to be a mere “fabrication.” To me the question seems a very difficult one, about which it will be well to go minutely through all the authorities.
The Chronicles, Florence, William of Malmesbury, Simeon of Durham in his main history, are all silent as to any transfer of Lothian from English to Scottish dominion. And yet nothing is more certain than that Lothian was at one time English and that at a later time it became Scottish. The only question is as to the date of the change. The first beginnings of the Scottish occupation of Lothian are certainly older than either of the dates given above. Indulf, who reigned from 954 to 962, occupied Edinburgh, Eadwinesburh, the frontier fortress of the great Northumbrian Bretwalda, which ever after remained in the power of the Scots. This does not seem to have been a conquest made in war. The English forsook the post. “In hujus tempore,” says the Pictish Chronicler (Ant. Celt. Norm. p. 142), “oppidum Eden vacuatum est, ac relictum est Scottis usque in hodiernum diem.” Possibly Edinburgh was a grant made by Eadred on his final acquisition of Northumberland in 954. Eadred’s relations with Scotland were friendly. The Scots made full submission to him on his election in 946; they acted as his allies in his wars with the rebellious Northumbrians; Scots and English, “the men of Alba and the Saxons,” were, according to the Four Masters (vol. ii. p. 668), defeated by the “foreigners”—doubtless the Danes—in 951. If Eadred rewarded his Scottish ally with the grant of Edinburgh, the step would be very like the grant of Cumberland to Malcolm in 945. On the other hand, it is quite possible that the relinquishment of Edinburgh by the English may have been less wholly an act of free will than the grant of Cumberland; it may have been found difficult or useless to maintain so distant a fortress during the troubles of the reign of Eadwig. But on any showing, the event of Indulf’s reign was simply a relinquishment of the single fortress of Edinburgh, though such a relinquishment may well have been felt, especially on the Scottish side, to be merely a step towards the transfer of the whole province. For the date of the great cession our authorities are John of Wallingford (p. 544) and Roger of Wendover (i. 416), who give the earlier date, and Simeon of Durham in his Tract on the Northumbrian Earls (X Scriptt. 81), who gives the later.
According to John of Wallingford, Eadgar (see p. 266 and Appendix KK), in a meeting of the Northumbrian Witan at York (“barones Northumbrenses in concilium convocans apud Eboracum”), divided the ancient kingdom into two earldoms, giving Deira to Oslac and Bernicia (which John confusedly calls Deira) to Eadwulf “Evelchild.” The name of Eadwulf is seemingly due to some confusion with Oswulf, whom John fancies to be dead. But Lothian, the northern part of Bernicia, lying exposed to the incursions of the Scots, was little valued by the English Kings. The King of Scots moreover asserted a claim to it by hereditary right. Kenneth accordingly went to London, accompanied by the two Northumbrian Earls and by Ælfsige Bishop of Lindisfarne, to seek a conference with Eadgar. Eadgar received him friendly, and Kenneth opened his case, praying for Lothian as an ancient possession of the Scottish Kings. Eadgar referred the matter to his Witan (“caussam curiæ suæ intimavit”), by whose consent the province was granted in fief—I cannot avoid the terms of a later jurisprudence—to Kenneth, who did homage for it. Kenneth also promised that the ancient laws and customs of the country should be preserved and the English language retained, an engagement which was strictly carried out (“sub cautione multa promittens quod populo partis illius antiquas consuetudines non negaret, et sub nomine et lingua Anglicana permanerent. Quod usque hodie firmum manet”). Thus the old dispute about Lothian was settled, though new ones often arose (“sicque determinata est vetus querela de Louthion, et adhuc nova sæpe intentatur”).
Roger of Wendover is briefer. He tells how Earl Eadwulf—he does not mention Oslac—and Bishop Ælfsige took the Scottish King to the court of Eadgar; how the King of the English gave Kenneth many magnificent presents, and granted to him the whole land of Lothian. The tenure was that, each year, on the great feasts when the King wore his crown (see the Peterborough Chronicle under the year 1087), the King of Scots should come to his court with the other princes of his realm. Eadgar also assigned to his royal vassal and his successors several houses at different points of the road, at which they could be entertained on their way to the English court, which mansions the Kings of Scots retained down to the time of Henry the Second.
Simeon places the cession after the death of Uhtred in 1016 (see p. 448);
“Quo [Ucthredo] occiso, frater ipsius Eadulf cognomento Cudel, ignavus valde et timidus, et successit in comitatum. Timens autem ne Scotti mortem suorum quos frater ejus, ut supradictum est [see p. 329], occiderat, in se vindicarent, totum Lodoneium ob satisfactionem et firmam concordiam eis donavit. Hoc modo Lodoneium adjectum est regno Scottorum.”
Now, looking at our authorities in the abstract, there is no doubt as to the infinite superiority of Simeon, our very best authority for Northumbrian affairs, over two late and often inaccurate writers like John of Wallingford and Roger of Wendover. If there is an irreconcileable contradiction between the two stories, Simeon’s story is to be preferred without hesitation. I hold that Simeon’s statement distinctly proves that some cession of Lothian was made by Eadwulf, and, if so, we can hardly be wrong in setting down that cession as a result of the battle of Carham. The question is whether this can be admitted, and at the same time some kernel of truth be recognized in the story told by John and Roger. Let us first see what the witness of those writers is worth in itself.
I need hardly say that secondary writers of this sort, even the best of them, must be subjected to much severer tests than any that we apply to the Chronicles, to Florence, or even to William of Malmesbury. We accept nothing, strictly speaking, on their authority. We weigh their statements and judge what they are worth, both according to the laws of internal evidence and according to the way in which they may incidentally fall in with or incidentally contradict the statements of better writers. We put very little faith in their details, which are more likely than not to be romantic additions. Still in all cases we acknowledge the likelihood that there is some kernel of truth round which the romantic details have grown. John of Wallingford is undoubtedly a writer whom it is not safe to trust, unless his statements have some strong confirmation, internal or external. Of his way of dealing with matters, I have given some specimens in the course of this volume (see Note GG). Still he is not to be cast aside as wholly worthless. A few pages before the passage with which we are concerned (pp. 535, 540), he shows a good deal of critical acumen in pointing out the chronological impossibility of the tale which makes Rolf an ally of the great Æthelstan (see above, p. 165). Roger of Wendover is, on the whole, a more trustworthy writer than John, and when he comes nearer to his own time, he becomes a very valuable authority; but for times so far removed from their own days, John and Roger must be set down as writers belonging essentially to the same class. Now in comparing their two statements as to the cession of Lothian by Eadgar, we are at once struck by the fact that the two accounts seem quite independent of each other. There is no sign that either narrative is borrowed from the other, no sign that the two are borrowed from some common source. The two stories do not directly contradict one another; but they have nothing in common, except the bare facts that Kenneth received the province from Eadgar, and that Earl Eadwulf and Bishop Ælfsige had a hand in the business. They are two independent witnesses, pointing, as it seems to me, to two independent sources of tradition or lost record. And of the two, the narrative of John of Wallingford certainly has the clearer inherent signs of trustworthiness. If there is any ground to suspect fabrication with a motive—not necessarily in the historian himself, but in those whom he followed—it certainly appears in the narrative of Roger rather than in that of John. Roger gives no account of the circumstances of the grant, he assigns no intelligible political motive for it, he describes no intelligible tenure by which the fief was to be held; he dwells mainly on the magnificence of the presents made by Eadgar to Kenneth, and on points bearing on questions which, when he wrote, were matters of recent controversy and negotiation. The points brought out into the greatest prominence are the duty of the King of Scots to attend at the English court, and the signs at once of English munificence and of Scottish submission displayed in the preparations made for the due reception of the royal vassal. These were points of no small interest in the times when Roger was young, and which were not forgotten when he wrote. There is nothing of this kind in the narrative of John of Wallingford. He has undoubtedly made a false step on ground on which it is very easy to make a false step, namely in the succession of the Northumbrian Earls. Even the accurate Simeon, writing so much nearer to the place and to the time, has himself, in one case at least, done the like (see Note LLL). John’s Eadwulf Evelchild ought to be Oswulf, just as Simeon’s Uhtred, in the account of the battle of Carham, ought to be Eadwulf. But John’s main story fits in very well with the facts of the case. Mr. Robertson (ii. 391) objects that there was no “old quarrel about Lothian.” But the facts show that there was. Surely Lothian was an old Pictish possession which had been conquered by the Angles, and which was sometimes partially won back by its old owners. The wars of Æthelfrith (Bæda, i. 34) and of Ecgfrith (iv. 26) surely make up a very old “querela de Louthion,” but one not too old for Celtic memories to bear in mind. The acquisition of Edinburgh, however made, shows that the Scottish Kings in the tenth century were looking steadily in the direction of Lothian. Kenneth himself, friendly as he now was to Eadgar, had made at least one foray into the country. The Pictish Chronicle (Ant. Celt. Norm. 143) says, “Primo anno perrexit Cinadius et prædavit Saxoniam [Lothian] et traduxit filium regis Saxonum” (see p. 65). The captivity of an English Ætheling is a grotesque exaggeration; but we may accept the fact that Kenneth had some border skirmishes with the local Earl, who in 971, the first year of Kenneth, would be Oswulf. All this shows that the acquisition of Lothian was at this time a favourite object of Scottish ambition. And now that Eadgar and Kenneth were on friendly terms, a grant of the country, like the undoubted grant of Cumberland, like the probable grant of Edinburgh, might be an act of thoroughly good policy on the part of England. A distant province, which it was hard to keep as an integral part of the kingdom, might be prudently granted as a fief to the prince by whom it was claimed, and to whose incursions it lay open. That the conditions spoken of by John of Wallingford, the retention of the laws and language of Lothian, were strictly kept, is proved by the whole later history. The laws and language of Lothian became the laws and language of the historic Scotland.
The cession recorded by John of Wallingford seems therefore to be in itself highly probable. But is it inconsistent with the later, and undoubtedly better authenticated, cession recorded by Simeon of Durham? It does not seem to me to be so; neither did it to Sir Francis Palgrave (Engl. Comm. i. 474, 477) or to Dr. Lappenberg (ii. 141, 207, p. 473 of the original). It may be that the word Lothian, a somewhat vague name, has a slightly different meaning in the two passages; it may be that a cession was made to Kenneth by Eadgar, and a further cession by Eadwulf Cutel to Malcolm. It is less easy to believe, with Sir Francis Palgrave, that Eadwulf’s cession was a cession of the rights of the local Earl, reserved, or not formally surrendered, at the time of the earlier grant by the King. The simplest explanation is to suppose that Lothian was recovered by the English after the great victory of Uhtred in 1006, that it was occupied again by the Scots after their victory at Carham, and that then the cowardly Eadwulf gave up all claim to it. Cnut however, in 1031, if not before (see p. 450 and Note LLL), set matters straight. In that year at least, “Scotta cyng him to beah,” “and wearð his mann”—Malcolm then became the liegeman of the King of all England for Scotland and Lothian and all that he had.
This I believe to be the most probable explanation of this difficult question. The silence of the Chronicles proves nothing either way; it has to be accounted for equally on either view of the story. No transfer of Lothian at any time is mentioned in the Chronicles, yet we know that a transfer did take place at some time. The positive argument from the statement of the Chronicles is always the strongest that can be found; the negative argument from their silence is, under varying circumstances, of every degree of strength and weakness. Here it seems easily accounted for. The Chroniclers are at all times somewhat capricious in their mention or neglect of Scottish affairs. They mention neither the victory of Durham nor the defeat of Carham. And the reigns of Eadgar and Cnut, the periods with which we are immediately concerned, are periods in which the Chronicles are decidedly meagre, as compared with their minute narratives of the reigns of Æthelred and of Eadward the Confessor.
How thoroughly English Lothian was held to be long after either date assigned to the cession appears from the words of the Chronicler, 1091; “Melcolm ... for mid his fyrde ut of Scotlande into Loðene on Englaland.” Florence translates “Northymbriam invasit.” One would like to know whether the “xii. villæ quas in Anglia sub patre illius [Willelmi Rufi sc.] habuerat [Malcolmus]” (Flor. Wig. 1091) were in Lothian or where.