During the seventh and eighth centuries there were many fluctuations in the relative position of the English kingdoms. Not only Essex, but Sussex and East-Anglia, each of which had given the nation a single Bretwalda, sink into insignificance, and even Kent falls into quite a secondary position. Wessex stood higher; but its Kings, occupied with extending their western frontier, made as yet no attempt to win the supremacy of the whole island, and they often had no small difficulty in maintaining their own independence against Northumbrians |Rivalry of Mercia and Northumberland.| and Mercians. The rivalries of these last two powers fill for a long while the most important place in our history. |Greatness of Northumberland at the| At the end of the sixth century and the beginning of the seventh, Northumberland was at the height of its power. Its King Æthelfrith stands forth in the pages of Bæda[34] as |beginning of the period.| the mightiest of conquerors against the Welsh, and as checking an invasion of Picts and Scots at the great battle |603.| of Dægsanstan. It must always be borne in mind that, at this time and long after, Lothian was politically as well as ethnologically English, and that Picts and Scots—whatever was the amount of distinction between them—are to |Dominion of Eadwine. 617–633.| be looked for only north of the Forth. Eadwine, the first Christian King of Northumberland, and who ranks as the fifth Bretwalda, has left his name to the frontier fortress of Eadwinesburh or Edinburgh. Eadwine was a true Bretwalda in every sense of the word, holding a supremacy alike over Teutons and Britons.[35] Five Kings of the |626.| West-Saxons fell in battle against him;[36] but at last |633.| he died at Heathfield in battle against Penda, the |Reign of Penda of Mercia. 627–655.| heathen King of the Mercians. Along with Penda appeared a strange ally, Cadwalla, the Christian King of the Strathclyde Welsh, the last of his race who could boast of having carried on aggressive war, as distinguished from mere plundering inroads, within the territory of any, |641.| English people. Not long afterwards, Oswald, the restorer of the Northumbrian kingdom and the sixth Bretwalda, fell in another battle against the heathen Mercian. The arms of Penda were no less successful against the West-Saxons. |628.| Even before the overthrow of Eadwine, he had most likely annexed to Mercia part of the West-Saxon |644.| lands north of the Thames and Avon;[37] and sixteen years later, Cenwealh, who afterwards appears as an extender of the West-Saxon frontier at the expense of the Welsh, was for a while driven from his kingdom by the same terrible enemy. Penda, in short, came nearer to achieving the |Extent of his dominion.| union of the whole English nation under one sceptre than any prince before the West-Saxon Ecgberht. Everything looked as if the lasting dominion of Britain were destined for Mercia, and even as if the faith of Christ were about to be plucked up out of the land before it had well taken root. But it was impossible that England should now fall back under the rule of a mere heathen conqueror. The dominion of Penda appears in our history as a mere passing tyranny, and, though he must have possessed more real power than any English prince had ever done before him, his name finds no place on the list of Bretwaldas. |Death of Penda. 655.| At last the seventh prince who bore that title, Oswiu of Northumberland, checked him in his last invasion, and slew him in the battle of Wingfield, a name which, obscure as it now sounds, marks an important turning-point in the history of our island. The strife between the creeds of Christ and of Woden was there finally decided; the Mercians embraced the religion of their neighbours, and Northumberland again became the leading power of |Greatness of Northumberland under Oswald, Oswiu, and Ecgfrith. 635–685.| Britain. Under her two Bretwaldas, Oswald and Oswiu, the English dominion was, seemingly for the first time, extended beyond the Forth, and Picts and Scots, as well as English and Britons, admitted the supremacy of the Northumbrian King.[38] But the greatness of Northumberland lasted no longer than the reigns of Oswiu and his son |685.| Ecgfrith. Ecgfrith was slain in battle against the Picts; the northern dominion of Northumberland died with him, and the kingdom itself, which had been for a while the most flourishing and advancing state in Britain, was gradually weakened by internal divisions. It sank into utter insignificance, and stood ready, as we shall soon see, |Greatness of Mercia. 716–819.| for the irruption of a new race of conquerors. After the decline of Northumberland, the Christian Mercians are again seen on the road to that supremacy which had once been so nearly grasped by their heathen forefathers. The |655–656.| fall of Penda carried with it a momentary subjugation of Mercia to Northumberland, but the land almost immediately recovered its independence, and in the next century Mercia again advanced from independence to dominion. |Æthelbald, 716–757. Offa, 757–795. Cenwulf, 796–819.| Under three bold and enterprising Kings, Æthelbald, Offa, and Cenwulf, the armies of Mercia went forth conquering and to conquer, and the periods of momentary confusion which divided these three vigorous reigns seem to have been no serious hindrance to the general advance of the kingdom. Wessex was still engaged in its long struggle with the Welsh, and was in no position to aspire to the dominion of Britain. It was quite as much as the West-Saxon Kings could do to push their conquests against the Welsh on the one hand and to maintain their independence against Mercia on the other. Wessex was more than once invaded by the Mercians; at one time it became actually |752.| tributary; till Cuthred, in the middle of the eighth century, finally secured its independence in the fight of Burford. In the latter half of that century, Offa raised the Mercian kingdom to a greater degree of real power than it had ever held, even during the momentary dominion of Penda. He conquered from the Welsh the lands between the Severn and the Wye, a lasting and useful acquisition for the English nation, which he is said to have secured by the great dyke which still bears his name. On the other side of Britain, all the smaller states, East-Anglia, Essex, Kent, and Sussex, were brought more or less completely under his power. Victorious over all enemies within his own island, Offa, as the mightiest potentate of the West, corresponded on equal terms with the Great Charles, the mightiest potentate of the East.[39] |Influence of Charles the Great| Occasional misunderstandings between the two princes seem not to have seriously interrupted their friendship. It |in English affairs. 808.| is possible that the Kentish Kings applied for help against Offa to the mighty Frank; it is more certain that, after Offa’s death, Charles, now Emperor, procured the restoration of the banished Northumbrian King Eardwulf, and there seems reason to believe that both the Northumbrian and his Scottish neighbours acknowledged themselves the vassals of the new Augustus.[40]
After the death of Offa the greatness of Mercia continued for a while undiminished under the reign of his son Cenwulf. But meanwhile the seeds of a mighty revolution |Accession of Ecgberht of Wessex. 802.| were sowing. A prince, taught in the school of adversity, who had learned the arts of war and statecraft at the feet of the hero of the age, was, in the eighth year after Offa’s death, raised to the throne of the West-Saxons.[41] He was destined to win a dominion for which that narrow and local description seemed all too mean. Once, but seemingly once only, in the hour of victory, did the eighth Bretwalda, the founder of the abiding supremacy of Wessex, venture to exchange his ancestral title of King of the West-Saxons for the prouder style of King of the English.[42]
Ecgberht was chosen King of the West-Saxons two years after Charles the Great was chosen Emperor. And we can hardly doubt that the example of his illustrious friend and host was ever present before his eyes. He could not indeed aspire, like Charles, to the diadem of the Cæsars, but he could aspire to an analogous rank in an island which men sometimes counted for another world. He could win for his own kingdom a lasting superiority over all its neighbours, and so pave the way for the day when all England and all Britain |Permanent supremacy of Wessex now established.| should acknowledge only a single King. The eighth Bretwalda not only established a power over the whole land such as had been held by no other prince before him, but he did what no other Bretwalda had ever done, he handed on his external dominion as a lasting possession to his successors in his own kingdom. From this time forward, Wessex remained the undisputed head of the English nation. The power of the West-Saxon Kings might be assaulted, and at last overthrown, by foreign invaders, but it was never again disputed by rival |Ecgberht the founder of the kingdom of England.| potentates of English blood. In short, as Charles founded the Kingdom of Germany, Ecgberht at least laid the foundations of the Kingdom of England. In his reign |Gradual submission of the other states. 802–837.| of thirty-six years he reduced all the English kingdoms to a greater or less degree of subjection. The smaller states seem to have willingly submitted to him as a deliverer from the power of Mercia. East-Anglia became |Kent, &c. 823. [See Chron. in anno.]| a dependent ally; Kent and the smaller Saxon kingdoms were more closely incorporated with the ruling state. While in East-Anglia Kings of the old line continued to reign as vassals of the West-Saxon over-lord, Kent, Essex, and Sussex were united into a still more dependent realm, which was usually granted out as an apanage to some prince of the West-Saxon royal house.[43] Northumberland, torn by civil dissensions, was in no position to withstand the power which was growing up in the |Submission of Northumberland. 829.| south of Britain. At the approach of a West-Saxon army the Northumbrians seem to have submitted without resistance; keeping, like East-Anglia, their own line of |Final struggle with Mercia. 802–829.| vassal Kings. But Mercia was won only after a long struggle. Ecgberht had inherited war with Mercia as an inheritance from his predecessors. The first year of his reign, before he had himself come back to assume the crown to which he had been chosen, was marked by a successful resistance to a Mercian inroad.[44] And even |825.| many years after, one of the greatest victories of his reign, the fight of Ellandun, was a victory over Mercian invaders within the West-Saxon realm. That victory deprived Mercia of all her external dominion; it was immediately after it that Ecgberht annexed the smaller |Submission of Mercia. 829.| kingdoms which had become Mercian dependencies. Four years later, Mercia herself had to submit to the conqueror; |830–874.| she kept her Kings for nearly another half century, but they now received their crown at the hands of the West-Saxon over-lord. It is immediately after recording this greatest of Ecgberht’s triumphs that the Chronicles give him in a marked way the title of Bretwalda.
It was immediately after the submission of Mercia that Ecgberht received the far more easily won submission of Northumberland, which completed his work of welding all the Teutonic kingdoms of Britain into one whole. |Successes of Ecgberht over the Welsh. 815–837.| But, while thus occupied, he had also to carry on the usual warfare with his Celtic neighbours. The power of the Cornish Britons was now utterly broken. The long struggle which had gone on ever since the days of Cerdic was now over; the English frontier seems to have been extended to the Tamar,[45] and the English |825.| supremacy was certainly extended to the Land’s End. The Welsh however within the conquered territory still |835.| kept their distinct being, and they sometimes, with the aid of foreign invaders, strove to cast off the yoke. Against the North-Welsh,[46] that is the inhabitants of Wales proper, Ecgberht was equally successful. As Lord of Mercia he inherited from the Mercian Kings a warfare against them as constant as that which he had inherited from his own ancestors against the Welsh of Cornwall. As soon therefore as he had established his supremacy |828.| over Mercia, he went on to require and to receive the submission of the Celtic neighbours of his new dominion. |North and West Welsh vassals of Wessex.| From this time forth all the Celtic inhabitants of Britain south of the Dee were vassals of the West-Saxon King. But his power never reached to the Picts, the Scots, or |Independence of Picts, Scots, and Strathclyde Welsh.| the Strathclyde Welsh. In fact, the northern Celts, except so far as they came in for their share of the Danish invasions, enjoyed about this time a century of unusual independence. The power of Northumberland had long been unequal to maintaining its old supremacy over its Celtic neighbours, and the new over-lord of Northumberland seems not to have attempted to enforce it. Ecgberht therefore, even at the height of his power, was not Lord of the whole isle of Britain. To win that title was the work of the West-Saxon conquerors of the next century.
But just as the West-Saxon monarchy was reaching this pitch of greatness, it was threatened by an enemy |Invasions of the Danes. 789–1070.| far more formidable than any that could be found within the four seas of Britain. We have now reached the time of the Danish invasions. The Northern part of Europe, peopled by a race closely akin to the Low-Dutch and speaking another dialect of the common Teutonic speech, now began to send forth swarms of pirates over all the seas of Europe, who from pirates often grew into conquerors. They were still heathens, and their incursions, both in Britain and on the Continent, must have been |787. [Chron. in anno.]| a scourge almost as frightful as the settlement of the English had been to the original Britons. The Scandinavian incursions began before the accession of Ecgberht, and even his power did not keep them wholly in check. It must however have had some considerable effect, as it is only quite towards the end of his reign that we hear of them again. In his last years their incursions |833.| became frequent and formidable, and in one battle the Bretwalda himself was defeated by them. But he afterwards gained, over the united forces of the Danes and |836.| the revolted Welsh, the battle of Hengestesdun in Cornwall, which may rank with Ellandun as the second great victory of his reign. Soon after this success, which barely checked the Danish invasions, but which completed |837.| the submission of the West Welsh, King Ecgberht died, like his model Charles, with, his own power undiminished, but perhaps foreseeing what was to come when his sceptre should pass into weaker hands.
The Danish invasions of England, as I have already said,[47] fall naturally into three periods, each of which finds its parallel in the course of the English Conquest of Britain. As the Saxons and Angles plundered and desolated long before they actually settled, so now their |First Period, of simple plunder. 789–855.| Northern kinsmen followed the same course. We first find a period in which the object of the invaders seems to be simple plunder. They land, they harry the country, they fight, if need be, to secure their booty, but whether defeated or victorious, they equally return to their ships, and sail away with what they have gathered. This period includes the time from the first recorded invasion |Second Period, of settlement. 855–897.| till the latter half of the ninth century. Next comes a time in which the object of the Danes is clearly no longer mere plunder, but settlement. They now, just as the English had done before them, come in much stronger bodies, and instead of sailing away every winter with their plunder, they make lasting settlements in a large part of the country. This took place in the second half of the ninth century. During the greater part of the tenth century we read of few or no fresh invasions from Scandinavia; the energies of the Northern tribes were just now mainly devoted to those successive settlements in Gaul which formed the Duchy of Normandy. |Struggle of the West-Saxon Kings with the Danes settled in Britain. 902–954.| But the West-Saxon Lords of Britain were engaged for more than fifty years in a constant struggle to subdue and keep in obedience the Danes who had already settled in the island. And the Danes in Britain were often helped by the Scandinavian settlers who had occupied the eastern coast of Ireland and the islands to the west and north of Scotland. A short interval of peace, the glorious reign of Eadgar, now follows; |Third Period of Danish invasion. Period of political conquest. 980–1016.| towards the end of the tenth century the plundering invasions of the Danes begin again; but they soon assume altogether a new character. The North of Europe, hitherto divided among a crowd of petty princes, had now, like England, like the Empire, settled down into a more regular order of things. Three great kingdoms, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, had arisen. With Sweden we had nothing directly to do; the conquests of that power were made to the East. With Norway also England proper had comparatively little to do, though the Northmen who ravaged and settled in Scotland and Ireland seem to have come mainly from that part of Scandinavia. But the history of England for a long term of years is one record of constant struggles with the power of Denmark. This forms the third period. We have passed the time of mere plunder; we have passed the time of mere local settlement. We have now reached the time of political conquest, the |994–1013.| time analogous to the conquests of the West-Saxon Kings from Cenwealh to Eadred. We now see a King of all Denmark bent on achieving the conquest of all England. We at last see the foreign invader succeeding |1013–1016.| in his attempt, and reigning as King of the English, with the formal, though no doubt the constrained, assent of the English nation. Of these three periods, the third, as furnishing some of the immediate causes of the Norman Conquest, I must deal with in greater detail at a later stage of this history. The two earlier periods, those of mere plunder and of mere settlement, come within the bounds of the present preliminary sketch.
The reigns of the son and the grandsons of Ecgberht were almost wholly taken up by the struggle with the |Reign of Æthelwulf and his sons. 837–901.| Northmen. In the reign of Æthelwulf the son of Ecgberht it is recorded that the heathen men wintered for the first time in the Isle of Sheppey. This marks |855.| the transition from the first to the second period of their invasions. Hitherto they had plundered and had gone away with their plunder; to spend the winter on English soil was the first step towards a lasting |866.| settlement. It was not however till about eleven years from this time that the settlement actually began. Meanwhile the sceptre of the West-Saxons passed from one hand to another. It is remarkable that no English king of this or of the following century seems to have reached old age. After Æthelwulf, whose age is uncertain, only one or two of his descendants for several generations reached the age of fifty, and the greater part of them were cut off while they were quite young. Four sons of Æthelwulf reigned in succession, and the |858–871.| reigns of the first three among them make up together |Reign of Æthelred. 866–871.| only thirteen years. In the reign of the third of these princes, Æthelred the First, the second period of the invasions fairly begins. Five years were spent by the Northmen in ravaging and conquering the tributary |Conquest of Northumberland. 867–869.| kingdoms. Northumberland, still disputed between rival kings, fell an easy prey; one or two puppet princes did not scruple to receive a tributary crown at the hands |Invasion of Mercia. 868.| of the heathen invaders.[48] They next entered Mercia, they seized Nottingham, and the West-Saxon King, hastening to the relief of his vassals, was unable to |Conquest of East-Anglia. 866–870.| dislodge them from that stronghold. East-Anglia was completely conquered, and its King Eadmund died a |First invasion of Wessex. 871.| martyr. At last the full storm of invasion burst upon Wessex itself. King Æthelred, the first of a long line of West-Saxon hero kings, supported by his greater brother Ælfred, met the invaders in battle after battle |Reign of Ælfred. 871–901.| with varied success. He died, and Ælfred succeeded, in the thick of the struggle. In this year, the last of Æthelred and the first of Ælfred, nine pitched battles, besides smaller engagements, were fought with the heathens on West-Saxon ground. At last peace was |872.| made; the Danes withdrew to London, within the Mercian frontier; Wessex was for a moment delivered, but the supremacy won by Ecgberht was lost. For a few years Wessex was subjected to nothing more than temporary incursions, but Deira or Southern Northumberland, and north-eastern Mercia were systematically |876–877.| occupied by the Danes, and the land was divided among them. In Bernicia or Northern Northumberland English princes still reigned under Danish supremacy. The last native King of the Mercians,[49] Burhred, the brother-in-law |874.| of Ælfred, had already been deposed by the Danes, |Second invasion of Wessex. 878.| and had gone to Rome, where he ended his days. At last the Danes, now settled in a large part of the island, made a second attempt to add Wessex itself to their possessions. For a moment the land seemed conquered; Ælfred himself lay hid in the marshes of Somerset; men might well deem that the Empire of Ecgberht, and the kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for ever. But the strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen, the saint, the scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver, carried his people safely through this most |Peace of Wedmore and evacuation of Wessex. 878–880.| terrible of dangers. Within a few months the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious; the Northmen were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen, fifty years sooner, would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation, but which now might fairly be looked upon as honourable and even as triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wedmore the Northmen were to leave Wessex and the part of Mercia south-west of Watling-Street;[50] they, or at least their chiefs, were to submit to baptism, and they were to receive the whole land beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the West-Saxon |Reign of Guthrum-Æthelstan in East-Anglia. 880–890.| King. Guthrum, the Danish King, was accordingly baptized by the name of Æthelstan; he took possession of his new dominions, and observed the peace with decent fidelity down to his death.
A large part of England thus received a colony of Danish inhabitants. They gave their name to their conquest, and England is now divided into Wessex, Mercia, and Denalagu, the region where the Danish law was in force. This Danish occupation was a real settlement of a new people in the land. There is no reason to think that any extirpation or expulsion of the native inhabitants took place, such as that which accompanied the English Conquest. But the displacement of landowners and the general break-up of society must have been far greater than anything that was afterwards |Evidence of local nomenclature.| brought about by the Normans. How extensive the Danish occupation was is best seen in the local nomenclature and local divisions.[51] The West-Saxon shires keep to this day the names and the boundaries of the principalities founded by the first successors of Cerdic. |Contrast between the West-Saxon and Mercian shires.| In some of them there is no one dominant town in a shire; several shires contain a town bearing a cognate name, but the shire is seldom called directly and solely after a town. In short, the local divisions of Wessex were not made but grew. Mercia, on the other hand, has every appearance of having been artificially mapped out. The shires, with at most two exceptions, are called after towns, and in most cases the shire groups itself round its capital, as round an acknowledged and convenient centre. The names of the old principalities vanish, and their boundaries are often disregarded. One principality is divided among several shires, and another shire is made up of several ancient principalities. We can hardly doubt that the old divisions were wiped out in the Danish invasions, and that the country was divided again by the English Kings after the reconquest.
Again, the names of the towns and villages throughout a large part of the ceded territory show the systematic way in which the land was divided among the Danish leaders. Through a large region, stretching from Warwickshire to Cumberland, but most conspicuously in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire, the Danish termination by marks the settlements of the invaders, and, in a vast number of cases, the name of the manor still retains the name of the Danish lord to whom it was assigned in the occupation of the ninth century. In two cases at least the Danes gave new names to considerable towns. Streoneshalh and Northweorthig received the |Whitby and Derby.| new names of Whitby and Derby (Deoraby). This last town is one of considerable importance in the history of the Danish settlement. It was, together with Lincoln, |The Five Boroughs.| Leicester, Nottingham, and Stamford, a member of a confederation of Danish towns, which, under the name of the Five Boroughs, often plays a part in the events of the tenth and eleventh centuries.
Ælfred, the unwilling author of these great changes, is the most perfect character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince who has become a hero of romance, who, as a hero of romance, has had countless imaginary exploits and imaginary institutions attributed to him, but to whose character romance has done no more than justice, and who appears in exactly the same light in history and |Singular union of virtues in him.| in fable. No other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no other man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little alloy.[52] A saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained by cruelty,[53] a prince never cast down by adversity, never lifted up to insolence in the hour of triumph—there is no other name in history |Comparison with Saint Lewis;| to compare with his. Saint Lewis comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monastic piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic virtues. Ælfred and Lewis alike stand forth in honourable contrast to the abject superstition of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly engaged in the care of their own souls that they refused either to raise up heirs to their throne or to strike a blow on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the sake of distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious, undertakings. The true duties of a King of the French clearly lay in France and not in Egypt or at Tunis. No such charge lies at the door of the great King of the West-Saxons. With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian benevolence, Ælfred never forgot that his first duty was to his own people. He forestalled our own age in exploring the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected its |with Washington;| duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Ælfred, like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous displays of superhuman genius, but in the simple, straightforward, discharge of the duty of the moment. But Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot like Ælfred, has no claim to Ælfred’s character of scholar and master |with William the Silent;| of scholars. William the Silent, like Ælfred the deliverer of his people, had no call to be also their literary teacher; and in his career, glorious as it is, there is an element of intrigue which is quite unlike the noble simplicity of both Ælfred and Washington. The same union of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of the warrior and the statesman is found on a wider field of |with Charles the Great;| action, in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire to the pure glory of Ælfred. Amidst all the splendours of conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of personal ambition and personal vice, to occasional unjust aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. |with Edward the First.| Among our own later princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a moment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, when tried by such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike disinterestedness which marks the character of Ælfred. The times indeed were different; Edward had to tread the path of righteousness and honour in a time of far more tangled policy, and amidst temptations, not harder indeed, but far |Ælfred’s position as a legislator;| more subtle. The legislative merits of Edward are greater than those of Ælfred; but this is a difference in the times rather than in the men. The popular error which makes Ælfred the personal author of all our institutions hardly needs a fresh confutation. Popular legends attribute to him the invention of Trial by Jury and of countless other portions of our law, the germs of which may be discerned ages before the time of Ælfred, while their existing shapes cannot be discerned till ages after him. Ælfred, like so many of our early kings, collected and codified the laws of his predecessors; but we have his own personal witness[54] that he purposely abstained from any large amount of strictly new legislation. The legislation of Edward, on the other hand, in its boldness and originality, forms the most |as scholar.| marked of all epochs in the history of our law. It is perhaps, after all, in his literary aspect that the distinctive beauty of Ælfred’s character shines forth most clearly. The mere patronage of learning was common to him with many princes of his age. Both Charles the Great and several of his successors had set brilliant examples in this way. What distinguished Ælfred was his own personal appearance as an author. Now, as a rule, literary kings have not been a class deserving of much honour. They have commonly stepped out of their natural sphere only to display the least honourable characteristics of another calling. But it was not so with the Emperor Marcus; it was not so with our Ælfred. In Ælfred there is no sign of literary pedantry, ostentation, or jealousy; nothing is done for his own glory; he writes, just as he fights and legislates, with a single eye to the good of his people. He shows no signs of original genius; he is simply an editor and translator, working honestly for the improvement of the subjects whom he loved. This is really a purer fame, and one more in harmony with the other features of Ælfred’s character, than the highest achievements of the poet, the historian, or the philosopher. I repeat then that Ælfred |Happiness of Ælfred in his successors.| is the most perfect character in history. And he was specially happy in handing on a large share of his genius and his virtue to those who came after him. The West-Saxon kings, for nearly a century, form one of the most brilliant royal lines on record. From Æthelred the Saint to Eadgar the Peaceful, the short and wretched reign of Eadwig is the only interruption to one continued display of valour under the guidance of wisdom. The greatness of the dynasty, obscured under the second Æthelred, flashes forth for a moment in the short and glorious career of the second Eadmund. It then becomes more permanently eclipsed under the rule of Dane, Norman, and Angevin, till it shines forth once more in the first of the new race whom we can claim as English at heart, till, if not Ælfred himself, at least his unconquered son, seems to rise again to life in one who at once bore his name and followed in his steps.
There can be little doubt that the Danish settlement in England, which seemed at first to be the utter destruction of the West-Saxon monarchy, tended in the end to the consolidation of England and of all Britain under the West-Saxon kings. Looking at Ælfred as Bretwalda, a title which had passed away, or as King of the English, a title which he hardly ventured to assume, his loss was beyond expression. But, as local King of the West-Saxons, he undoubtedly gained. The Danes were nominally his vassals;[55] but their vassalage was so purely nominal that we may look on Ælfred as having lost all authority over East-Anglia, Northumberland, and the larger half of |Closer union between Mercia and Wessex.| Mercia. But the remainder of Mercia was more closely united to Wessex than it had been since the seventh century. The new frontier gave to Ælfred nearly the whole of the old extent of Wessex beyond the Thames and Avon, while it added a large region in the centre of England which had never been West-Saxon before.[56] Still this great acquisition was not absolutely incorporated with the West-Saxon kingdom. The over-lord no longer entrusted the dependency to a vassal King, but English |Before 886.| Mercia still had an Ealdorman of her own, a man of princely descent within the land over which he ruled. But Æthelred, the new ruler of south-western Mercia, was the son-in-law of the West-Saxon King and ruled by his |Recovery of London. 886.| father-in-law’s appointment.[57] And along with the recovered portion of Mercia, Ælfred also regained London, a city which we shall henceforth ever find to be one of the firmest strongholds of English freedom and one of the truest bulwarks of the realm.
We may therefore look on the immediate West-Saxon territory as actually increased by the Danish invasion. The recovered part of Mercia was reduced to the form of a province; we hear no more of even dependent Kings in Kent and Sussex, but at most of Ealdormen of the King’s appointment. All England south-west of Watling-Street was fast growing into a compact and homogeneous kingdom. |Progress of the West-Saxon power aided by the Danish| And the very fact of the foreign occupation of the rest of England paved the way for its easier incorporation with the one kingdom which remained independent. The wars of Wessex with the Danes of Mercia and Northumberland were wars of quite another character from the |settlements.| old border strife between the English inhabitants of the several kingdoms. They were in the strictest sense national wars, wars of religion and patriotism. The West-Saxon Kings were, in the eyes of all Englishmen in whatever part of the island, the champions of the national independence and the national faith. Their conquests brought with them deliverance from the Danish yoke, and we therefore find them everywhere welcomed as deliverers by the subject English population. One or two attempts at a division of the kingdom[58] show that the old local feelings had not fully died out; but their ill success shows no less clearly that such divisions no longer rested on any strong national basis. The successors of Ælfred were gradually enabled to win back the supremacy established by Ecgberht, and to enlarge it into an actual sovereignty over all England and an acknowledged supremacy over all Britain. The kingdom so formed was at last overcome by a Danish conqueror; but it was overcome by a very different process from the settlement of this or that wandering pirate. It was the transfer of the crown of a consolidated English kingdom to the head of the King of a now no less consolidated kingdom of Denmark.
The reign of Ælfred contains two intervals of nearly |897–901.| perfect peace. After the great deliverance of Wessex |Later Danish Wars of Ælfred. 893–897.| there was no very serious warfare with the Danes till quite towards the end of Ælfred’s life. Then came five years of a struggle almost as fearful as that of the early days of his reign. But in the end Ælfred and England were again victorious. During the years of peace Ælfred had seen the need of forming a naval force to meet the wikings on their own element. It is wonderful how wholly the old sea-faring spirit of the Angles and Saxons |Ælfred the founder of the English navy.| seems to have died out before his time. But both Ælfred and his successors diligently fostered the naval power of England, alike for war, for commerce, and for discovery. In short, Ælfred laid the foundations of that naval greatness which is the special pride of Englishmen. His fleet seems to have preserved Wessex itself from anything more than a few landings for plunder. But for three years, Danish invaders, helped by the Danes settled in the country, marched to and fro through all Britain |Death of Ælfred. 901.| north of the Thames. But at last Ælfred succeeded in reducing them at least within the terms of the Peace of Wedmore, and he again enjoyed a few years of quiet before his death.