[Transcriber's note: This production is based on http://www.archive.org/details/popularhistoryeng01guiz.

Spoiler alert: If you expect to hear about Cinderella and Prince Charming living in Camelot, here are some of the most frequently used words in this book, ordered by number of occurrences.

war, armies, enemies, soldiers, weapon, prison, attack, defence, conquer, battle, invade, fortifications, dead, suffer, anger, seize, kill, insurrection, threat, fight, traitor, surrender, fear, escape, pursue, opposition, strike, wound, condemn, blood, victor, quarrel, insurgent, punish, capture, rival, pirate, danger, crime, violence, destroy, arrest, trouble, archer, unhappy, murder, disorder, combat, reinforcement, pillage, dying, anxiety, exile, besiege, repulse, executed, captive, hostages, cruel, bitter, conspiracy, insult, revenge, humiliated, imprisoned, ruin, assassin, plunder, barbarian, rampart, jealous, confiscate, avenge, alarmed, usurpation, tyrannical, savage, malcontents, massacre, slaughter, despair, military, misfortunes, unfortunate, widow, detested, succumb, die, dagger, languished, assault, mercenaries, disaster, armor, booty, perjury, drown, repugnance, fatal, slave, armistice, robber, odious, greed, poison, incursion, false, foe, impeached, ambush, capricious, perfidious, scaffold, dungeon, decapitated.]

Murder Of Thomas A-Becket.

A Popular History Of England
From the Earliest Times
To The Reign Of Queen Victoria

M. Guizot
Author of "The Popular History of France," etc.

Authorized Edition
Illustrated
Vol. I
New York
John W. Lovell Company
150 Worth Street, Corner Mission Place

Volume One.

Table Of Contents.

Preface.

"The History of France," related to his grandchildren by M. Guizot, is now universally known. It has supplied a want which every one must have felt; it has been welcome both to children and to parents. Our national history enjoyed one indisputable privilege: it had everywhere the right to the first place. But after the "History of France," my father had related for the benefit of his grandchildren the "History of England." He had adopted a plan slightly different from that which he had followed in his previous narratives. He felt that in this case the knowledge which would enable the reader to supply any hiatus is less extended; he was, in consequence, careful to preserve the regular and chronological sequence of events. I have collected these lessons as I collected those of "The History of France." My father foresaw that he would not himself make use of the notes which I preserved. He therefore requested me to edit them, and he took a pleasure in re-perusing my work. I have thus written this "History of England," step by step, as he related, and in great part revised it; and I now publish it in accordance with his desire, and, in the hope of enabling others to share in the useful instruction which we all derived from it, both parents and children. The French have often been charged with ignorance of the history of foreign nations. It is time to remove that reproach. For us the "History of England" is important and interesting above all others. In peaceful times and in times of war it is everywhere connected with our own by a national bond, which all the causes of dissension have not been able to destroy. In studying the History of England we study again the History of France; and we may draw from it useful lessons for the service and the welfare of that country whose trials and sorrows have rendered her a thousand times dearer to us.

Guizot De Witt.
[Henriette Guizot de Witt, daughter of François Guizot.]

History Of England.

Chapter I.
Ancient Populations Of Britain.
Roman Dominion, 55 B.C. TO 411 A.D.

The earliest periods of English History are obscure, and even the origin of its inhabitants is still a subject of discussion. The first authentic information which we possess with regard to them is derived from their conqueror. Julius Caesar remarked their resemblance to the Gauls, and modern researches have confirmed his testimony. Every thing seems to show that the inhabitants of Britain were Celts, or Gaels, a name which the population of the highlands of Scotland retain to this day. On the Southern Coasts, an invasion of Cimrys, or Belgians, appears to have mingled with the Celtic population and to have brought with it some elements of civilization. Long before the advent of Cæsar, the Phoenicians and Greeks established at Marseilles, had entered into relations of commerce with the Scilly Isles, which they called the Cassiterides, and also with the extremity of the County of Cornwall, where the tin-mines were situated. Pytheas, who lived at Marseilles at the commencement of the Fourth Century B.C., has related his voyage along the coast of Britain; but it is with the invasion of the Romans that the history of England commences. It is here that we penetrate for the first time into those islands which, though separated from the rest of the world, sent to the Gauls, who were struggling for their independence, succor, which furnished Cæsar with a pretext for the attempt to conquer them. After his fourth campaign in Gaul, about the year 55 B.C., the great Roman general set sail on the 26th of August for Britain. He had brought with him the infantry of two legions,—about twelve thousand men, and he disembarked near the point where the town of Deal is now situated. The Britons had gathered in a mass upon the shore. A great number were on horseback, urging their horses into the waves, and insulting and defying the foreigners. They were almost entirely naked, having cast off the clothing of skins with which they were ordinarily covered, in order to prepare for the combat. Their war chariots were driven rapidly along the shore. For a moment the Roman soldiers hesitated, troubled by the unaccustomed sight, perhaps from a dread of offending the unknown gods of people celebrated among their Gaulish brethren for the devotion with which they surrounded the Druidical faith. The standard-bearer of the tenth legion was the first to precipitate himself into the sea. "Follow me, my fellow-soldiers," said he, "unless you will give up your eagle to the enemy. I at least will do my duty to the Republic and to our general." His comrades followed his example, and the savage inhabitants of Britain retired in disorder, driven back, in spite of their bravery, after a short engagement.

On the morrow, ambassadors from the Britons came to solicit peace. At the first rumor of the projected invasion they had sent emissaries into Gaul to offer their submission to the Romans, in the hope of turning them from their enterprise. Cæsar had listened to them with kindness and had had them conducted by his own envoy Comius, king of the Belgian Atrebates; but he did not relinquish his intentions, and the Britons in their irritation had put the delegate of Cæsar in irons. This was the first matter with which the conqueror reproached them, at the same time demanding hostages for their future good behavior. Some hostages were immediately given. The British chiefs asked for time to send others, and Cæsar entered into separate negotiations with the chiefs who came one after the other to treat with the conqueror.

During these negotiations the sea rendered aid to the Britons. Great part of the Roman fleet was destroyed. The barbarians perceived their advantage and were dilatory in sending the hostages. Meanwhile Cæsar had promptly set his soldiers to the task of repairing the vessels, and making requisitions upon the Gauls for the materials which were required. The vessels were beginning to be in a state to take the sea when the seventh legion, detached on a foraging expedition in the country, was surprised in the only field of grain then standing, by a number of Britons who were lying in ambush concealed by the long stalks of the corn. Horsemen and war chariots issued forth from the surrounding forests. The Romans ran the risk of being crushed, when Cæsar came to their assistance with the remainder of his forces, and defeated the barbarians, who sued for peace. The equinox was approaching. The general did not even wait for the hostages, but set sail for Gaul in the middle of September, sending at the same time news to Rome which induced the Senate to decree twenty days of public thanksgivings to the Immortal Gods. In his Commentaries, however, Caesar modestly describes this first campaign in Britain as a reconnoitring expedition. He cherished the design of returning thither later.

Accordingly in the following year (54 B.C.), Caesar embarked at the same point upon the coast of Gaul, in order to land at the same spot, though with very different forces. He carried with him the infantry of five legions (about thirty thousand men) and two thousand cavalry. Eight hundred transport vessels covered the sea.

From the summits of their cliffs the Britons had perceived this formidable expedition, and had sought refuge in the vast forests which cover their shores. Cæsar marched forward to drive them back into their retreats, when a violent tempest destroyed forty of his ships and drove a great number ashore. The first care of the conqueror was to protect his fleet against the fury of the sea and the hostility of the islanders. He caused all his vessels to be hauled ashore, in order to surround them afterwards by a strong intrenchment. His largest galleys were diminutive in comparison with our vessels of war. His transport ships were hardly more than barges. The Roman soldiers labored without intermission ten days and ten nights before they had rendered their fleet secure.

They then resumed their march against the Britons, whose army was still increasing. All the chiefs had united their forces under the orders of a commander-in-chief, Cassivelanus, king of the Cassii, renowned for his bravery and skill. The Britons avoided a general engagement. Assailing the Romans incessantly with their cavalry and their war-chariots, which they conducted with the ease of habit even along the edge of precipices, they retired again into the forests from the moment that the advantage was no longer on their side. But this barbarian intrepidity was not accompanied by experience. Cæsar's cavalry, supported by three legions, having scoured the country in quest of forage, the enemy had remained concealed all day, when suddenly they issued in a mass from the neighboring forests and swept down upon the Romans who were scattered about the country. Already the Britons imagined themselves victors; but the well-disciplined Roman detachments formed again as if by enchantment, the horsemen rallied, and the Britons, enclosed in a formidable circle, sustained losses so great that on the morrow the allies of Cassivelanus nearly all deserted him and returned into their territories, leaving him to face the Romans unsupported. The king in his turn fell back upon his kingdom, which was situated on the left bank of the Thames.

In their pursuit the Romans had traversed the fertile country which now forms the counties of Kent and Surrey, while this skirmishing species of warfare continued, often with results favorable to the Britons. But the fatal want of union common to barbarous tribes lent aid to the Romans. Cassivelanus was detested by his neighbors the Trinobantes, who sent ambassadors to Cæsar, asking the restoration of their king Mandubratius, a fugitive in Gaul, where he had implored the protection of the Romans against this same Cassivelanus, who had conquered and put to death the father of his rival. On this condition the the Trinobantes offered their submission. Some other tribes followed their example. These seceders acquainted the Romans with the road to Cassivelanus's capital situated on the environs of the spot now occupied by the town of St. Alban's. This was a collection of huts reminding beholders of the dwellings of the Gauls. They rested on a foundation made of stones, from which arose the walls composed of timber, earth, and reeds, and surmounted by a conical roof which served at once to admit daylight and to allow smoke to escape through a hole in the top. Fens and woods surrounded by a ditch and earthworks protected this primitive capital, which soon fell into the hands of the Romans.

Cassivelanus had only one hope left. He had given orders to the four chiefs who had the command in Kent to attack the Roman vessels. They obeyed, but the detachment charged with the protection of the fleet was on its guard. The Britons were repulsed. Cassivelanus, beaten and discouraged, humbled himself so far as to sue for peace. Nevertheless when Cæsar at the commencement of September retired once more to Gaul, he left in Britain neither a soldier nor a fortress. The second campaign, longer and more fortunate than the first, had not produced any greater results.

Ninety-six years elapsed; the Roman Republic had become the Roman Empire; but the Britons had been troubled by no new invasion. The Belgian population of the sea-coast had continued to cultivate their fields, to which they already knew how to apply marl for manure. They had woven in peace their long brogues, or chequered breeches, their square mantles, and their tunics. The Celts, more savage, had seen their flocks multiply around them. Even this, the only kind of wealth among barbarous tribes, did not exist in the northern part of Britain. The rude inhabitants of Scotland depended only on the products of the chase, and found a shelter for their almost naked state in the hollow of rocks or in the obscurity of caverns; but no invader had come to trouble their wild liberty up to the day when the Emperor Claudius, in the year 45 of the Christian Era, conceived the project of marching in the footsteps of Cæsar and subduing the savage land of Britain. One of the most experienced of his generals, Aulus Plautius, sent forward with a force of fifty thousand men, obtained at first some successes, notwithstanding the resistance of the chief of the Silures, Caractacus. When the Emperor arrived, the capital of this people was captured, and several tribes had submitted almost without a struggle. Claudius returned to Rome to enjoy there the honors of an easy triumph.

Thirty battles fought by Aulus Plautius were insufficient to reduce Caractacus. Ostorius Scapula was the first to succeed in establishing on the Severn a line of forts separating from the rest of the island the country, now become Roman, which comprised nearly all the Southern tribes. The Britons, who appeared to be subdued, were disarmed. But a new insurrection soon broke forth. The Iceni, who occupied the country now known as the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, were the first to rise. The Cangi followed their example; and in order to reduce them the Praetor was compelled to pursue them as far as to within one day's march of the sea which separates England from Ireland. From the territory of the Brigantes, which embraced a portion of the present counties of Lancashire and York, Ostorius hastened to invade the Silures, who inhabited the southern portion of Wales, and who were always the most indomitable opponents of a foreign domination. "Behold the day which is to decide the fate of Britain!" exclaimed Caractacus at the sight of the Romans. "To-day begins the era either of liberty or eternal slavery. Remember that your ancestors were able to drive back the great Cæsar, and to save their liberty, their life, and their honor!" He spoke in vain. The naked breasts and bare heads of the Britons could not resist the broad swords of the Roman soldiers. The massacre was horrible. The wife and the daughter of Caractacus were captured, but the chief himself had disappeared. Hoping to renew the struggle, he had taken refuge with his mother-in-law, Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes. She delivered him up to the Romans. Caractacus was sent to Rome with his family. "How can men who possess such palaces make such efforts to conquer our miserable hovels?" exclaimed the British hero, while traversing the streets of Rome. He appeared before the tribunal of the emperor. Agrippina was there by the side of her husband. The wife of Caractacus threw herself at her feet, imploring her pity; but the conquered chief asked for nothing, and exhibited no sign of fear. This greatness in defeat penetrated to the heart and to the sluggish mind of Claudius. He gave the order to set the captives free. Tradition states that he even restored to his prisoner a portion of his territory, but Tacitus does not mention this; he leaves the story of the vanquished chief at the point where the fetters fall from his hands.

For a moment Nero, who had become emperor, thought of abandoning the conquest of Britain, so difficult to secure. It was not until the year 59 A.D. that Paulinus Suetonius, at that time prætor, resolved to crush the resistance of the Britons in their innermost retreat. The island of Mona (now Anglesey) was consecrated to the Druid worship; the priests had nearly all taken refuge there, and there the defeated chiefs found an asylum. Religion even then exercised a considerable power over the minds of the inhabitants of Britain. In no part were the Druids more numerous and powerful; nowhere had they a greater number of disciples diligently occupied during long years in engraving upon their memory the regulations of their worship, the sacred maxims, the ancient poems, which the priests did not allow to be committed to writing. Great, therefore, was the emotion in Britain when the Romans were seen to attack the holy isle.

Caractacus and his Wife before Claudius.

On the shore a great crowd awaited the advance of the enemy, "savage and diversified" in appearance, says Tacitus. The armed men were assembled in a mass; the women, attired in sombre dress, running about with dishevelled hair, like furies brandishing their torches; and the Druids were standing, clothed in their long white robes, as if about to sacrifice to their gods, their heads shaved, their beards long, their hands raised to heaven, while they pronounced the terrible maledictions of the Celtic races against the enemies of their people and their divinities. The Roman soldiers hesitated; their limbs seemed paralyzed by fear, and they exposed themselves, without resisting, to the blows of their enemies. Their general urged them to advance. At length, each encouraging the other to despise the infuriated cries of a band of priests and women, they rushed upon the Britons, and precipitated them upon the stakes which they had prepared in order to sacrifice the Roman prisoners to their gods. A garrison was placed on the island; the sacred grove was cut down; and the fugitive Druids disappeared, to seek an asylum among the tribes which still offered a resistance.

The number of these tribes had increased in the absence of the prætor. The infamous treatment inflicted upon Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, and her children, by order of the procurator Catus, had aroused the indignation of her neighbors as well as of her own subjects. By secret intrigues the malcontents from all quarters were invited to strike a great blow for the recovery of their liberty. The colony of Camalodunum was first attacked and put to fire and sword. Suetonius hastened from the isle of Mona, and marched first towards London, already an important and populous city. Defence was impossible. The prætor withdrew the garrison to protect the rest of the provinces, and all the citizens who had not been able to retire under the shelter of the Roman eagles were massacred. The Roman colony of Verulam suffered the same fate. It is said that more than 70,000 Romans and their allies had already perished under the blows of the insurgents, when the two armies found themselves confronted. Queen Boadicea rode along the ranks of the Britons, clothed in a robe of various colors, with a golden zone around her waist. She reminded her countrymen that she was not the first woman who had led them to battle, since the custom of the country often called to the throne the widow of a sovereign, passing over his children. She spoke of the irreparable insults which she had undergone, of the misfortunes of the nation, and she exhorted the warriors to immolate all the Romans to Andrasta, the goddess of victory. The Romans remained motionless; they were awaiting the attack of the Britons.

The barbarians, excited by the glowing words of the queen, rushed upon the legions; the Romans bestirred themselves at length, and their broad swords opened for them a passage through the midst of the mass of Britons. The latter fell without flinching; but their enemy advanced to the line of chariots, and put to the sword women and children. It is said, though no doubt, with the usual exaggeration of the time, that 80,000 Britons perished on that day. Boadicea, resolved not to survive her hopes of vengeance, poisoned herself upon the battle-field.

Successive prætors had failed to establish tranquillity in Britain, or to obtain the submission of the people, when Agricola, father-in-law of the celebrated historian Tacitus, arrived in his turn in this indomitable island. His brilliant exploits soon caused him to be respected; but, while pursuing year by year the course of his conquests, he endeavored to found the Roman rule upon the most durable basis. In his hands the civil administration became milder; the Britons governed with justice, became gradually less estranged from their conquerors. A taste for luxury and Roman civilization began to distinguish the chiefs admitted to the prætorian court; the Roman toga took the place of the British mantle; buildings arose upon the model of the Roman constructions; children began to speak Latin; and at the same time the spirit of liberty and resistance diminished among the inhabitants of the south of Britain. "The Britons willingly furnish recruits to our armies," wrote Tacitus; "they pay the taxes without murmuring, and they perform with zeal their duties towards the government, provided they have not to complain of oppression. When they are offended their resentment is prompt and violent; they may be conquered, but not tamed; they may be led to obedience, but not to servitude."

The military progress of the Roman general was no less important than his moral conquests. He had reached the Firth of Forth and the narrow isthmus which separates this river from the mouth of the Clyde. After every new victory he protected the subjected territory with forts. He even constructed a wall, the ruins of which, crossing the north of England from the Solway to the mouth of the Tyne, bear to this day his name. In the eighth and ninth year of his government he passed the line of the forts and penetrated into Scotland, the country of the Caledonians, savage tribes who had not yet beheld the Roman eagles. Scarcely had the conquerors invaded this new territory when the Caledonians, under the command of their chief, Galgacus, descended from the Grampian hills and fell upon the invader. On Ardoch Moor traces of the combat still exist, together with the lines of the Roman encampment. The struggle lasted all day, and the barbarians were defeated; but on the morrow at sunrise they had disappeared, and the Romans found themselves alone in the midst of a wild country. In their flight the Caledonians had set fire to their habitations, and with their own hands had slain their wives and children, to prevent their falling victims to the vengeance of the conqueror. The savage tribes had returned into their mountains, leaving, according to the chronicles, 10,000 dead upon the field of battle. Agricola made no effort to pursue them. Falling back towards the south, he despatched his vessels to make a voyage of exploration all round the island, the northern shores of which had not yet been visited. The mariners returned, reporting that no tongue of land connected Britain with the continent, that they had seen in the distance Thule (Iceland), enveloped in mists and eternal snow, and that the seas which they had traversed were of a sluggish kind, heavy under the oar, and never agitated by wind or storms. Agricola was recalled to Rome through the jealousy of the Emperor Domitian, but his wise government had appeased the passions of the Britons, and for thirty years afterwards the Roman annals contain no mention of British affairs—an evidence that peace reigned in the island.

An invasion of the Caledonians brought the Emperor Hadrian to Britain (120 A.D.). Having driven them back beyond the forts which connected the mouth of the Solway on the west with that of the Tyne on the eastern coast, he caused to be raised behind this rampart an enormous wall, fortified by a wide fosse and provided with towers which received a garrison. This redoubt is still partly in existence, as is the wall of Antoninus, constructed some years later across the isthmus of the Forth, after a fresh invasion of the barbarians.

No rampart, however, could resist the warlike ardor of these savage populations; and the disorganization which had attacked the vast body of the Empire began to make itself felt among the legions established in Britain. The soldiers often murmured; the general, Albinus, after having refused the title of Cæsar from the hands of the Emperor Commodus, accepted it upon the offer of Septimius Severus, and, suddenly rejecting his allegiance, he was proclaimed emperor by his troops. Crossing immediately into Gaul to sustain his pretensions by force of arms, he was defeated near Revoux, and paid for his ambition by the loss of his head; but he had brought with him and had sacrificed the best of the troops in Britain, both Roman and native. The Caledonians took advantage of this opportunity to redouble their efforts, and the case became so grave that the emperor left Rome to oppose them (207 A.D.).

Septimius Severus was old and infirm, but his spirit was still unsubdued. When he entered into Caledonia with his son Caracalla, he brought in his train enormous armaments. His enemies were badly armed; they carried only the short sword and the target, which their descendants in the highlands still employed during the wars of the last century. But they were skilled to take advantage of the natural defences of their country, and without being able to meet the Caledonians in a fixed battle the emperor had lost, it is said, 50,000 men before abandoning his expedition. He had carried the name and arms of the Romans so far that he had no intention of retaining the territory which he had traversed. He left there neither fortress nor garrison, but when he had returned into the subjected territory he separated it from Caledonia by a new rampart, more imposing than all those of his predecessors. For two years the legions were employed in constructing it in stone, fortifying it with towers, and surrounding it with roads. The remains of this gigantic work attest to this day the power of those who raised it. The Caledonians, however, had just attempted another invasion when the emperor, who was marching against them, died at York (211 A.D.), and his son Caracalla, compelled to hasten back to Rome to protect the safety of the empire, hurriedly concluded with the rude tribes a peace which lasted for some years.

It was not until the year 228, under the reign of Diocletian and Maximilian, that the dangers which threatened Britain again disturbed the repose of the Emperors. Her shores were threatened by Saxon and Scandinavian pirates. A commander of Belgian origin named Carausius was sent against them, who crowned his success by causing himself to be proclaimed emperor by his legions. Diocletian conferred on him the title of Cæsar. This new sovereign was assassinated at York, and succeeded in the year 297 by his minister Allectus, who himself fell soon after before the power of Constantius Chlorus. When this prince died at York, his son Constantine, proclaimed emperor by his troops, carried with him on leaving Britain a great number of the young men of the country eager to serve in his armies.

The Roman empire no longer existed. The distant seat of power had been transferred to Constantinople. The province of Britain escaped from the imperial watchfulness. It was at the same time ill defended. The Caledonians at this period had yielded their place, either in fact or in name, to the Picts, so called perhaps by the Romans on account of the colors with which they painted their bodies. Side by side with them, and often driving them back upon their own territory were the Scots, originally from Ireland, from which country they crossed over in so great a number in their little flat-bottomed boats that they finally gave their own name to the country they invaded. Under the Emperor Valentinian we find them pursuing their depredations as far as London, and driven back to their own country with great difficulty by Theodosius, father of Theodosius the Great. Before him and after his death, in the year 393, Britain presented a similar spectacle to that of the other Roman provinces. The generals who were in command there, were proclaimed emperors by their legions, assassinated by their rivals, or decapitated by order of the sovereign rulers of Rome or Constantinople, from the moment that they attempted to leave the island to extend their conquests. Every one of these attempts cost Britain a number of soldiers and contributed to weaken a race already deteriorated by foreign domination. In 420, under the Emperor Honorius, when the Empire was expiring under the attacks of the barbarians, the Britons deposing the Roman magistrates, proclaimed their independence, which was immediately recognized by the emperor. But the Britons were not in a condition to struggle against the invaders who were pressing them on all sides. Like the Roman Empire, their country was fated to fall into the hands of the barbarians.

Like the Roman Empire, however, Britain had already received the principle which was destined to save her from complete desolation. In the midst of political disorganization, and of power distributed among a hundred petty chiefs, all enemies and rivals, she had already heard the only name which has been given to men for their salvation. The gospel of Jesus Christ had been proclaimed upon her shores. At what epoch or by whom is not known. Probably Rome brought with her arms the Christian faith to the British people; the Christians were numerous in the imperial armies, and their zeal often won to Jesus Christ the souls of the vanquished. Up to the reign of Diocletian the progress of Christianity in Britain was not impeded by any severity. At that epoch (303—305) the great persecution which was raging throughout the empire extended itself to Britain. Constantius Chlorus, who was then governor, favorable though he was to the Gospel, was nevertheless unable to avoid calling around him the officers of his household and announcing to them the necessity of either relinquishing their trusts or abjuring the name of Christ. Those who were cowardly enough to prefer earthly greatness to Christian fidelity found themselves disappointed in their ambitious hopes. The general immediately deprived them of office, remarking that men faithless to their God would be equally wanting in fidelity to their emperor. But the moderation of Constantius Chlorus was insufficient to extinguish the persecuting zeal of the inferior magistrates; and the British Church soon counted its martyrs. The Christians took refuge in the forests and the hills. They were able to find brethren among the rude tribes of the north; for Tertullian tells us that, in the portion of Britain where the arms of the Romans had failed to penetrate, Jesus Christ had conquered souls. With the power of Constantine Christianity ascended the throne; the British Church was organized; she had sent three Bishops to the Council of Arles in 314; but Britain was about to undergo a new yoke: and her dawning Christianity was destined to encounter other enemies.

Chapter II.
The Rule Of The Saxons
To The Invasion Of The Danes (449—832).

Discord prevailed in Britain. The petty rival chiefs, sometimes triumphant, sometimes defeated, united in vain against the Picts and Scots, whom the Roman walls no longer impeded now that the Roman power had disappeared. In this disorder, the Britons were dwindling in numbers day by day, when Vortigern, chief of Kent, conceived the project of calling to his assistance the Saxons, a famous people who inhabited the northern coasts of Germany and Denmark and extended their power even to a portion of the territory now known as Holland. Several tribes were descended from a common origin. The Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons (properly so called) all led the life of pirates, and many a time had they suddenly appeared upon the coasts of Britain or of Gaul, scattering terror among the inhabitants, whose houses they pillaged and burnt, killing all who resisted them. For a long time they risked their lives and sported with the dangers of the sea in mere skiffs; but in 449, when Vortigern called to his aid two celebrated pirates among the Jutes, named Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon vessels were long, strongly built, and capable of carrying a considerable number of men and of wrestling with the fury of the waves. The pirates responded promptly to the appeal, and for some time they faithfully observed their engagements, driving the Picts and Scots back into their territory and fighting for Vortigern against his British enemies. It is related that the Saxon Hengist, having fortified himself at Thong-Caster, situated in the county of Lincoln, gave there a feast to King Vortigern. Hengist had sent for his daughter, the beautiful Rowena, who, bending the knee before the British sovereign, offered him the cup of welcome. Her beauty enchanted Vortigern, and he could not rest until he had obtained her hand.

Whether from a weakness for the father of his wife, or from gratitude for services, or from the impossibility of ridding himself of the allies whom he had sent for, Vortigern permitted Hengist to establish himself in the isle of Thanet; and gradually fresh vessels arrived bringing reinforcements for the foreign colony. Angles followed Jutes; and the Britons began to be anxious about these powerful neighbors. At the first quarrel swords were drawn from their scabbards. Their blades were equally good and keen; for the Britons had derived their military equipments from the Romans, and the Saxons, passionately fond of iron, attached more importance to their arms than to any other possession. But the Britons had been weakened by their old dissensions; the Saxons allied themselves with the Picts and Scots, against whom they had been originally called to fight, and several indecisive battles ended in a truce. It is even related that the two parties being assembled at a banquet at Stonehenge, on the 1st of May, Hengist cried out to the Saxons, in their language, "Draw your swords!" and, at the same moment, the long knives concealed under the garments of the Saxons were plunged into the hearts of their entertainers. Vortigern alone was spared, no doubt at the intercession of Rowena. The war began; the Britons were defeated, and Eric, son of Hengist, became in 457 the first Saxon king of the county of Kent, the Isle of Wight, and that part of the coast of Hampshire which faces that island.

The success of Hengist and Horsa naturally attracted new hordes. In the year 477 the Saxons, under the command of Ella, founded the kingdom of Sussex (South Sax), which comprised only the present county of Sussex. In the year 519 other Saxons, under the orders of Cerdic, completed the invasion of South Britain, and extended themselves from the county of Surrey, bordering upon Sussex and Kent, to the eastern extremity of England; they occupied also Surrey and all that portion of Hampshire not in the possession of the Jutes, together with Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Devonshire, not even leaving to the Britons the whole of the county of Cornwall. This new kingdom took the name of Wessex (West Sax).

The invaders grew bolder. In 530 a new body of Saxons, the name of whose leader is not recorded in history, arrived, and established themselves upon the northern border of the kingdoms of Kent and Wessex, founding there the kingdom of Essex (East Sax), the importance of which was due to the Thames and London, since it comprised only the county of Essex, the small territory of Middlesex, and the southern part of the county of Herts.

"Thus," says M. Guillaume Guizot in his History of Alfred the Great, "the Saxons originally rested their power upon the first state founded by the Jutes at the south-eastern extremity of England. They surrounded it by their own settlements, and all established themselves in the southern part of the island." They had scarcely completed their migrations when the Angles, who had then arrived only in small numbers, and were mingled with the Jutes, began on their own account to invade the eastern coast. About the year 527 several bands of Angles arrived under different chiefs, but it was not until some years later that they united to form the kingdom of East Anglia, which comprised the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, the isle of Ely, and probably a portion of Bedfordshire. The territories of Norfolk and Suffolk owe even their names to two tribes of Angles, the North folk and the South folk, while the entire race have given their name to England. This new kingdom, still isolated as well as defended by the sea, was fortified by fens and by many rivers. Where natural defences were wanting the Angles raised earthworks, long known as the Giant's Dyke, then as the Devil's Dyke. In spite of the draining of the fen, the line of these works can be traced to this day.

In the year 547, new bands of Angles, led by a chief named Ida, landed upon the north-east coast and founded there the kingdom of Bernicia, which comprised Northumberland and the south of Pentland, between the Tweed and the Firth of Forth. Some years later, in 560, other Angles, no less enterprising than their predecessors, established themselves from the southern limit of Bernicia as far as the Humber, and from one sea to the other, occupying all the territory of the counties of Lancaster, York, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Durham. This was the kingdom of Deira. These two colonies were united under the same sceptre in 617, and took the name of Northumbria.

The Angles began to advance from the coasts. In the year 586 they occupied all the country bounded on the north by the river Humber and the kingdom of Deira; on the west, by Wales, which alone remained in the hands of the Britons; on the south, by the Saxon kingdoms; and on the south-east, by the Angles of East Anglia. Mercia, as the new kingdom was called, comprised then on the south-east the northern part of the counties of Hertford and Bedford; on the east, all the counties of Northampton, Huntingdon, and Rutland; on the north, the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, and Chester; on the west, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire; in the centre of the island, Warwickshire and Leicestershire; on the south, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and the county of Buckingham. In this kingdom, the most extensive of all, the British population had not been destroyed or driven back, as they had in the greater portion of other parts; they continued to inhabit their ancient country, mingled with and subject to the Angles.

Such was the division of Britain among the conquerors, and the constitution of the Saxon kingdoms. This is what is known as the Heptarchy, or Octarchy, according to whether we place the denomination before or after the union of the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia in a single kingdom of Northumbria. Such was the new scene of the wars which were destined to break out again and deluge Britain, now become England, with blood.

A more gentle influence was soon to exercise its effect upon the sanguinary passion of the barbarous races. The British Christians, though vanquished and driven back into the narrow territory of Cambria or Wales, do not seem to have attempted to convert their conquerors. For a moment they had themselves run the risk of falling into the heresies of Pelagius, an Irish monk who denied the doctrine of original sin; but the missionaries from Gaul, Saint Germain and Saint Loup, had succeeded in 429 and 446 in uprooting among them these disastrous tendencies. One day Saint Germain, who had been a soldier before being a bishop, found himself in the presence of a band of Picts and Saxons who were laying waste the coast. Putting himself at the head of his flock, he marched against the enemy amidst loud cries of "Alleluia!" These cries taken up by the neighboring echoes terrified the pirates, who fled; hence this peaceful victory became known by the name of "The Battle of the Alleluias."

The Britons were not heretics, but with the independence which always characterized their race they differed from Rome and from the Eastern Church upon various points of little importance in themselves, though they had often created divisions in Christendom. For no reason that has come down to us the Britons celebrated Easter in accordance with the customs of the Eastern Church—that is to say, at the fourteenth day of the moon, whatever might be the day on which that event fell, in imitation of the Jews who on that day offered up the Paschal lamb. The Western Church, on the contrary, postponed the celebration of Easter till the Sunday following. Nothing more was needed to breed dissensions between the British bishops and the missionaries despatched from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great. For some years previously, Gregory, not yet become a bishop, and being in fact only a simple priest, passing through the slave-market in Rome, had been struck by the handsome appearance of some young persons offered there for sale. Learning that they belonged to the race of Angles, or Saxons, "They would not be Angles but angels," he exclaimed, "if they were Christians;" and he conceived the project of going himself to preach the faith of Jesus Christ to a people so well endowed by nature. His friends were only able to prevail on him to renounce his intention by inducing the Pope to forbid his departure from Rome. When in his turn he was elevated to the episcopal dignity in the most important see of the Western Church, he did not forget the Saxons whose conversion had previously occupied his thoughts. He endeavored first to inflame with his zeal the young slaves whom he had caused to be placed in convents; but the Saxons were apparently not disposed to become Missionaries, for in the year 595 the Pope despatched to Britain a young monk named Augustine, prior of the Convent of St. Andrew at Rome, accompanied by forty friars. They took the road towards Gaul; but they had scarcely arrived at Aix, when they heard such terrible accounts of the ferocity of the Anglo-Saxons that they were alarmed and wrote to the Pope to ask his leave to retrace their footsteps. Gregory, on the contrary, encouraged them to persevere in their enterprise, and furnished with interpreters by the good offices of Brunehaut, who was reigning over Austrasia in the name of her grandsons, they arrived in 597 in the Isle of Thanet. Augustine sent immediately one of his monks to Ethelbert, king of Kent, announcing his intention of coming to preach Christianity to his court.

The place could not have been better chosen. A powerful prince in his domains, Ethelbert was their Bretwalda, or general chief of all the Heptarchy. This title, which was in no way well defined, but which conferred a certain influence in the counsels of the seven Saxon states, seems to have been accorded to a kind of merit understood by all. Two chiefs had already borne it before Ethelbert— Ella, first king of Sussex, and Ceawlin, king of Wessex. The new Bretwalda was a pagan, but he had married a Christian wife, Bertha, daughter of Charibert, king of Paris: she had reserved to herself the free exercise of her religion; a French bishop had even accompanied her. Ethelbert had no repugnance towards Christianity and he consented to receive the Roman missionaries. "Be careful to grant them an audience in the open air," said the pagan priests, however; "their maledictions will be less powerful there than under a roof." It was therefore in the open field that the Saxon Bretwalda awaited the approach of the Christian priests. They advanced bearing a crucifix and a banner on which was painted the image of the Saviour. They made the air resound with their grave canticles. The imagination of the barbarians was no doubt struck by these ceremonies, and when Augustine by the aid of an interpreter, had explained to the king the leading doctrines of the Christian faith and asked permission to preach to his subjects the religion which they had come to proclaim to him, Ethelbert mildly replied, "I am not disposed to abandon the gods of my fathers for an unknown and uncertain faith; but since your intentions are good and your words full of gentleness, you can speak freely to my people. I will prevent any one interfering with you, and will furnish food to you and your monks." Augustine overjoyed, directed his steps towards the neighboring city of Canterbury, which he entered chanting, "O Eternal Father, we supplicate Thee according to Thy mercy turn Thy anger from this city and from Thy sacred place, for we have sinned. Alleluia!"

The preaching of Augustine and the sanctity of his life exercised a powerful influence over the Saxons. Numerous converts already pressed around him when King Ethelbert decided to embrace the Christian religion. His conversion attracted his subjects in a mass to the new Faith, and Pope Gregory, delighted with the success of the Mission, sent to Augustine the episcopal pallium [Footnote 1] with the title of Archbishop of Canterbury. At the same time Gregory advised the new prelate not to destroy the pagan temples to which the people had been accustomed, but to consecrate them to the worship of Jesus Christ, and to transform the pagan festivals into joyful family meetings at which the Christian Saxons could eat their oxen instead of sacrificing them to false gods.

[Footnote 1: An ornament of woollen texture, sprinkled with black crosses, which the Pope sends to the Archbishops and sometimes to Bishops.]

With these sage counsels Gregory sent a reinforcement of missionaries; but they did not suffice for the zeal or the views of Augustine, who resolved to address himself to the British bishops in Wales asking their assistance in the work of evangelization. The Britons were jealous and anxious. They consulted a hermit of great reputation for sanctity upon the claims of Augustine to their trust and obedience. "If the stranger comes from God, follow him," said the hermit. "But how shall we know if he is from God?" asked the Britons. "By his humility." … The reply still appeared to the envoys to be vague.

Augustine preaching to Ethelbert.

"If he rises at your approach, know that he is the leader sent by God to direct his people," continued the hermit. "If he remains seated reject him because of his pride." Fortified with this precise instruction the British priests, with seven Bishops and the Abbot of Bangor, presented themselves at the conference. Augustine was seated, and did not rise to receive them. The question was already settled in their minds when the Archbishop of Canterbury stated his demands. He desired that the British priests should henceforth celebrate the festival of Easter on the same day as the Western Church; that they should employ the Roman forms in the ceremony of baptism, and that they should join their efforts with his for the conversion of the Saxons. All these proposals were rejected. Then Augustine rose and in a loud voice exclaimed, "You refuse to labor to convert the Saxons! You will perish by the swords of the Saxons." This prediction was remembered some years later when all the monks of Bangor were massacred by the Northumbrians in a Saxon expedition into Cambria.

In spite of the coolness of the British Bishops the work of conversion went on. The zeal of Ethelbert had already engaged his nephew Sebert, king of Essex, to receive baptism. A church had been founded in London which possessed a bishop. Another prelate had his seat at Rochester. Ethelbert had also gained over to the Christian faith the chief of East Anglia, Redwald, who became after him Bretwalda of the Heptarchy. But the wife of Redwald was still a pagan and his subjects were attached to the religion of their ancestors. The king set up two altars in the same temple, one dedicated to Odin and the other to the God of the Christians; but the new faith soon prevailed over its rival, and East Anglia took its place among the Christian kingdoms of the Heptarchy.

Christianity had not yet penetrated into Northumbria when the king Edwin married a daughter of Ethelbert, a Christian like her father. The queen came accompanied by a Roman bishop named Paulinus; but the king remained faithful to the worship of his forefathers in spite of the solicitations of his wife, of Paulinus, and even of the Pope. He had, however, consented to the child of Ethelburga being baptized; and the day was at hand when his scruples were destined to be overcome. In his youth, during a long exile and in the midst of serious perils, there had appeared before him, doubtless in a dream, a person of venerable aspect, who asked him, "What wouldst thou give to one who should deliver thee to-day?" "All that I possess," replied the Saxon. "If he asked thee only to follow his counsels, wouldst thou obey?" "Unto death," was the answer. "It is well," said the apparition, at the same time placing his hand softly upon his head; "when one shall return and make thee this sign, follow him." Edwin had escaped from the dangers which threatened him, and his dream had remained deeply engraved upon his memory.

One day when he was alone, the door of his apartment opened, and Paulinus entering softly placed his hand upon his head. "Dost thou remember?" he asked, and the Saxon, falling on his knees, promised to do whatever he should desire. Still thoughtful and prudent, however, while accepting baptism for himself, he reserved the right of his subjects to act as might seem well to them. The Council of Wise Men or Aldermen was called together, and the king having informed them of his change of faith, as the basis of a new doctrine, asked them what they thought of it. The chief of the priests was there, and spoke first. "Our gods are powerless," he said; "I have served them with more zeal and fidelity than all the people, yet I am neither richer nor more honored. I am weary of the gods."

An ancient warrior near the king rose at this speech. "O king," he said, "thou rememberest perhaps in the winter days when thou art seated with thy captain near a good fire, lighted in a warm apartment, while it is raining and snowing out of doors, that a little bird has entered by one door and gone out by another with fluttering wings. He has passed a moment of happiness, sheltered from the rain and the storm; but the bird vanishes with the quickness of a glance, and from winter he returns again to winter. Such it appears to me is the life of man upon this earth. The unknown time is irksome to us. It perplexes us because we know nothing of it. If thy new faith teaches us something, it is worthy of our adherence."

The whole assembly took the side of the two chiefs; but when Paulinus proposed, as a token of renunciation to false gods, that their idols should be cast down, all hesitated except the high priest. He demanded a horse and a javelin in place of the mare and the white rod which pertained to his old office, and galloping towards the temple he struck the image with his weapon. The people trembling awaited some token of the wrath of the gods; but the heavens and the earth remained silent, and the king was baptized with all the most distinguished of his people, who were accompanied by a crowd of warriors. Edwin soon became Bretwalda, and his reign was an epoch of repose and happiness for his subjects.

During the struggles which recommenced after the death of Edwin, three kingdoms fortified themselves, and took the lead over the others. These were Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. These three divisions of the Heptarchy were predominant in the year 800, when Egbert, prince of Wessex, returned to his country after a long exile. He had passed a considerable portion of the time at the court of Charlemagne, and had thus acquired a development of intellect and of knowledge rare at that time among the Saxon princes. The first part of his reign was peaceful; but from the year 809 forward, the sword of Egbert was drawn from the scabbard, and for many years he pursued his conquests from kingdom to kingdom. He had already extended his dominion over the British people of Cornwall, who had consented to pay him tribute, when he subjugated Mercia and the kingdom of Kent, Essex, and East Anglia. He had carried his victorious arms up to the frontiers of Northumbria. The chiefs, anxious and already beaten in anticipation, came to meet him, recognizing him for their sovereign, and promising him obedience. Egbert accepted their homage, and retired without fighting a battle. Nearly the whole Heptarchy had accepted his laws, and the title of Bretwalda had conferred upon him an authority more considerable than in the case of any of his predecessors. He continued, however, to assume the simple title of king of Wessex. He reigned until the year 836, happy and powerful; but the last years of his reign were troubled by the first invasions of the Danes. Egbert repulsed them with glory; but if he had possessed a spark of the almost prophetic foresight of Charlemagne, he would have wept, like the Frankish hero, over the infinite woes with which these men from the North menaced his country.

Chapter III.
The Danes.
Alfred The Great (836-901.)

For nearly four centuries the Saxons had been established in Britain; they had become the sole masters of the country, and had there forgotten the original source of their wealth. But the nation from which they had sprung was still prolific in warriors, vigorous, enterprising, and possessed of nothing in the world but their arms and their ships, for all the property of the family belonged by right to the eldest son: warriors too ardent in conquering and in obtaining wealth at the point of the sword. The peninsula of Jutland and the provinces still further north of Scandinavia sent year by year to the French and English coasts a great number of ships, manned by the "Sea-kings," as they styled themselves: "The tempest is our friend," they would say; "it takes us wherever we wish to go." Repulsed three times from the coast of England by Egbert, these pirates soon reappeared under the reign of his son Ethelwulf; the whole island became surrounded by their light skiffs. The Saxons had been compelled to organize along the shores a continual resistance, and to appoint officers whose duty it was to call out the people in a body to repulse the enemy. Three serious contests took place in 839—at Rochester, at Canterbury, and at London. King Ethelwulf himself was wounded in battle. But shortly after, the internal dissensions which were agitating the whole of France, attracted the pirates as the dead body attracts the vulture. During twelve years the Danish fleets altered their course, and repaired to the French coasts. When they reappeared, in 831, in England, their successes were at first alarming; three hundred and fifty of their vessels ascended the Thames as far as London, and the town was sacked. But the king awaited the enemy at Oakley: they were defeated, and suffered great losses. After having met with severe reverses at several other parts of the Saxon territory, the Danes withdrew from there, and respected the English coasts during the remainder of the reign of Ethelwulf.

It is at this period that there appears in the pages of history the name of the fourth son of Ethelwulf, him whom England was one day to call Alfred the Great, Alfred the Well-beloved. He had first seen the light of day at Wantage, in the heart of the forests of Berkshire, in 849, two years before the departure of the Danes. His mother Osberga, a noble and pious woman, gave herself up entirely to the task of rearing her little son, who soon began to excite the hope and admiration of all who saw him. Doubtless the predilection which his father had for this little child, induced him to give a startling proof of his affection, for Alfred was scarcely four years of age when he was sent to Rome with a numerous suite of nobles and servants, to ask for himself, of Pope Leo IV., the title of king, and the holy unction. The Pope was aware of the piety of the Saxon monarch, and he consecrated with his own hands the little king, and even administered to him the sacrament of confirmation. Alfred returned to England, and it was no doubt the recollection of what he had seen at Rome, which began thenceforward to instil into his soul the desire to gain knowledge, the pursuit of which was probably very rare among the young Saxons. His mother, one day, was holding a pretty manuscript in her hand, a collection of ancient Saxon poems, and was showing it to her four sons, who were playing beside her. "I will give this pretty book," she said, "to whichever of you shall learn it the soonest by heart." Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred eyed the book with indifference, and went on with their game; but little Alfred approached his mother: "Really," said he, "will you give this beautiful manuscript to whoever shall learn it by heart the quickest and who shall come and repeat it all to you?" The large, round eyes of the child were fixed upon his mother: she repeated her promise, and even gave up the manuscript into the keeping of the little prince. He quickly hurried away with it to his master, who was able to read aloud to him the verses which it contained, for, alas! Alfred could not read until he was twelve years of age. He soon returned, triumphant, repeated the lines, received the book from his mother, and preserved thenceforth throughout his life a taste for the old Saxon ballads of which he had thus first made the acquaintance.

Alfred was six years old and had lost his mother, when his father, wishing to make the pilgrimage to Rome in his turn, took his youngest son with him: the Saxon king spent a year with the Pope, carrying from church to church his sumptuous devotion. On his return journey, he stopped at the court of Charles the Bold, a court elegant and polite in comparison with the still rude customs of the Saxons; and, attracted by the beauty as well as the arts of Princess Judith, daughter of Charles, Ethelwulf married her, notwithstanding the disparity in their ages, and brought her in triumph into his kingdom. But the two persons whom the old king loved best, his young wife and his youngest son, were distrusted by the rest of his family, as well as by his people; Judith claimed a share of the sovereign power, according to the old custom in Britain and Germany, which had become odious to the Saxons by reason of the crimes of several queens; the elder sons of Ethelwulf feared that their young brother, so dear to their father, might be raised above themselves; the eldest, Ethelbald, revolted, and his father found a general rising against him when he returned to England. The old king did not resist: he ceded to his son the greater portion of his states and died at the end of two years, having shared equally between his sons his kingdom of Wessex, previously enlarged by the addition of Kent and Sussex. The tributary states of Northumbria and Mercia had shaken off the feeble authority of Ethelwulf and had recommenced their internal wars. The Danes profited by these disputes, and had taken up with renewed ardor their terrible incursions upon the English coasts.

In this alarming situation of affairs the sons of Ethelwulf foresaw that the division of Wessex would be their ruin; instead, therefore, of sharing it among themselves they agreed that each should reign over the whole in turn, according to their ages. The reigns of the three eldest were short. Supported successively by their brothers, they fought against the Danes, and all died in the flower of their youth; the last, Ethelred, was still on the throne, when an invasion of the Danes, who penetrated as far as Reading, called all the men of Wessex to arms. The war had a short time before assumed a new aspect; the Danes did not content themselves with descending upon the most fertile portions of the coast with their long ships, or with taking possession of all the horses. Overrunning the country, they ravaged and sacked everything in their passage, and re-embarked in their vessels before the frightened inhabitants had had time to rise up to resist them. From pirates, the Danes had become conquerors, and desired to establish themselves in that England which their predecessors, the Saxons, had formerly snatched from the Britons. Already possessed of East Anglia and a portion of Northumbria, they were threatening Wessex, and had intrenched themselves at Reading. Alfred had recently been married to a princess of Mercia, but his new relations did not give him any support against the Danes, when, having beaten several detached corps of the pirates, Ethelred and Alfred attacked the citadel. The greater number of the Danes sprang outside the walls, "like veritable wolves," says Asser, the historian of Alfred, and the struggle recommenced.

The Danes were nearly all tall men; their wandering and adventurous life favored the development of their muscular powers; they did not fear death, for the Walhalla or Paradise of their god Odin, promised to the brave warriors who fell in battle all the pleasure which they esteemed most on earth. The figure of the raven, the confidant of their god, floated on the red flags of the Danes; if its dark wings fluttered on the long folds of silk, victory was certain; if they remained motionless, the Northmen feared defeat. The wings of the raven were fluttering triumphantly before Reading, for the Saxons were defeated and were obliged to retreat.

They had not lost courage, however, and four days later they returned to give battle once more to their enemies; the Danes had already issued forth from their intrenchments, but Ethelred was still in his tent, attending holy mass, and would not hurry to the scene of battle, in spite of urgent messages from Alfred. The latter, therefore, attacked their opponents single-handed, opposite a little tree which the Danes had chosen as a rallying-spot. The Saxons fought with the fury of despair; Ethelred soon came to support his brother, and the Danes, beaten upon the great plain of Assendon, took to flight; but only to return a fortnight afterwards, their number swelled by the reinforcements which were continually arriving by sea. Wessex alone had sustained eight battles in one year; her resources were becoming exhausted in such an unequal struggle; Ethelred, wounded, had just died, and Alfred found himself alone at the age of twenty-two years (871), subject to a peculiar illness which had succeeded to a slow fever of his boyhood, and of which the attacks would frequently bring him to the very verge of the grave. His men and his resources exhausted, a ninth and unfortunate battle completely disabled him; he was compelled to sue for peace. The Danes willingly consented to his proposal; there were other princes to vanquish, other territories to conquer, less valiantly defended than Wessex, on which they proposed to revenge themselves when it should stand alone in its resistance to them. In 875 they had finished their conquest; Wessex alone still preserved its independence, and three Danish kings who had passed the winter at Cambridge embarked secretly, by night, to attack the coast of Dorset. Vainly did Alfred strive to resist his enemies by sea; his ships were beaten, and soon the long line of incendiarism and murder which always marked the progress of the Danes extended as far as Wareham. This was past endurance, and Alfred, stricken down on a sick-bed, asked for and obtained peace at the price of gold. The Danes retired after having sworn friendship upon some relics brought by the Christian king and on their sacred bracelets steeped in the blood of their victims, exchanging hostages, whose fate they troubled themselves very little about. The very night after peace was concluded, the Saxon horsemen were destroyed and cut up piecemeal by the Danes, who took possession of their horses in order to make a raid into the interior of the country. The remonstrances of Alfred were powerless to stop these disastrous expeditions, so easy for an enemy who threatened the country from all sides.

Alfred took to arms once more; and for awhile the issue of the war seemed to incline in his favor; he had been the first to see the necessity for attacking the Danes on the ocean, which was incessantly bringing them inexhaustible reinforcements, and his vessels having met the pirates during a storm had defeated and dispersed them, thus cutting off all hope of succor to the Danes whom Alfred was besieging in Exeter. This glimmering of success did not last however; in 878 the enemy was once more invading Wessex in two formidable troops; one of them was stopped and even defeated by some faithful retainers of Alfred's, but the second army, which had entered the kingdom by land, was advancing without opposition from town to town. The subjects of Alfred were weary and discouraged. The king, on whom they had founded such great hopes, had lost in their eyes his prestige; brave but uncertain, he had not profited by the advantages which his military genius had sometimes given him, and his people complained of his inflexibility, of his pride, of the severity which he manifested towards offenders; of the indifference which he displayed towards the unfortunate. They did not enter with any spirit into the struggle against the invaders, and the Saxon kings held no power but by the free will of their subjects. The clergy, who were especially hated by the pagan enemy, fled to France, carrying with them from their country its relics and the treasures from the churches. The agricultural population submitted to cultivate the land for the Danes. The latter were seeking Alfred; but the king had suddenly abandoned his post, and left by the struggle sick and wounded to the heart by the defection of his subjects, he had disappeared, his place of concealment being unknown and not even suspected.

The fugitive king did not know where to go. Wandering from forest to forest, from cave to cave, he went his way, trying to conceal his deep disgrace, learning in his cruel wanderings, as his historian and friend Asser says, "that there is one Lord alone, Master of all things and all men, before whom every knee bends, who holds in His hand the hearts of kings, and who sometimes makes His happy servants feel the lash of adversity, to teach them, when they suffer, not to despair of the Divine mercy, and to be without pride when they prosper."

Alfred wanted confidence in God, when he arrived in the island of the Nobles (Ethelingaia), now called Athelney, in order to hide himself there in the hovel of a cowherd. He received him at first as a traveller who had lost his way, and ended by learning in confidence from his guest that he was a Saxon noble of the court of King Alfred, flying from the vengeance of the Danes. The worthy Ulfoath was perfectly satisfied with the explanation, and allowed the fugitive to remain at his house.

His wife was not in the secret, and was annoyed, no doubt, to see her work increased by the presence of this unknown guest. She would ask him at times to perform little services, and would leave him in charge of some household duties. One Sunday, while the husband was gone to lead the beasts to the field and the wife was busy with several little matters, she had left some loaves or thin cakes by the fire, which were baking slowly on the red stone of the hearth. Alfred had been commissioned to watch them, but, absorbed in his sad meditations, he had forgotten that the bread was burning; the smell warned the housewife; she sprang at a bound to the fireplace, and quickly turning her cakes, she called out angrily to the king, "Whoever you may be, are you too proud to turn the loaves? You will not take the slightest heed of them, but you will be very glad to eat some of them presently." Alfred did not lose his temper; he laughed, and helped the woman to finish her task. A few days later the cowherd's wife learnt with dismay the name of the guest whom she had thus scolded.

Alfred in the Herdsman's Hut.

Some of the faithful subjects of Alfred, pursued by the Danes, took refuge also in the island of Nobles, where they discovered to their great astonishment their king. Secretly and by degrees the rumor that Alfred was living spread through his family, who came in search of him. The little band became greater day by day, and the king was beginning to gain courage. In his solitude and humiliation, God had taken charge of this great soul which had hitherto forgotten Him, and which regained through religious faith the necessary energy to struggle against the enemies of his country.

The Danes had not profited by their victory. They had established themselves in the conquered country as plunderers, and not as owners. The inhabitants of Wessex were writhing under their cruel and capricious rule. They had now forgotten the rigorous acts with which they had reproached Alfred, and regretted that the Christian king was no longer at their head. Exasperated by their sufferings, the Saxons were ripe for revolt.

Such were Alfred's prospects when he began with his companions the work of re-establishing himself in his country. A solid bridge, defended by two towers, enabled the king to issue out easily from his retreat in his fortress. He gathered around him all the malcontents before making anybody aware of his identity, and without announcing his great projects; each day he saw his little army swell in numbers, and he defeated the Danes in every skirmish which he chanced to have with them. He then went back to the island of Nobles. It is even said that he went by day, disguised as a minstrel, into the very camp of the Danes, in order to ascertain their numerical strength. In the month of May, 878, he finally decided to attack them openly. Secret messengers were despatched through the neighborhood, who said to the Saxons; "King Alfred is alive. Assemble in the forest of Selwood, at Egbert's field; he will be there, and you shall all march together against the Danes." The Saxons, desperate, were rushing there in crowds, and soon Alfred's standard, bearing the golden dragon, was boldly unfurled before the Danish raven.

The secret had been well kept. The Danish king, Godrun, was vaguely aware that a number of Saxons were assembled in the neighborhood, but he knew neither how many they mustered, nor the name of their chief, when he found himself suddenly attacked on the plain of Ethandune. The Saxons were in high spirits: "It is for your own sakes that you are about to fight," Alfred had said to them. "Show that you are men, and deliver your country from the hands of these strangers." The Danes had not had time to recover from their surprise before Alfred was upon them, his whole army following him. The standard-bearer was pushing to the front, accomplishing prodigies of valor: "It is St. Neots himself," Alfred cried, designating a saint held in great reverence by the Saxons, and an ancestor of his own. His soldiers gained fresh courage at these words; the Danes were beaten, and pursued, and they perished in great numbers. King Godrun, shut up with his court at the fortress of Chippenham, was compelled to surrender after a siege which lasted three weeks. He gave hostages without taking any in exchange, a proceeding very humiliating to the Danes, and Alfred wisely imposed upon him an agreement useful in securing the definitive tranquillity of England, if not consistent with the spiritual welfare of the Danes; the conqueror exacted that the defeated enemy should embrace the Christian religion. Godrun and his son were baptized and settled in the portion of land which Alfred conceded to them. Finding the impossibility of driving from the country the whole of the Danes, who were already masters of the land in Northumbria, in Mercia, and in East Anglia, Alfred hoped to accomplish, by the aid of Christianity and his right over part of the land, a fusion of the Danish and Saxon races, and to secure by that union a kind of rampart against any new Scandinavian invasions.

He was not mistaken. In the year following, a Danish fleet entered the Thames; but in vain did the warriors call for help to Godrun, who was established in the country He remained deaf to their voices, and they, discouraged by his refusal, went away again and pursued their ravages on the coast of Flanders.

For more than thirteen years peace reigned over all England. One or two little isolated invasions served to exercise the energy of Alfred's troops, and each day his forces were augmenting. But Godrun was dead, and a dangerous enemy now threatened the Saxon king: the famous pirate Hastings, already advanced in age, but still passionately fond of the "game of war" was encamped upon the coast of France, at Boulogne, in 892. Wherever he appeared, death and ruin followed in his wake. The black raven always unfurled its wings for him; he was always assured of victory before the fray began. He sailed forth in the spring of 893, and instead of descending upon the lands already held by the Danes, he disembarked in Kent, a country rich and fertile, inhabited entirely by Saxons; and dividing his army into two corps, he lay awaiting Alfred, who was advancing in haste to resist him. The Danish pirate had cleverly organized the attack. Already the Danish population of East Anglia were profiting by his presence to attack the Saxon towns; but Alfred had studied too well the art of war to disperse his army over the country; he led the whole of his available forces against Hastings. There the greater portion of the enemy's army, protected by a forest and a river, were met by the Saxon king, who sent out at the same time several small bodies of men in pursuit of the Danish warriors who were pillaging the country, staying by these means the progress of the invasion, and opposing with exemplary patience the ruses of the barbarians. Hastings appeared to grow weary of this: he asked for peace, and sent his young sons as hostages. Alfred had just returned them to him after having baptized them, when the Danes, caring little for their plighted Word, began to march towards Essex, which they intended to attack, passing by way of the Thames. The king hastened at once in pursuit of them and to the support of his eldest son, Edward, who was defending the frontier. They joined their forces; a great battle was fought near Farnham in the county of Surrey; the Danes were vanquished and driven as far as the isle of Mersey, which they fortified for their defence. The king attacked them at once; but while he had been away recruiting his forces a Danish fleet threatened the coast of Devonshire. Alfred marched against the new invaders, while the forces which he left behind fought against Hastings, and in a sortie got possession of the wife and children of that chief. These were sent to Alfred; but the Christian warrior could not forget that he had presented the young barbarians at the baptismal fount, and sent them back to their father loaded with presents.

The pirate, however, was not overcome by his foe's generosity. He attacked Mercia, sustained by the Danish hordes established in the country. Abandoning all thought of the conquests which he had originally intended, and the kingdom which he had wished to found, he once more took up the irregular invasions by which he had acquired so much wealth, and thought only of plundering the Saxon territory. But the subjects of Alfred had learnt some useful lessons; they rose with one accord against the foreign enemy, and when the king, returning in haste from Devonshire, arrived in the vicinity of the Severn, he found himself at the head of a numerous army which allowed him to completely surround the trenches of Hastings. The Danes had been decimated by hunger: they had even eaten their horses. Making a last desperate effort, they opened up a passage straight through the ranks of their enemies, and took refuge in Chester, where they spent the winter.

In the spring-time, the long vessels, the "water-serpents," as the pirates would affectionately call them, invariably brought reinforcements to them. In 895, Hastings began by attacking Wales, finding the states of King Alfred too well defended. He ended, however, by retreating to the isle of Mersey, from whence he set out in 896 to establish himself on the river Lea, in the north of London. He had raised a fortress and there defended himself valiantly, when King Alfred perceived that he could stop all the enemy's navigation by river. He accordingly constructed a canal, and reduced the Danes to despair: their fleet was on dry ground. They abandoned it, and marched in a northern direction. This time the old pirate was beaten. Wearied by this struggle against a man of energy equal to his own, and in the enjoyment of the youth and vigor which he no longer possessed, he assembled his vessels in the spring of 897, and leaving definitively the English coast, he ascended the Seine and extorted from Charles the Simple a donation of land in the vicinity of Chartres. He established himself there, and Rollo found him there fifteen years later, spending in peace the remainder of his stormy life.

The Danes who remained in England had reacquired a taste for adventurous expeditions. They assembled along the coast of Northumberland to organize an attack on the southern portion of the kingdom; but Alfred had long resolved to fight his enemies with their own weapons. Having ridded himself of Hastings, he had had time to look to his navy, and the Danes found themselves opposed by vessels larger and more rapid than their own. The struggle began on all sides. Wherever the pirates advanced to the attack they found Saxon vessels to check them. The contests were of frequent occurrence; they were not invariably favorable to the Saxons, but the Danes suffered great losses: their ships would often founder on the coast and the cargo would be lost. In 897, the last Danish ships disappeared from England. Alfred had now only to heal his country of the wounds left on it after all its struggles, which had cemented the union of the several kingdoms, in calling them all to the common defence under a single chief placed above them by reason of his conspicuous ability. After the war with the Danes, Alfred, who had merely assumed the title of King of Wessex, had added to his states Mercia, Wales, and Kent.

It was a kingdom composed of incongruous elements; but Alfred understood the management of them by reason of his far-seeing wisdom. In Mercia, originally peopled by the English, he established a viceroy chosen from their royal family, the Ealderman, or duke Ethelred, and gave him his own daughter in marriage. When Ethelred died, after having faithfully served his father-in-law, the Mercians themselves placed in the hands of his widow Ethelfleda the reins of government.

Kent already belonged to Alfred. Its unhappy inhabitants, subject more than any others to the Danish invasions, had displayed the most passionate affection and gratitude towards the prince who had effected their deliverance. The Welsh chiefs swore allegiance to him. Alfred established one of them, Amorant, as viceroy of Wales, leaving him thus all his prerogatives and full command over his subjects.

While he was thus organizing his Saxon kingdom, Alfred was maintaining firm and friendly relations with the Danish kingdom, which he had allowed to be established near to his own. The propagation of Christianity amongst the pagans was his principal means of effecting the fusion of the races, which he foresaw and which he hoped ardently to see accomplished, but which he could not completely finish during his own lifetime. Some laws were already in force and respected by both races: the crime of murder was punished in the same manner in each state, and Alfred caused the people to rigorously respect the treaties which bound them together; the pirates of East Anglia who came to pursue their ravages along the coasts, being hanged without mercy. The Danes established in England had already become Englishmen in the eyes of Alfred, and were compelled to observe the laws of the English population.

But although thus providing for the future, Alfred felt completely safe for the present. The Saxon kings had never maintained a standing army: at the time of an invasion, when the necessity for defending himself or attacking was felt by the sovereign, he would send into the boroughs and through the country a messenger carrying his sword, unsheathed, who would cry aloud: "Whoever shall not wish to be held a worthless fellow, let him leave his house and come and join in the expedition." But the day after the battle the warriors would disperse, and if the enemy should recommence hostilities, the king and the country found themselves unprepared. Alfred divided into two great divisions all his subjects capable of bearing arms: one was always on a war footing, ready to march against the enemy; the other portion of them would work in the fields and cultivate the soil until the very day when they would be called out to follow the golden dragon, while their companions would disperse and quietly retire to their cottages. The king made use of these soldiers in fortifying towns, in constructing citadels, and in putting the whole country in a position to defend itself. It was thus that he was able to withstand the attacks of Hastings, the most severe which England had as yet encountered.

So much wisdom and foresight on the part of Alfred, naturally increased his regal importance and authority. Until this time, the Saxon kings had been essentially warriors; each "ealderman," or chief proprietor, ruled supreme in his own district, without troubling his sovereign; the clergy were nearly upon an equality with the king, and the offences committed against a bishop were punished with the same penalties as those committed against the king himself. Alfred re-established the royal supremacy by the force of his own intellectual superiority; his ealdermen became his officers, and his profound piety, as well as his respect for the clergy, did not prevent his disengaging himself from any servile submission to the Church. The priests had suffered and trembled more than any other class under the rule of the pagan Danes; they obeyed without a murmur the orders of their liberator.

Justice was but badly administered in England, divided though it had been for a long time into tythings, hundredths and counties, and provided with local assemblies which corresponded to these territorial denominations. During the troubles which the Danish invasion had caused, and in the miseries which had followed, the Saxon proprietors had ceased to attend to their internal affairs; they neglected to select the judges. The assessors, or free men who should be present on the occasion of any trial, to help the judge with their advice, no longer answered when called upon to do so; only small numbers of witnesses would appear. The king undertook to re-establish order; he himself nominated the judges, and punished them severely when they ventured to give any decision in a case without previously consulting the assessors, whom he re-established in their original form—the germ of the institution now known as the jury. He was not even satisfied with all these cares; it often happened that he would revise the sentences of the judges, so zealously did he occupy himself with the administration of justice in his kingdom.

The judges hitherto had been charged with the civil administration as well as that of justice; they were succumbing under the weight of such onerous functions. Alfred relieved them, however, by nominating dukes, earls, and viscounts, who were entrusted with the administration of justice in the counties, the tythings and hundreds. He himself compiled for these magistrates a code of laws borrowed, some from the old mode of legislation in Kent, Wessex, and Mercia, and others from the Bible, from the books of Moses as well as from the New Testament; and they all unmistakeably bore the imprint of, and were modified by, the real Christian spirit which animated the king.

All these laws, the fruits of revealed wisdom or of the ancient experience of the people, Alfred submitted for approval to his subjects: "I have shown these laws to my wise men," said he in the preamble at the beginning of his code, "and the result was that they were unanimous in wishing that they should be observed." These wise men, or "witans," forming an assembly called a "witenagemote" (an assembly of wise men), no longer represented, under Alfred, the entire nation, as in the time when the Saxons still preserved in their simplicity their Germanic institutions. At that period all the free men (cearls), whether proprietors or not, composed part of it. By degrees the free men disappeared from it, and the "thanes," or proprietors, alone remained; but the lower class of "thanes," although invested with the same rights as the royal "thanes," were less wealthy; it was more difficult for them to leave their affairs in order to repair to the Witenagemote. In the time of Alfred, these great proprietors alone made up this assembly of wise men, whose functions were as vaguely defined as the number and the periods of their meetings were uncertain, but who thenceforth maintained in England the principle of a national representative assembly, or the institution whereby the country undertakes its own government, which is the foundation and key of English history.

While Alfred was drawing up laws of an equitable and merciful character, while he was rebuilding the ruined convents and churches, and erecting new ones, he did not forget the poorest and most unhappy of his subjects. Slaves were numerous in England, and suffering under a heavy yoke. The king provided for their protection, granting to them the right of enjoying and transmitting to their heirs whatever goods they might have acquired; he even applied in favor of Christian slaves the Biblical law, granting to them their freedom at the end of six years of servitude. In his will he ordered that all the serfs on his entire domains should be emancipated. His example was followed: the serfs and the emancipated slaves became day by day more numerous, and began thenceforth to form in England the lower middle class, which did not yet exist anywhere upon the Continent.

So many efforts and so much foresight must necessarily have proceeded from a great and enlightened mind. Alfred had neglected nothing in order to add to his stock of knowledge. He had not studied during his childhood, in spite of his ardent desire to acquire knowledge, for there were no intellectual resources at the court of King Ethelwulf. The ancient kind of erudition which had already been remarkable in England, where the means of study, at the beginning of the eighth century, were far superior to anything of the kind which could be found upon the Continent, had become extinct during the wars with the Danes. "When I began to reign," wrote Alfred the Great in the preface to his translation of the Pastoral of Gregory I., "very few people on this side of the Humber could say their daily prayers in English, or could explain in English a Latin epistle, and I suspect that there was not a greater number on the other side of the Humber." It was thus that, notwithstanding his eagerness to instruct himself, Alfred had arrived at the age of thirty-five years without understanding Latin, and he only began the study of it in 884, after having made prodigious efforts to secure masters who were to instruct himself and his people. In the way of embassies, presents, negotiations, he spared no trouble in order to attract John, the old Saxon of the monastery of Corbie; Grimbald, monk at Saint-Omcr; and Plecmund, a learned Mercian, who had taken refuge in a solitary island of the county of Chester during the Danish wars, and whom he made archbishop of Canterbury; finally, he invited the monk Asser, living at the extremity of Wales, in the convent of St. David, and whom he soon secured, not only as a master, but as a friend. It is to Asser that we owe a biography of Alfred, so minute in its details that it proves beyond question the great intimacy which existed between the monarch and the historian.

Alfred was looking about in all parts for learned men, and was studying Latin like a schoolboy; but he understood that the period of purely classical education had passed away. His childish taste for Saxon poetry had not been obliterated, and his reverence for his native tongue stimulated him to spread education among those of his subjects who were not in a position to devote themselves to the Greek and Latin languages. "It has appeared to me very useful," he wrote to Bishop Wulfsege, "to choose a certain number of books, those which it is most important to render easily accessible to all, and to translate them into the language which we all understand. We shall thus easily insure, with God's help, and if peace continues, that all the youth of this nation, and particularly the young men of rich and free families, shall apply themselves to the study of letters, and shall not sacrifice their time in any other exercise than that of learning the Anglo-Saxon writers. The masters shall then teach the Latin language to those who shall wish to know more, and to attain a higher standard of instruction. After having reflected upon the nature of this instruction, I have chosen the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis, and which we call The Book of the Pastor. The learned men whom I have around me explained it to me, and when I fully arrived at the precise meaning of it, I translated it into Anglo-Saxon, sometimes literally, sometimes taking only the thoughts, and writing them in the manner which appeared best in order to make them easily comprehensible, and I have sent a copy of the work to each bishop in the kingdom."

After having begun this great work of clothing in a scarcely formed language the beauties of classical literature, Alfred did not remain idle. Impossible labors have been attributed to him; a translation of the entire Bible; the revision of a portion of The Saxon Chronicles, &c. It is positively known, however, that he translated, besides The Pastor, long fragments of The Soliloquies of St. Augustine, which he called Culled Flowers; The Ecclesiastical History of Bede; the historian Orosius; and the book of Boethius on The Consolation of Philosophy. There even exist of his, some poems, translations or rather imitations of the verses which Boethius had scattered throughout his book, and which Alfred often altered to suit his own taste and the tastes of the race of men for whom he was writing.

How can such great tasks, which would have sufficed to fill up the lifetime of an author, have been accomplished during that of a king whose reign was partly taken up by his wars against the Danes? The good order which prevailed in all the undertakings of Alfred can alone answer this problem. Subject to violent attacks of sickness, loaded with work and with cares, he had divided his time into three parts: the first belonged to his regal duties; the second to his religion, to prayer and study; the third was devoted to his repasts, to sleep, and to bodily exercise; but the portion allotted to sleep was very short. The king was often awake during a great portion of the night, and having neither a clock, nor a sand time-measurer, he was struck with the idea of having some tapers or candles made, which should burn for a certain time, and by means of which he should be enabled to count the hours. Unluckily, however, a gust of wind would sometimes penetrate into the royal tent and make the candles burn too rapidly, and then the king would suddenly lose all means of reckoning the time, until the sun came to give him its infallible direction.

His strength was quickly consumed in this struggle against human weakness. When scarcely fifty-two years of age, Alfred was dying. He sent for his son Edward: "Come and stand beside me," he said; "I feel that my last moment is near; we must part. I am going to another world, and you will be alone with all my riches. I beg you, for you are my beloved child, strive to be a good master and a father to your people. Relieve the poor, support the weak, and apply yourself with all your might to the redress of wrongs. And then, my son, govern yourself according to your own laws; then the Lord will help you and will grant you His supreme reward. Invoke Him that He may advise and direct you in your difficulties, and He will help you to accomplish as well as possible your designs." It was in the same manner that, three hundred and fifty years later, when dying upon the shore at Tunis, St. Louis recommended his son to France. Great kings and great Christians both, although very different in character and ideas, Alfred and St. Louis both deserved the name of "pastors" of their people, which the gratitude of Englishmen has accorded to Alfred.

He died on the 20th of October, 901, after having reigned twenty-nine years, and he was interred at Winchester, in the monastery which he had founded there. It is not there, but at Wantage—at the spot where he was born—that the grateful memory of England caused the celebration of the jubilee on the occasion of the thousandth anniversary of the birthday of Alfred the Great. On the 25th of October, 1849, a vast concourse of people went to Wantage to do honor to the memory of a king so much beloved. The assemblage decided on the publication of his complete works, a monument less durable than the gratitude graven by his deeds on the heart of his people.

Chapter IV.
The Saxon And Danish Kings.
The Conquest Of England By The Normans (901-1066).

One hundred and sixty-five years elapsed between the death of Alfred and the Invasion of England by William the Conqueror. Two dynasties reigned during that period in England: first, the Saxon, which numbered ten sovereigns, and secondly, the Danish, which was represented by four princes. The first of the Saxon kings, Edward, the son of Alfred, did not enjoy a very brilliant reign, but contrived to make his authority recognized, with the help of his sister Ethelfleda, widow of Ethelred, the viceroy of Mercia. He drove back the Danes into their territory, a portion of which he conquered, and, at the death of his sister, he annexed Mercia to his states, which he left thus augmented, to his son Athelstan, when he died, in 925.

This young prince was brave as well as able. He placed the Welsh tribes, always ripe for revolt, under subjection, and imposed upon them an annual tribute of gold, silver, and cattle; he repelled the people of Cornwall, who had never been thoroughly subjected by Alfred. But the Danes had not accepted their defeat. King Olaf, who was established in Northumbria, and who had recently pushed his conquests so far in Ireland as to capture the town of Dublin, ascended the Humber with more than 600 vessels: the Scots at the same time attacked the frontiers, and the Britons from Wales once more revolted. So many enemies rising suddenly did not daunt Athelstan. He triumphed over his opponents: five Danish kings remained on the soil, as well as the king of Scotland's son. They all retired into their territories, there to remain until the end of the reign of Athelstan, whose court attained a degree of luxury hitherto unknown to the Saxon kings. It was there that Louis d'Outre-Mer took refuge when driven from France, and it was thence that he was recalled to the throne at the death of Charles the Simple. All England recognized the laws of Athelstan, and he had taken the title of king of the Anglo-Saxons, instead of the less assuming one of king of Wessex, when he died in 940, at the age of forty-seven years, leaving the throne to his brother Edmund. The reign of the latter, like that of his brother Edred, presents nothing remarkable with the exception of a series of battles with the Danes, who were sometimes daring and victorious, and sometimes beaten and repulsed. At the death of Edred, in 955, the Danes of Northumbria were apparently almost entirely subjected; their chiefs had lost the title of kings, and their territory was governed by an earl chosen by the Saxons. The progress had been great since the time of Alfred.

Young Edwy, the son of Edmund, was only fifteen years of age when he succeeded to the throne. The Danes left him in peace; but he commenced a struggle against the clergy of his kingdom, enemies more powerful than the "Sea-Kings." He had married Elgiva, a young and beautiful princess whose family was related to his own within the degree of kinship prohibited by the Church, and he refused to abandon his wife, as also to submit to be reproved by the archbishop of Canterbury, Odo, who was supported by the famous abbot of Glastonbury, Dunstan, renowned throughout England for his austere mode of living. On the occasion of the coronation of the young king, Dunstan, being annoyed, retired during the banquet. Edwy flew into a passion, and threats were so quickly followed by action, that Dunstan was obliged to make his escape and was immediately pursued by the emissaries of the king, who were instructed to burn out his eyes.

Archbishop Odo, however, had remained in England at the head of the austere party of the Church. The disagreement between the king and the clergy was growing more and more serious, when a revolt of the Danes took place in Northumbria and extended into Mercia. Soon afterwards Edgar, a younger brother of Edwy, until then king of Mercia, was declared the independent sovereign of the two provinces. Family afflictions assailed the young king at the same time: his wife had been seized in one of his castles by a wandering band of soldiers, and carried to Ireland, where her beautiful face had been disfigured by red-hot irons. Dunstan had just reappeared in England after a short period of exile, at the time when the young queen, who had been tended and looked after by the friends whom she had made in Ireland, and had now recovered from the effects of her disfigurement, was returning to England to rejoin her husband. She was stopped, however, near Gloucester by her implacable enemies, who no doubt credited her with a fatal influence over her husband. She was so cruelly mutilated by them that she died a few days afterwards. Edwy survived her but a short time, and died at the age of nineteen in 958 The beauty of his personal appearance had gained him the title of Edwy the Beautiful.

When Edgar ascended the throne of his brother Edwy, Dunstan shared it with him, and whatever may have been the part played by him in the events of the last reign, the authority of the king bore, in the hands of the monk, the fruits of order and justice. The Danes, attached to young Edgar, who had been brought up amongst them, submitted voluntarily to his authority. Their territory was divided and placed under the rule of several earls; the fleet, greatly augmented, kept the "Sea-Kings" in constant fear, and the young sovereign of England, assisted by his able minister, who had become archbishop of Canterbury, traversed his state every year, presiding at courts of justice and gathering around him the principal chiefs of each province. Ardent and ambitious, Dunstan was at the same time of a firm disposition and character; his practical knowledge was as conspicuous as his religious zeal. He was one of that great race of priests, whose influence, preeminent in the middle ages, was the source of much good and evil alike, until the period when the magnitude of their pretensions and the abuse of their power brought about the great revolt of the Reformation. It was under King Edgar that the Welshmen saw their annual tribute of gold and silver commuted for an annual presentation of three hundred wolves' heads, a measure which insured the destruction of these ferocious animals, who were very numerous in England.

King Edgar, who was under the authority of Dunstan, contrived, however, sometimes to escape from his influence and to indulge in all kinds of excesses; but the archbishop on such occasions would reprove him severely. He imposed upon him as a penance, for a serious transgression, the disuse of his golden crown during a period of seven years—a severe punishment for the vain Edgar, who dearly loved to bestow upon himself titles as pompous as those of the Oriental princes. Death soon put an end to this penance. Edgar died in 975, leaving two sons. The elder, Edward, who succeeded him, had been born of his first wife; the younger, Ethelred, was the son of the beautiful but treacherous Elfrida, for whom the king had conceived a violent passion, and whom he had married after the death of her husband. Edgar was even accused of having wilfully killed the latter in the hunting-field.

Whatever crime may have been committed by the king in order to gain the hand of Elfrida, the expiation fell to the lot of his children. From the commencement of his reign, the young Edward, although supported by Archbishop Dunstan, sat very insecurely upon his throne, which was undermined by intrigues in favor of his brother Ethelred. Three years after his accession, Edward was hunting one day in Dorsetshire, when he conceived the fatal idea of paying a visit to his brother, who was then residing in Corfe Castle. It may be, that on his arrival he was struck with a terrible presentiment at the sight of his step-mother Elfrida, for he refused to dismount, and asked only for some refreshment in order to drink to the health of the queen. A goblet was brought to him; but, while he was carrying it to his lips, a dagger was plunged in his back. His body quivered with agony, and the horse, alarmed, rushed away, carrying across the forest the body of the young king, held fast by the stirrups. When the body was found, it was disfigured by the shrubs and stones of the roads, and the long fair hair of the martyred king was clotted with blood and dirt. Queen Elfrida had accomplished her object, but not without trouble; for the young Ethelred, grieved at the death of his brother, burst in tears, which irritated his mother to such a degree that he nearly fell a victim to her blows. There remained no other heir to the throne; Dunstan and his friends decided, not without some reluctance, to recognize the claims of the son of Elfrida; but in crowning him, Dunstan, it is said, gave utterance to some sinister predictions concerning the misfortunes which threatened his reign, and it was he who gave to this young king that title of "careless," which the latter seemed only anxious to justify.

For several years the Danes, who were established in England, seemed to have identified themselves with the Saxon race; the invasions of the Norsemen had ceased, occupied as they were with devastating the coasts of France, which were but badly defended by the feeble Carlovingians. But a new dynasty was about to be established in France, more powerful and more warlike than the descendants of Charlemagne. Already the Danes began to return to their old habits, and to turn their vessels towards the English coasts. The son of the king of Denmark, Prince Sweyn, resolved to seek his fortune in foreign lands. A band of bold adventurers gathered round him, and after several little preliminary expeditions, they landed in 991 on the coast of East Anglia, between Ipswich and Maldon. They hoped to find friends there among the Danes who had formerly settled in that territory; but Earl Brethnolte who was in command there, although a Dane by birth, remained faithful to his new country and religion; he fought valiantly against his brothers from across the seas, and was killed in battle. King Ethelred became frightened; he sent offers of money to the Norsemen. The latter accepted ten thousand pounds of silver which they stowed away in their long vessels; and carrying with them the head of Count Brethnolte, they started to return to their own country. But the plan of defence, so often resorted to by the Carlovingian kings in France, was a sure means of bringing back the "Sea-kings" the following year. Soon Ethelred found himself compelled to establish a regular tax which was known as "danegelt" (Danish money), and which served to pay the ever-increasing tribute exacted by the pirates. In 993, the Danes of Northumbria and of East Anglia rose up to support their countrymen in invading the country. Sweyn had become king of Denmark, and had the whole forces of that country at his command. In 994 his ships appeared off the English coasts, accompanied by the vessels of Olaf, king of Norway, his ally. The invaders encountered no resistance from the king, nor any serious opposition from his subjects. Silver was again offered, but this time, as though to lessen the humiliation of the treaty, the Saxons demanded the conversion of the Danes to Christianity. Sweyn did not hesitate to accede to this: he caused himself to be baptized, a ceremony which was considered very unimportant by the majority of the pirates, some of whom openly boasted that they had been washed twenty times in the baptismal water. But Sweyn's ally, King Olaf, who was sincerely touched, and moved, no doubt, by the grace of God, made a vow never to return to invade England, and kept his promise. Sweyn reappeared alone the following years. In 1001 the Danes overran the country, from the Isle of Wight to Bristol, without meeting with the slightest resistance. The price of their withdrawal that year amounted to twenty thousand pounds of silver.

The Danes had disappeared; but the unlucky king of England had become involved in fresh difficulties, through his quarrels with Richard, duke of Normandy. A fleet was being raised against him on the Norman coast when Richard died, leaving to his son Richard II. the burden of carrying on the war. The interference of the Pope put an end to the quarrel, which was followed by the marriage of Ethelred with the Countess Emma, sister of Richard, who was called the "flower of Normandy." Ethelred already had six sons and four daughters by his first wife.

The young queen had just arrived in England, and the rejoicings were scarcely at an end, when a prolonged cry was heard throughout the country. Either by a spontaneous movement, or in consequence of secret orders, the Saxons had risen in every direction and had slaughtered the Danes who were established in their midst, and whose reiterated insults had become unendurable. "A Norseman is equal to ten Saxons," the Danish lords haughtily said; but the ten Saxons united had triumphed over the Norsemen. Taken by surprise on the 13th of November, St. Brice's Day, "women, old men, and children, good and wicked, big and little, pagans and Christians," succumbed under the effects of the popular hate and revenge. The sister of King Sweyn, Gunhilda, who had embraced the Christian faith in order to marry Palric, Earl of Northumbria, a chief of Danish extraction, saw her husband and children murdered before her eyes, and afterwards encountered the general fate herself. "My brother will drown your country in blood when he revenges me," she exclaimed when dying.

Gunhilda had not been mistaken. Already the news of the crime which had been committed in England had spread to Denmark; an immense fleet was being prepared. The Norsemen, actuated this time by their thirst for revenge as well as by their natural love of plunder, were gathering eagerly round their king; not a serf, not a freedman, not an old soldier was admitted into this chosen band; the freemen, in the flower of their youth and strength, alone had the privilege of avenging their brothers slaughtered in a foreign land.

The ships of the Sea-kings were resplendent with the golden and silver ornaments with which they were decked, from prow to stern, when the great Dragon, with King Sweyn on board, was the first to land, in the neighborhood of Exeter. The defence of the town had been entrusted to a Norman, Count Hugo, who had come from France with Queen Emma. He betrayed King Ethelred, and gave up the town to the invaders. Having pillaged and burnt down Exeter, the Danes spread throughout Wiltshire. On arriving at a farm or at a house, or a village, they would order the trembling inmates to prepare a meal; then, having satiated their appetites with meat and mead, they would murder the inmates upon the threshold of their huts, which they would then burn down, and remount their horses to go forth and extend their fearful ravages.

The Saxon king, meanwhile, was organizing an army; but he had entrusted the command of it to the Mercian Elfric, the chief who had already upon a previous occasion betrayed him, and whose son's eyes had been put out in consequence as a punishment. Arrived before Sweyn and his army, Elfric declared that he was taken ill, and recalling his soldiers, who were prepared for the struggle, he allowed Sweyn to pass with the enormous booty that he was going to place on board his ships before descending upon the Eastern Counties, which all suffered in the same manner. When the Danes returned into their country, in 1004, they were escaping, not from the Saxon arms, but from the famine which their ravages had brought upon England.

In vain did King Ethelred solicit the help of his father-in-law, Richard, the Norman duke; the disdain which he evinced towards his young wife had irritated the Normans to such a degree that their duke had caused to be thrown into prison all English subjects who happened to be within his dominion. Ethelred therefore found himself alone and a prey to the pirates, who reappeared in 1006 upon the English coasts. England was exhausted. Scarcely had the Danes left a house, after exacting a ransom for each member of the family and for each head of cattle, than the king's collectors would follow in their steps, demanding the sums necessary for paying off the invaders, and imposing a fresh penalty for the punishment of the unhappy wretches who had given money to the Danes.

While the Saxon king was plundering his subjects in order to pay an ever-increasing "danegeld," while the people, exhausted, were writhing under the double extortion of the conquerors and of the legitimate sovereign, an old man was enabled, single-handed, to resist the demands of the proud Danes. The archbishop of Canterbury, Elphege, had for twenty days defended his town against the reiterated assaults of the enemy, when a traitor opened the gates to the Danes. They rushed into the place, mad with anger and thirsting for revenge. They sent for the old archbishop, who had not sought refuge in any hiding-place. He was brought forth, bound in chains, before their chief, Thurkill. "Buy your life," cried the chief, touched with compassion. "I have no money," the archbishop calmly replied. The Danes were beginning to close round him. "He is a servant of God," said Thurkill; "perhaps he is poor." And he suggested a small sum as ransom for the archbishop. "Prevail upon your king to collect together the value of all his property, so that we may leave England," he added. The old man looked at him impassively. "I have not the money which you ask for," he repeated, "and I shall not urge the king to further oppress his people in order to purchase your departure." The eyes of the Dane flashed with anger; he no longer endeavored to protect the archbishop against his soldiers. But the firmness of the old man had produced a wonderful effect upon them: he was led into prison without suffering the slightest injury. Towards dusk, when he was alone, his brother found a means of reaching him; he brought the sum fixed upon for the ransom of the archbishop. "No," the latter said, "I cannot consent to enrich the enemies of my country." The Danes came hourly, urging the old man to purchase his freedom. "You will urge me in vain," at last said Elphege; "I am not the man to provide Christian flesh for pagan teeth, by robbing my flock to enrich their enemies." The pirates had lost all patience; it was late; they were already heated with drink; they dragged the old man out of prison. "Gold, bishop! Give us gold!" they all cried together, and they closed round him threateningly. The old man was silent; he was praying. Hustled, beaten, wounded, the archbishop fell upon a pile of bones, the remains of the rude banquet. His enemies seized these primitive weapons, and he fell under their blows. A Dane, to whom he was still preaching the Gospel an hour before, and whom he had baptized with his own hands, at length took a hatchet and put an end to the old man's agony.

While Elphege was resisting and dying, Ethelred was submitting and paying an enormous sum of money, abandoning at the same time several counties to the Danes. Thurkill settled in England, after swearing fidelity to the Saxon monarch. His conquests excited the envy of Sweyn. In the following year a large fleet appeared in the Humber, and landed near York. This time the invaders planted their lances in the ground or threw them into the rivers, to intimate that they took possession of the soil. The Saxons offered no resistance. Sweyn had overrun all the Midland and Northern Counties, and, leaving the fleet to the care of his son Canute, he marched towards the South. He was stopped near London, where the king had taken refuge, and where the brave citizens stood firm behind their massive walls. Sweyn did not attempt to conquer their town; he turned towards the West, and all Devonshire received him with open arms. He was proclaimed king at Bath. Ethelred was gradually losing the little power which he still retained. He suddenly left London, which surrendered soon afterwards, and he took refuge in the Isle of Wight. From thence he sent his wife Emma to Normandy with the two sons whom she had borne to him, Edward and Alfred. In spite of his disagreements with his brother-in-law, the duke Richard received his sister with so much kindness that Ethelred soon followed her, and arrived at Rouen while Sweyn was taking the title of King of England (January, 1013).

Titles are easily taken, but conquests are sometimes difficult to keep. Six weeks after the flight of the Saxon king the Danish king died suddenly at Gainsborough, and the power was slipping from the hands of his son Canute. The nobility and people of England had recalled Ethelred to the throne; they added, however, the words "providing that he will govern us better than heretofore." The king did not rely entirely upon the promises of his subjects. He sent his son Edward to negotiate with the principal chief. When he re-entered London his first care was to declare that no Danish prince could have any pretensions to the throne; but Canute had already been proclaimed king by his army and by the Danes established in England, and the war had recommenced. Ethelred died in the year 1016, in the midst of all this confusion, and at the time when the Danes were preparing to lay siege to London.

Three sons by his first wife yet remained to Ethelred. One of them, Edmund, called "Ironsides," on account of his strength and prowess, had already commanded the armies during the lifetime of his father; he was proclaimed king. But the country was divided: the Danes established throughout the kingdom were powerful and numerous; treason crept even into the most intimate councils of the new king. Twice he delivered London when besieged; he fought five pitched battles, and repulsed on several occasions the Danes, driving them northwards. At length he proposed to Canute that they should decide their pretensions to the crown by the fate of arms in a single combat. Unlike the majority of his race, Canute was not tall, and he was quite unfitted to sustain a struggle against the gigantic stature of Edmund. "Let us rather divide the kingdom, as our ancestors did before us," he said. The two armies received this proposition with acclamation. The North of England was allotted to Canute, and Edmund contented himself with the South, with a nominal right of sovereignty over the whole kingdom. One month afterwards, the Saxon king was dead, and Canute, convoking the "wittenagemot" of the South, protested that the treaty contained no stipulation in favor of Edmund's heirs. The chiefs declared themselves of the same opinion; the Dane was proclaimed King of all England, and the children of Ironsides were placed in his hands.

Canute had proclaimed an amnesty; but on seizing power, he immediately proscribed all the partisans of Edmund whom he did not put to death. "Whoever brings me the head of an enemy shall be dearer to me than a brother," said he. Many heads were brought to him. The wittenagemot which had until then excluded from the throne all the Danish princes, voted the same sentence against the Saxon princes. Canute, however, had not assassinated the children of Edmund; he sent them to his ally, the king of Sweden; no doubt, with sinister intentions; but the innocence and beauty of his victims touched the heart of the proud Scandinavian: he could not keep them by his side, and he therefore sent them to the court of the king of Hungary, St. Stephen, who received them kindly and brought them up carefully. One of them, Edmund, died early; the second, Edward, subsequently married Agatha, daughter of the emperor of Germany, and we shall see his children reappear in history.

The Duke Richard of Normandy did not protest, in the name of his nephews against the elevation of Canute; on the contrary, he even offered his sister, widow of Ethelred, in marriage to the Dane. Canute accepted this offer, and the Norman princess found herself placed for the second time on the throne of England, which was so dear to her heart that, in order to reach it, she stifled all her natural instincts. As soon as she had borne a son to Canute, she lost all affection for the children whom she had left in France, and who became more and more Normans by habit during their prolonged absence from England.

Power has different effects upon different men: it hardens and corrupts some, while it humanizes and exalts others. Canute made good use of his power, and when he was delivered from the enemies whom he dreaded most, his government became less severe and more regular than that of the recent Saxon kings. The English followed their new chief in all his wars, and fought valiantly at his side to secure to him the crowns of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The viceroy of Wales refused to render homage to Canute, whom he treated as a usurper; Malcolm, king of Scotland, upheld the rights of the descendants of Ethelred to the throne of England. The Normans did not lend any help in these demonstrations, and Canute triumphed over the Welsh and the Scotch.

The influence of the Christian religion was slowly but surely producing a good effect on the fierce Danes. Sweyn had been baptized, but he had afterwards sunk again into pagan practices. His son constructed churches and monasteries, and made a solemn pilgrimage to Rome, on foot and with a wallet on his back to obtain forgiveness for the crimes which he had committed. Already, in the midst of a warlike life, a sense of justice seemed to have developed itself in his soul; he had been guilty of killing a soldier in an outburst of passion; he descended from his throne, convoked his chiefs, and asked them to impose a penalty upon him.

Canute By The Sea-shore.

All remained silent. The king insisted, however, promising not to be offended. The chiefs left it to his own discretion, and Canute condemned himself to pay a fine of three times as much as the sum fixed by the Danish law, as the penalty for murdering a soldier, adding at the same time nine golden talents as compensation.

Having returned to England after his pilgrimage to Rome and a journey to Denmark, Canute applied himself to the administration of the laws which he had promulgated, "I will have no money acquired by unjust means," he had said in a letter to Archbishop Elfric. The latter portion of the reign of the Dane was not characterized by any crime or act of oppression. Canute had learnt that there was a tribunal above to which he owed respect and submission. One day as his courtiers were overrating his power, the king ordered that his throne should be placed upon the margin of the sea. The tide was rising: Canute, seated on the beach, ordered the waves to stop in their onward course. "Ocean," he said, "the earth upon which I sit, is mine; you form a portion of my dominions; do not rise as far as my feet; I forbid you." The sea still continued rising; it was already bathing the king's mantle, when he turned to his flatterers. "You see," he said, "what human power is compared to that of Him who says to the sea: 'Thou shalt go no further.'" And, depositing his golden crown in the cathedral of Winchester, he refused thereafter to wear that emblem of sovereignty.

Canute died in 1035, leaving three sons: Harold and Sweyn, born of a Danish mother; and Hardicanute, son of Princess Emma. He had divided his states among his children, leaving England to Harold, Denmark to Hardicanute, and Norway to Sweyn. These two last princes already, no doubt, exercised some authority in their dominions, for both were in the North when their father died. But England was wont to have a voice in questions of succession, and Canute left behind him a powerful favorite, who was inclined to further the interests of Hardicanute. This favorite was Earl Godwin, a nobleman of Saxon extraction, formerly but a simple herdsman in the county of Warwick. During the struggle between Edmund and Canute, a Danish chieftain, named Ulf, had lost his way in a forest, in the evening after a battle. He had walked in vain all night when, at daybreak, he met a young countryman who was driving a herd of cattle. "What is your name?" asked the Dane. "I am Godwin, son of Ulfuoth," said the young man, "and you are a Danish soldier." The warrior hesitated. "It is true," he said at length. "But could you tell me the way to my countrymen's ships, on the sea coast?" Godwin shook his head. "He is a very foolish Dane," he said, "who expects a favor from a Saxon." And he hurried on his cattle. Ulf insisted. "There are many of my country men close to us," replied the herdsman; "they would spare neither me nor you if they should meet us." The chieftain silently offered him the heavy golden ring which he wore on his finger. Godwin looked at him. "I will accept nothing from you," he said; "but I will try and show you the way."

They came to Godwin's hut. He invited the Dane in. "Remember," said the herdsman's father to the Dane, "that he is my only son, and that he sacrifices his safety for you. Try and find employment for him at your king's court." Ulf promised to do so, and kept his word. Canute took a fancy to the young Saxon, who had attained the rank of governor of a province when the king died. He immediately declared himself in favor of the son of Emma, who was not so thoroughly Danish as his brothers. Leofric, governor of Mercia, took up the cause of Harold, in common with all the Northern chiefs. The town of London followed their example. War was about to break out; but the Wittenagemote convoked at Oxford allotted all the provinces North of the Thames to Harold; and those on the South to Hardicanute.

While Queen Emma and Godwin were thus striving to secure the power for the young king of Denmark, the latter lingered in his Northern possessions, and had not yet set his foot in England. His Norman brothers, sons of Ethelred and Emma, had been more prompt. Scarcely had the news of the death of Canute reached Normandy, when the elder of the two princes, Edward, who subsequently became Edward the Confessor, landed at Southampton with a few ships. But Queen Emma's natural affection was confined to her son by Canute: she raised the country against her eldest child, who was obliged to retire precipitately. His ill-success did not discourage his brother Alfred, and, the following year (1037), the two princes received a letter, coming, it was said, from their mother, urging them to come secretly to England, where the people were anxious to have a king of Saxon origin to rule over them. Alfred immediately embarked for England, followed by some troops from Normandy and Boulogne.

He landed in the neighborhood of Herne Bay. Godwin had come to meet him and appeared friendly; but, either from premeditated treason, or from annoyance at seeing the strangers who accompanied the prince, Godwin altered his mind, and took Alfred to Guildford, lodging the Normans in the houses of that town. In the dead of night, while the little band of soldiers were asleep, Harold's soldiers surrounded Guildford; the Normans were made prisoners, Godwin meanwhile not appearing on the scene to defend them, and a fearful massacre took place at daylight. Six hundred men, it is said, were slaughtered in cold blood, and the unhappy Alfred was dragged to London, from whence Harold sent him, bound hand and foot, to the isle of Ely. He appeared before a Danish council of war, and was condemned to have his eyes put out, as a disturber of the public peace. He died a few days afterwards. Harold soon sent Queen Emma into exile, and Godwin having sworn allegiance to him, he was proclaimed king of all England, not, however, without some dissatisfaction on the part of the Saxons. The archbishop of Canterbury, Ethelnoth, who was a Saxon, refused to crown him. Depositing on the altar the royal emblems, he exclaimed: "I will not give them to you. I do not forbid you to take them, but I refuse to bestow my benediction upon you, and no bishop shall consecrate your throne." It is said that, thereupon, Harold seized the crown, and placed it upon his head with his own hands. Some chroniclers state that he subsequently found favor with the archbishop; but the Dane was more than half pagan; he had abandoned the Christian Church. When divine service was being celebrated, when the bells were ringing, and the priests were mounting the altars, he would let loose his dogs, and start for the forest to enjoy the pleasure of hunting or racing; a fondness for which pastimes won him the name of "Harefoot." He died in 1040, at the time when his brother Hardicanute had just repaired to Flanders, where Queen Emma had taken refuge, to consult her preparatory to attempting an invasion of England. Soon afterwards an embassy of Danish chieftains and English counts came unsolicited and offered him his brother's throne. He thereupon came to England with his mother.

Hardicanute, like his predecessors, was thoroughly Danish by nature; he gave himself up to the pleasures of the table, surrounding himself at the same time by the chieftains whom he had brought over with him from the North; despising and oppressing the Saxons, from whom he still exacted danegelt, as in the old times of the invasions. He had attributed his brother's misfortunes to Godwin; but the count had been able to justify himself before a council, in spite of public opinion which condemned him. The presents which he had offered to the king had had the effect of putting an end to the prosecution. Hardicanute had accepted from him a magnificent ship covered with burnished metal, ornamented with gold, and manned by eighty warriors furnished with every kind of weapon. By degrees power had returned entirely into the hands of Godwin and Emma, when, in 1042, Hardicanute, at a banquet, fell a victim to the excesses of every kind to which he was accustomed.

The Saxon earl had resolved to deliver his country from the Danish yoke. He immediately sent for Prince Edward, who was still in Normandy, and was more a monk than a prince. The popular feeling in his favor which enabled Edward to return to England, was shared and fostered by the very man to whom he attributed his brother's death; but the new king was powerless and a stranger in the country which recalled him after an exile which he had endured during nearly the whole of his lifetime. He dissembled and accepted the hand of Edith, daughter of Godwin, a good and gentle princess, who "was born of Godwin as the rose is born in the midst of thorns," the chroniclers say. Edward was always cold towards her, and he manifested something more than coldness towards Queen Emma. He could not forget how she had repulsed him, and how she had failed to do anything to defend her son Alfred—even if she had not actually allured him to his ruin. He ordered her to remain within her domains, which had been greatly reduced, and refused to see her any more.

The power which Edward had regained was, however, scarcely more than nominal. The "Great Earl," as Godwin was called, had exacted the value of his services. He and his six sons held possession of nearly all the South of England. Besides this, his rival, Earl Leofric, was all powerful in Mercia. Siward held the whole of the North, from the Humber to the frontiers of Scotland. Happily for the king, all these chieftains were opposed to each other. Edward took advantage of their rivalries, trying from time to time to redress the wrongs of the people, who were oppressed and deprived of all power. But in vain did he suppress the danegelt; in vain did he inspire an almost superstitious veneration towards himself in his subjects by reason of the austerity of his life: the English never forgave him for the affection which he manifested towards the Normans and his preference for them, which induced him not only to surround himself with the friends of his younger days, but to lavish all the favors on them which he had at his disposal. The king's ordinary conversation was carried on in the Norman language; he dressed in Norman fashion; he raised to clerical dignities the Norman priests who had come over with him, and thus contrived to excite considerable jealousy in the people, all which increased the influence of Godwin.

An event happened which caused their animosity to break out openly. Eustace of Boulogne, the brother-in-law of King Edward, who had married the latter's sister, the Lady Goda, landed in England with a numerous suite of troops from Boulogne and Normandy. He was received in a very friendly manner by the king, and loaded with presents. He was returning home, when, on arriving at Dover, some of the inhabitants resisted the action of the strangers in unceremoniously taking up their quarters in the town. Eustace's soldiers, greatly incensed, killed those who closed the gate at their approach. The whole town rose against them in consequence of this act; they were beaten and routed. They took refuge in Gloucester, where King Edward was staying, who ordered Earl Godwin to impose a punishment on the inhabitants of Dover. Godwin told the king to inquire into the affair. Edward, however, summoned Godwin to appear before him. The earl was in no hurry to do so. Uneasy at the king's projects, he began to raise troops throughout his dominions, and his son Harold did likewise. Godwin soon found himself at the head of a considerable force. The king summoned to his aid Leofric, Count of Mercia, and Siward, Earl of Northumbria. These two great rivals of Godwin immediately advanced with an army; but the old hatred between the Danes and the Saxons had almost worn itself out. The soldiers from the North considered themselves English as well as those from the South, and they all murmured at the idea of coming to blows. It was agreed to lay the subject before the Wittenagemot; but, in the meanwhile, before the meeting of the assembly, Godwin's soldiers, who were nearly all volunteers, were slowly dispersing, while the king had collected together a numerous army. When the Wittenagemot began to sit, the earl and his sons were summoned to appear and establish their innocence. They hesitated, however, being unwilling to trust to the impartiality of the judges; and, in consequence of the decision which was come to in their absence, they were banished, driven from England within five days, and condemned to have all their goods confiscated. Godwin, his wife, and three of their sons sought refuge at the court of Flanders. Harold and his brother Leofwin fled to Ireland. Edward consigned to a convent the only person of Godwin's family remaining in England, Queen Edith. "It is not advisable," said the Norman courtiers, "that she should live in luxury and with wealth at her command, while her relations are suffering from such misfortunes."

Delivered of the ambitious and powerful Godwin, Edward was beginning to feel himself a king in reality. He took advantage of this to surround himself with those persons only who were personally devoted to him. Among others whom he wished to see at his court was the Duke of Normandy, William the Bastard, as he was called, his mother being the daughter of a tanner at Falaise. Edward was still an exile in Normandy, when the Duke Robert, William's father, conceived the idea of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to obtain forgiveness for his sins. These expeditions were of frequent occurrence among the Normans. The barons represented, however, to the duke that it would be inexpedient to thus leave his dominions without a ruler. "By my faith," answered Robert, "I will leave you no lord! I have a little bastard son who will grow up, please God; select him in the meanwhile, and I will appoint him my successor afterwards." The Normans did as the duke proposed, "because it suited them to do so," the chronicle says, and all the chiefs came, one after the other, and placed their rough hands between those of the child, swearing allegiance to him.

But scarcely had the duke, his father, started than the murmuring began. The Normans were proud, restless, unmanageable; it was repugnant to their feelings to live under the dominion of a child and a bastard; a war soon broke out; the partisans of young William carried him off, but the King of France came to their aid. When the child had reached manhood he soon manifested rare courage and a strong and ungovernable will, as well as that ambitious disposition which was destined to make the fortune of himself and his partisans. He was twenty-seven years old when he came to England in 1050 to the court of King Edward.

He might almost have imagined that he was not really out of his dominions; a Norman was in command of the fleet near Dover; Norman soldiers were in possession of a fort near Canterbury; and as he advanced into the country, other Normans, priests and laymen, gathered round him. King Edward received him in a very friendly manner, and made him presents of arms, horses, dogs, and hawks; it is not known whether William was incited by any hint from Edward to claim the inheritance of this rich kingdom which was to be without a master at the death of the king. Edward did not mention it, and the duke could keep his secrets.

He had just returned to Normandy, when Count Godwin appeared upon the coast of Kent with three ships; he had sent some emissaries to his numerous friends, and the entire population had risen in his favor. At the same time his sons Harold and Leofwin, coming from Ireland, joined him with a small army.

The father and his sons sailed round the coast, and everywhere met with followers. When they at length landed at Sandwich, nobody ventured to resist them. King Edward was in London, collecting together his warriors, who came forward very slowly. Godwin's vessels had ascended the Thames and found themselves under the very walls of London. They soon passed the bridge, and landed their troops. The king meanwhile did not stir.

Godwin had arrived at the capital without discharging an arrow or unsheathing a sword; he sent a message to the king in which he demanded the remission of the sentence which had been pronounced against him. Edward was aware of the desperate state of his affairs, but he was incensed at the daring of the earl and refused to listen to his demands. Several other messages were delivered. The king at this critical moment was still surrounded by his Norman favorites. He could not order his vessels to attack those of Godwin, as the former had been seized by the insurgents; but Edward remained inflexible. The Normans who were with him foresaw the issue of the conflict, and feared the vengeance of Godwin. They began to fly. The archbishop of Canterbury, Robert, and the bishop of London, William, mounted their horses and fought their way to the seacoast, where they embarked. The king at length surrendered; a Wittenagemot was convoked and the sentence of banishment pronounced against Godwin and his sons was annulled and transferred to the Normans, who were in their turn expelled from England. Queen Edith reappeared in her husband's palace. Godwin and his family regained their honors and property. The younger of the sons and one of the grandsons of the great earl were the only hostages given to the king, who confided them to the keeping of the duke of Normandy. Sweyn, in expiation of his former sins, gave up both his titles and his wealth to perform a pilgrimage barefooted to Jerusalem. He died long before reaching the Holy Land.

Peace seemed re-established in England, but the king still nourished the bitterest hatred against Godwin. The peace would probably not have been of long duration had not the death of the earl, which took place in 1053, put an end to their rivalry. The Norman chronicles relate that he was seated at the royal table, when a servant, accidentally losing his balance, supported himself by leaning against another. "There," said Godwin, laughing, "that is how brother helps brother." "Yes, certainly," said the king, "one brother requires the help of another, and I would to God that mine were still alive." "King," cried Godwin, "how comes it that at the slightest remembrance of your brother, you always look so fiercely at me? If I helped to cause his misfortune even indirectly, may the Lord of Heaven prevent my swallowing this piece of bread." At that moment, while carrying the bread to his mouth, the earl had a fit of choking and fell back "struck down by the hand of Providence." He died a few days afterwards, almost at the same moment as his old rival, Siward, count of Northumbria. The latter was ill and bedridden, when he said, "Lift me up, that I may die standing, like a soldier, and not lying down like a cow; give me my cuirass and helmet, that I may die armed." It is this old Siward whom Shakspeare represents in Macbeth, uneasy in his mind, before mourning the death of his son, about the situation of the fatal wounds, and consoling himself amidst his grief with the thought that they had all been inflicted in front and that his son had died like a brave warrior.

The son whom Siward left was too young to succeed him in the government of his vast dominions, which were presented to Tostig, one of Godwin's sons. Harold had all the estates of his father left to him, and although very loath to do so, he gave up the command of the Eastern territories which he had hitherto held, to Elfgar, son of Leofric of Mercia.

King Edward was much attached to Harold, the bravest and best of Godwin's sons; and the English people shared this affection with him. Tostig, on the contrary, soon caused himself to be detested in Northumbria. The people organized an insurrection in 1066, and he was driven from his territories. The king instructed Harold to quell the insurrection, but the latter knew his brother well, and understood the grievances of the people whom he had oppressed. He made proposals to the Northumbrians of a conference for peace, endeavoring at the same time to exonerate his brother and promising that the latter's conduct should be more worthy in future. The insurgents refused haughtily. "A proud and overbearing chief is unendurable to us," they said; "we have learned from our ancestors to live free or die." Harold himself conveyed the message of the Northumbrians to the king, and Morcar, son of Elfgar, was elected in place of Tostig, who took refuge at the court of Flanders.

Edward was growing old, and he had no children. His devotion was becoming day by day more fervent. He thought of making a pilgrimage to Rome, but the Wittenagemot opposed it. For the first time the king thought of his nephew Edward, son of Edmund Ironsides, who was still in Hungary, where he had been brought up. He sent for him. Edward Atheling, as he was called, immediately set out with his wife, daughter of the emperor of Germany, and also with his three children, Edward, Margaret, and Christiana. The English people were delighted. The memory of "Ironsides" had remained popular and his son was received with acclamation. But this was only by the people, for the king, who had sent for his nephew with the evident intention of making him his heir, never saw his face. By reason of some intrigues, probably of Harold, the interview was delayed, and before it could take place the prince died in London, where he was buried, in St. Paul's Cathedral. Godwin's son was rapidly approaching the throne.

For more than ten years, Harold's brother, Wulfuoth, and his nephew Heaco had been in Normandy, entrusted to the care of the Duke William, as Godwin's hostages. The count conceived a desire to go and set them free. The old king tried to persuade Harold to abandon his project, either on account of his esteem for him or because he had, as some chroniclers say, made a will in favor of the duke of Normandy, and consequently wished to prevent Harold from making his acquaintance. "I will not hinder you," said the king, "but if you go, it is not by my wish, for your journey will assuredly bring down some misfortune upon our country. I know the Duke William and his astute mind; he hates you, and will grant you nothing, unless he sees some advantage for himself in doing so; the way to make him give up the hostages would be to send somebody else."

Harold was young and presumptuous; he did not heed the advice of the old king, but embarked at a port in Sussex near Bosham, with his companions. The wind was unfavorable, and the two little ships were dashed ashore at the mouth of the river Somme, in the dominions of Guy, count of Ponthieu. According to the usage of the time, the crew were taken to the count, who was entitled to claim them, and they were shut up in the citadel of Beaurain, near Montreuil.

Harold had declared himself to be the bearer of a message from the king of England to the duke of Normandy, and William claimed the prisoners; but the count of Ponthieu only parted with them for a ransom. Harold was taken to the duke at Rouen. The latter received the Englishmen magnificently, and at once gave up to them the hostages, only asking Harold to prolong his stay in Normandy. The Saxon consented to do so, finding ample amusement in observing the luxury and civilized customs which he met with for the first time among the Normans.

The Duke William had conferred upon his guests the spurs of knighthood, and he proposed that, in order to enable them to display their prowess, they should accompany him on an expedition into Brittany. As long as the war lasted, Harold and William lived under a single tent and dined at the same table. On one occasion, after the Saxons had distinguished themselves by their warlike feats, the two chiefs were returning home together on horseback. William was speaking of his old relations with King Edward. "When Edward and I lived like brothers, under the same roof," he said, "he promised me, that if ever he should become king of England, he would make me heir to his kingdom. Harold, help me to get this promise fulfilled. If by your help I should obtain the kingdom, rest assured that whatever you ask for, I will immediately grant." Harold, astounded, did not know what to answer. He stammered a few words. William was resolved to get his consent. "Since you consent to serve me, you must undertake to fortify Dover Castle," he said, "to construct a well there for obtaining a supply of spring water, and to surrender it up to my soldiers. You must give up your sister to me, whom I will give in marriage to one of my barons; and you shall marry my daughter Adela. I also wish that, when you go, you would leave one of the two hostages whom you have claimed; I will take him back to England when I go over there as king." Harold shuddered inwardly. He was at the duke's mercy, and he agreed to all that he desired, mentally resolving not to fulfil his promises. He did not know the Norman and his farsighted schemes.

They were at Avranches (some say at Bayeux), and the Norman barons were convoked in a great assembly. The Saxon was there by the side of the duke; a massbook was brought and placed upon a stool covered with a golden cloth. Suddenly William exclaimed, "Harold, I call upon you, before this noble assembly, to confirm on oath all that you have promised to do to help me to obtain the kingdom of England after the death of King Edward." The Englishman was again taken aback, and was in great peril. He advanced slowly, and swore with his hand on the book, to perform the promises made to the duke, provided that he were alive and that God should help him to do so. All the Normans cried out, "May the Lord help him!" Then at a sign from William, the rich cloth was removed and the Saxon discovered that he had sworn upon a receptacle filled with precious relics which had been brought, by order of the duke, from all the neighboring convents. William did not detain Harold any longer. He left the country, taking his nephew with him; but his brother remained in the power of the Normans.

"Did I not warn you that I knew William?" said the old king Edward when Harold related to him what had happened; and he added sadly, "May none of these misfortunes happen in my lifetime!"

The death of the king was destined to be the signal for England's misfortunes to recommence, and he was becoming weaker every day. Sinister reports had been circulated. Old prophecies were recalled which threatened England with invasion and subjugation by a foreign people. The king himself, constantly occupied with his devotional practices, saw fearful visions in his dreams and would cry out, with a vague remembrance of biblical imagery, "The Lord has stretched His bow, He has unsheathed His sword; He moves and brandishes it like a warrior; His wrath shall be manifested through fire and by sword."

His servants shuddered at these threatening prophecies; but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, only laughed. "Dreams of the sick old man," he would say.

It is said that, before dying, Edward designated Harold to the members of the Wittenagemot as his successor; other chroniclers (the Norman writers) maintain, on the contrary, that when Harold and his relations presented themselves in the king's chamber, the latter said in a feeble whisper, "You know, my thanes, that I have bequeathed my kingdom to the duke of Normandy; do I not here see men who have sworn to uphold his rights?" Whatever the dying man may have wished, the opinion of the English chiefs was not to be mistaken. Scarcely had Edward the Confessor been buried in Westminster Abbey, which he had built in place of performing the pilgrimage to Rome, when the Wittenagemot proclaimed as king of England, Harold, the son of Godwin, and the grandson of the herdsman Ulfuoth, overlooking in his favor the rights of Edgar Atheling, son of Edward Atheling, and grandson of Edward Ironsides, as well as the more formidable pretensions of the duke of Normandy.

Harold's first care was to eradicate from the kingdom all traces of the Norman innovations introduced by King Edward; the ancient Saxon signature replaced, in the acts, the seals introduced from Normandy, and the Norman favorites whom Edward affectionately protected to the last, were deprived of their offices, though without being exiled or having their property confiscated. It was through them that the Duke William heard of the death of Edward and of the election of Harold. He was in a park, near Rouen, trying a new bow, when the important news reached him. He stopped immediately, gave his bow to his servants and went back to Rouen. He walked up and down the great hall in his palace, sat and rose alternately, and was quite unable to remain still. His friends looked at him in silence without daring to accost him. At length one of them, who was on more familiar terms with him than most of the others, approached him. "My lord," he said, "of what use is it to keep your news from us? It is rumored in the town that the king of England is dead and that Harold has taken possession of the kingdom, unfaithful to his plighted word to you." "That is true," answered the duke, "and my grief is caused as much by the death of Edward as by the wrong which Harold has done me." "There is no remedy for Edward's death," replied the Norman, "but there is for Harold's infidelity; yours is the willing arm and yours are the willing soldiers; a thing well begun is half done."

William's courtiers were not the only persons to advise him to support his pretensions by force of arms. Harold's own brother, Tostig, who had been driven from Northumbria, and whom his brother had failed to reestablish in his government, came from Flanders to offer his help to the duke of Normandy in attempting the conquest of England. William was too prudent to undertake the invasion without premeditation; he presented ships to Tostig, who went to Denmark to seek the support of King Sweyn. Upon meeting with a refusal from the Dane, Tostig repaired to Norway. The king of that country was Harold Hardrada, son of Sigurd, a great voyager and corsair, who had formerly extended his excursions as far as the seas of Sicily, and who on one occasion on his return had married a Russian princess. He was a poet and would sing on board his black vessel, laden with his warriors, who were a source of great terror to all peaceful people. Tostig approached him with flattery. "The whole world knows," he said, "that there is not in the North a warrior who is your equal; you have only to wish it, and England is yours." The Norwegian allowed himself to be seduced and promised to put to sea as soon as the ice should thaw and make the ocean navigable.

While Tostig was trying his strength on the coast of Northumbria with a band of adventurers, William, careful to have on his side all the appearances of right, sent a message to Harold as follows:—"William, duke of Normandy, reminds you of the oath which you swore with your own lips and with your hand upon good and holy relics." "It is true," answered Harold, "but I swore under constraint, not being free, and I promised what did not belong to me; besides, my services belong to my country, and I could not give up my position to anybody else without its consent, nor marry a strange woman. As to my sister, whom the duke claims for one of his chiefs, she died during this year. Does he wish me to send her body to him?" A second message, still calm and moderate, urged Harold at least to marry the Norman princess; but the king answered that he would not do so, and soon afterwards he chose a Saxon wife, a sister of Edwin and Morcar, the two sons of Elfgar, count of Mercia. William's anger at length burst forth, and, reproaching Harold bitterly for his perjury, he declared that he would come before the end of the year to exact payment of the whole of his debt and to pursue the perfidious Saxon even into the places wherein he considered his hold to be firmest. While awaiting the help of his allies from the North, William was aware of the importance of conciliating public opinion in Europe, or at least in that portion of Europe where the people were not altogether ignorant of what was happening in England and in Normandy. No influence was stronger than that of the Church for obtaining the good will of the people. The English were not in favor at Rome. They had refused to receive Robert of Jumièges, a Norman priest, brought up in Canterbury by Edward the Confessor, who had been appointed to a high position by the Pope, and the Saxon Stigand, who was still under excommunication from Rome, under pretence that he had been guilty of simony, was chosen in his stead. The Saxon Church had often shown itself to be somewhat undisciplined, and the clergy had been accused of laxity in performing their duties. William caused these facts to be represented at Rome, besides employing many other arguments. He had sent Lanfranc there, a priest of Italian extraction, whom he had made abbot of St. Stephen's at Caen, and who by reason of his clever and prudent mind was enabled to render important services to his master. Harold had sent no ambassador to this tribunal, whose jurisdiction he did not recognize in temporal affairs; his perjury was strongly denounced there, and Pope Alexander II. declared that William of Normandy, cousin of King Edward, and consequently his heir, could legitimately style himself king of England and seize upon the kingdom. The king received this permission sealed by the Pope, with a holy standard and a ring containing a hair of St. Peter enclosed in a diamond.

Strong in the support of the Pope, to whom he had promised to place England again under the authority of the Holy See and to cause the Peter's pence to be levied there annually, as Canute had done, William began his preparations for the conquest. The Normans were a free people; they were still conscious of their rude origin, but nevertheless accustomed to be consulted in their own affairs. The duke called together all his most intimate friends, his two maternal brothers, Odo, bishop of Bayeux, Count Mortaign, and the friend of his childhood, William, son of Osbert, the seneschal of Normandy. All encouraged him in his project "But," they said, "you must ask help and advice of the majority of the inhabitants of this country, for it is right that whoever pays should be invited to consent to the expenditure."

William was hot-tempered and haughty, but prudent and sensible. He convoked at Lillebonne a great assembly of men from every state of Normandy, the richest and most esteemed of their class. He unfolded his plans to them, and they retired to discuss them at their ease, out of the presence of the duke.

The excitement was great and the opinions various. William, son of Osbert, appeared in the midst of the groups. "Why do you discuss together?" he exclaimed. "He is your lord, and he has need of your services; your duty would be to make offers to him, and not to wait until he asks for anything. If you fail him, and he attains his object by the will of God, he will not forget it; show, therefore, that you love him and support him with a will." Low murmurs were heard; the opposition was beginning to burst forth. "No doubt he is our lord," they said; "but is it not enough for him that we should pay his taxes? We do not owe him any assistance for his foreign excursions; he has already oppressed us too much by his wars; if his new enterprise should fail, our country would be ruined." The offers accordingly were few, when Osbert's son was instructed to communicate them to William.

The assembly re-entered the room wherein the duke sat. The seneschal advanced. "Sire," he said, "I do not think that there are in the world men more zealous than these. You know how many burdens they have already borne for you? Well, they propose to add another, and to follow you to the other side of the sea as they do on this side. Push onward, then, and fear nothing; whoever has hitherto only supplied you with two good soldiers on horseback is willing to bear double the expense." The seneschal was interrupted by a hundred voices crying "We did not commission you to make such an answer as that. Let him remain in his own territory, and we will serve him as we should do; but we are not compelled to help him to conquer another people's country. Besides, if we were for once to do him this service, he would expect it as a right ever afterwards, and would thereby oppress our children; it shall not be." And the assembly dispersed in anger.

The duke sent for the noblemen, one after the other, as well as the abbots and the merchants: he showed his plans to them, asked for their support as a personal favor which should not compromise their liberty in any way in future, and by degrees he obtained what he wanted. The merchants promised vessels and armed warriors, the priests gave money, and the barons placed themselves and their vassals at his disposition. The preparations began forthwith in all the Norman towns; adventurers were everywhere crowding round William, "who slighted nobody," according to the chronicles, "and was always ready to oblige people as far as he was able." He promised lands, castles, women, plunder; he even sold an English bishopric to a certain Rémi, of Fécamp, for a ship and twenty warriors.

While the noise of hammers was resounding throughout all the shipyards of Normandy, the ice had thawed in the Baltic, and Harold Hardrada had set sail with his sea-serpents; he had been joined by Tostig, and had ascended the Humber and the Ouse, causing great destruction on his way. A certain number of Englishmen had rallied round the standard of Tostig. Edwin and Morcar marched to oppose the allies, but they were repulsed with loss. The citizens of York, fearing an assault, promised to surrender. The Norwegians were already celebrating the victory in their camp.

It was in the early morning, and Hardrada and Tostig, with a small body of troops, were advancing towards York to hold an interview with the chiefs of the town. Counting upon the terror which they inspired among the peaceful citizens, they were but half armed; Harold Hardrada had left his halbert in his tent, and wore a blue tunic embroidered with gold and a helmet ornamented with precious stones. Suddenly a cloud of dust, which was rising in the horizon, cleared away and revealed a forest of lances. It was King Harold whom the invaders believed to be in the South watching the movements of the Duke of Normandy, and who had come by forced marches to encounter them. The golden dragon of Wessex was displayed on his standard.

The position of the Norwegian, Hardrada, was critical, but his courage did not desert him. Planting in the ground his banner, the motto on which was "The despoiler of the world," he drew up around it all his forces at the foot of Stamford Bridge; he was riding backwards and forwards in front of his soldiers, when his horse stumbled and he fell. "A good omen!" he cried when he saw the faces of the pirates darken. His soldiers, resting their lances on the ground, with their points in the direction of the enemy, awaited the onslaught of the English. Hardrada was marching along the ranks, singing an improvised "skald." "Let us fight," he said, "let us march, although without any breast-plates beneath the edges of the blue steel; our helmets glisten in the sun; they are sufficient for brave warriors."

The English were contemplating these valiant preparations. A small band of men had detached themselves from the body of the army. "Where is Earl Tostig, son of Godwin?" asked one of the warriors clad in steel. "He is here!" cried Tostig himself, stepping out from the ranks. "Your brother salutes you," rejoined the Saxon; "he offers you peace, friendship, and your former honors." "This is a sensible offer," said Tostig, "and if my brother had made it a year ago he would have spared the lives of many brave men. And what does he offer to my noble ally, King Harold, son of Sigurd?" "Seven feet of English soil," haughtily replied the warrior, contemplating the Norwegian's huge person; "a little more, perhaps, for he is taller than most men." "Then," cried Tostig, "my brother. King Harold, may prepare for the fray. It shall not be said that the son of Godwin abandoned the son of Sigurd."

The Saxons retired slowly. Tostig was still looking fixedly at his antagonist. "Who is the warrior with such a proud tongue?" asked Hadrada. "King Harold, son of Godwin," said Tostig. "Why did you not tell me so" cried Hardrada; "he would not have lived to boast of having defeated us." He then added, "He is little, but he sits firmly in the saddle." At the same moment, King Harold was asking his companions whether this gigantic warrior clad in blue was really the formidable sovereign of the seas. It is the same, they told him. "He is a powerful man," replied Harold thoughtfully, "but I think his good fortune has deserted him."

The battle began—Hardrada was killed almost immediately by an arrow which stuck in his throat. Tostig took command of the army. Harold sent proposals for peace a second time for Tostig and the Norwegians. "We will owe nothing to the Saxons," cried the Norwegians, and the struggle recommenced. Tostig was killed in his turn, and great havoc was made among his men. The "despoiler of the world" was now surrounded but by a small number of warriors. They at length pulled up their precious standard, and slowly, defending themselves step by step, they regained the road leading to their vessels. A stout Norwegian had taken up his stand upon Stamford Bridge, covering the retreat of his comrades. They had nearly all passed the bridge, taking with them young Olof, son of Hardrada, when an English soldier, pushing his lance through a crevice in the timber, killed the valiant defender. The Scandinavian vessels unfurled their sails, and returned to Norway to spread the sad news of a defeat, indicated beforehand by the gloomy predictions of the soldiers, who had seen in their dreams a woman of gigantic stature seated on a wolf, and rushing along their ranks, making at each step a fresh corpse for the ferocious animal to devour.

Harold did not attempt to pursue the Norwegians on sea; he was recalled southward by the near approach of his great peril. William had assembled all his forces on the coast of Normandy, almost without any foreign help. The king of France, Philip I., had refused to give him any assistance, although the Duke had proposed to do homage to him when he should obtain possession of England. "You know," the French barons had said to the king, "how little the Normans obey you now; they will obey you still less if they conquer England, and if they fail in their enterprise, having assisted them we shall make enemies of the English people for ever afterwards."

The fleet and the army had been lying together for more than a month at Dive; the wind was unfavorable, and it was impossible to sail out of port. The south wind at length rose, and drove the vessels to Saint-Valéry-en-Caux, and then the bad weather began again. Several ships were dashed to pieces and their crews perished. In the army the men were murmuring. "There has been no fighting," they said, "and yet there are already some men killed." The Duke caused the sands to be watched, in order that the dead bodies thrown up by the sea might be buried immediately; and he allowed good cheer to his soldiers to induce them to wait patiently. He sent for the relics of the wrecks from Saint-Valéry, which were carried through the camp with great pomp. At length a propitious wind arose; all the sails were unfurled, and four hundred large ships and a thousand transport vessels sped away from land. The Duke's ship was at the head of them, bearing on the foremast the banner sent by the Pope; the sails of various colors were flying in the wind. The Duke's vessel soon left all the others behind; at daybreak he found himself alone. He sent a sailor to the foremast. "I only see the sky and the sea," cried the sailor; but a short time afterwards he reported four vessels in sight, and the Duke had not taken his breakfast before a forest of masts and sails was discovered.

It was a fine morning, on the 28th of September, 1066. Harold's vessels, which had been cruising along the coast during a whole month, had put in to land on the previous evening, being short of provisions. The fleet of the Normans approached, therefore, without resistance, and landed in Sussex, at Bulverhithe, between Pevensey and Hastings. The archers landed first, then the horsemen, and lastly the pioneers carrying their tools and wood ready prepared for making trenches round their camp. The Duke was the last to set foot on English soil, after superintending the disembarking of his men. Immediately upon stepping down, he stumbled and fell, smearing his hands with dirt. A shudder ran along the ranks. "What ails you?" cried the Duke, who had instantly sprung to his feet. "I have seized the land with my hands, and by the grace of God, throughout its length and breadth, it is yours." They were reassured at these words; a camp was at once planned and fortified with wooden trenches, after the French fashion, and bands of soldiers overran the neighborhood, ravaging and laying waste the country. Harold was still at Stamford, resting after the fatigues of the campaign against the Norwegians, when a messenger in an exhausted and breathless condition, burst into the room where he was at supper. "The enemy," he cried, "the enemy has landed!" Harold rose, for daybreak had arrived. He knew William and the Normans sufficiently well to feel confident that the struggle would be fierce and prolonged.

Time was precious. Harold was accustomed to make forced marches, and he accordingly started for London, ordering on his road all the earls and free men to rally round his standard. The whole country rose at his command, and large forces were being organized in different parts. "In four days the Saxon will have a hundred thousand men at his side," William was informed by one of those Normans formerly established in England during the reign of King Edward, who served him as spies. But some time was necessary to bring together these confused masses of men and to assemble them at a given point. Harold, in his haste, had not given them time to do so. He had arrived in London; his mother Gytha found his army worn-out and very small for opposing so formidable an enemy. "Do not risk a battle, my son," she said; "let the Normans pursue their ravages in the country, and famine will rid you of them." Harold trembled with indignation. "Would you have me ruin my kingdom?" he said. "By my faith, it would be treason; I prefer to put my trust in the strength of my arm and the justice of my cause." His young brother, Gurth, persisted, for the oath made to the Duke William weighed upon his conscience.

William the Conqueror Reviewing His Troops.

"Either under constraint, or by your own free will," he said, "you swore, and your oath will paralyze your arm during the conflict. We have promised nothing; leave us to defend the kingdom. You shall avenge us if we should be killed." Harold smiled bitterly at the remembrance of the Duke's perfidy, but he was inflexible, and he started the same day for Hastings with a force very much less than that of William.

King Harold's first idea was to suddenly attack the enemy, who had been intrenched during a fortnight in their camp; but the Normans were well defended; their trenches had been skilfully constructed, and the Saxon therefore abandoned his project, and selecting also a strong position upon a hill near Hastings, he fortified it in the fashion of his country with a line of stakes of about a man's height, and with a rampart of latticed branches, which was to protect the bulk of his army when the first line should have passed outside the stakes to defend the approaches to the camp.

Harold was uneasy; very few troops had had time to join him, and the Norman army was as strong as it was well disciplined. He, however, laughed aloud when three Saxon spies, who had penetrated into William's camp, came and informed him, that having been recognized and taken over the camp by order of the Duke, they had seen more priests than warriors in the Norman army. They had mistaken for priests all the warriors who had closely shaven faces and short hair, for the English at that time wore long flowing hair and long moustaches. "All these priests are good warriors," said the king, "and you will shortly see them at work."

William did not yet begin the attack. A Norman monk presented himself in Harold's camp. "The Duke William makes three proposals," said he; "first, to give up your kingdom to him; secondly, to submit his claim to the arbitration of the Pope; or, lastly, to decide the quarrel by single combat." "I will not give up my kingdom, I will not put the matter in the hands of the Pope, and I refuse the challenge to fight," replied Harold curtly. The monk returned to the Norman camp; but he soon reappeared, bearing another message: "if you will be faithful to your compact with him, the Duke will allow you to keep possession of all the country north of the Humber, and will give to your brother Gurth the land which was formerly held by Godwin. If you refuse, you are a perjurer and a liar, and all who fight for you shall be excommunicated by the Pope."

The Saxon chiefs looked at each other; but the love of liberty was stronger than their religious fears. "The Norman has given away everything beforehand to his soldiers," they said, "both land and goods. Where should we go, if we should lose our country?" And they resolved to die fighting to the last.

The night of the 13th of October, 1066, was passed very differently in the two camps. William's strict discipline only allowed religious music or devotional practices. After the fashion of the ancient Saxons and of the Danes, whose blood had become mixed with theirs, the English soldiers were eating, laughing, and singing warlike songs. At daybreak, after holy mass had been celebrated, the Normans issued from their camp. They were divided into three bodies, all preceded by archers. The duke was mounted on a Barbary horse which he had brought from Spain. He bore on his neck, in a golden casket, one of the relics upon which Harold had sworn the oath, as a silent witness of the latter's perfidy. By his side a young cavalier, Toustain le Blanc, was holding up aloft the standard sent by the pope. Odo, bishop of Bayeux, was marching through the ranks mounted upon his great white horse, and wearing a breastplate and helmet.

"See how well he rides," said the Norman, looking at William. "He is a graceful Duke, and will be a graceful king." And they advanced joyfully behind him.

At seven o'clock the attack on the Saxon camp began. Taillefer, the knight-minstrel of the Norman army, was marching in front, singing the song of Roland. The Normans cried, "Our Lady, help us!" The monks who had come with them to the field of battle had retired to pray.

Three times the Normans were repulsed. It was noon. In spite of the arrows of the archers, which inflicted great losses on the Saxon, and one of which had destroyed Harold's left eye, the English camp held good at all points. The duke's horse had been killed during an assault; a rumor had gone forth that William was dead; but immediately taking off his helmet, and showing himself bareheaded to his affrighted soldiers, he cried out, "Here I am! Look at me; I am living, and I will conquer, with God's help." Some were already taking to flight; these he held back with his long lance, and reconducted to the attack on the enemy's camp. All the defenders of the rampart were killed, but the twig hurdles still protected the bulk of the Saxon army. The Normans pretended to fly; the Saxons rushed forth in pursuit of them and were all killed. The remainder could no longer resist; the Normans therefore beat down the barrier and entered sword in hand.

Around Harold's banner, his chosen warriors had formed themselves into a compact circle, the "ring of death" as the Danes called it. Harold was there with his two brothers, Gurth and Leofwin. The fight recommenced furiously between the Normans and these brave men; not one of them receded; the heaps of bodies of the slain Normans formed a rampart for them, when twenty of their foes advanced together. They had sworn to cut a passage through the English or to perish to a man. Ten of them fell, but the ranks of the Saxons remained unbroken. William rushed to the attack, followed by his best warriors. The English soldiers were dying at their posts, immovable as the oaks in their forests. Gurth was dead, Leofwin was dying, bathed in blood, and Harold alone was still fighting at the foot of his banner. At sunset he fell, in his turn, and the standard of the pope replaced the golden Dragon of Wessex. All the English earls were stretched upon the field of battle, and the few Saxons who still remained were slowly retreating; yet so dauntless were they, even in defeat, that the Normans did not dare to disperse while it was still dark. Eustace of Boulogne, speaking to Duke William, was struck down by an unexpected blow.

On the morrow, at daybreak, Godwin's widow, whom William's pretensions to the English crown had deprived of four sons, came and asked permission to take away the bodies of her relations. Gurth and Leofwin had fallen together, at the foot of the banner. No one could find the body of Harold. His own mother could not distinguish him, but was obliged to send for "Swan-necked" Edith, whom her son had loved. Edith pointed to a body covered with wounds and disfigured by sword-thrusts. "That is Harold!" she said. He was borne with his brothers to Waltham Abbey, where he was buried beneath a stone bearing simply this inscription: "Infelix Harold."

Chapter V.
Establishment Of The Normans In England. 1066-1087.

King Harold was dead, but England was not subdued. The Wittenagemot had already reassembled in London to choose a new leader for resistance to the invasion. The sons of Harold were still children; and in accordance with a passion for hereditary right remarkable in a country which had often rejected that principle, the popular assembly chose Edgar Atheling, a grand-nephew of Edward the Confessor, to receive the perilous title of king of England. But Edgar was young, his intellect was feeble, and the chiefs who surrounded him were haughty and undisciplined. Stigand, the archbishop of Canterbury, was still endeavoring to organize the army, with the assistance of the Earls Edwin and Morcar, when the approach of the Normans rendered it necessary to make an immediate effort. After leaving Hastings, near which town he afterwards built Battle Abbey, the Conqueror had begun his march upon London. The city was well defended: after a slight attack William set fire to Southwark, and, spreading his troops over the country, pillaged the domains of all the thanes assembled at the Wittenagemot. He enclosed the capital in a circle of fire and plunder which raised fears of a famine. Edwin and Morcar, as well as the Saxon prelates, had already begun to lose courage. The reinforcements expected from the distant provinces were stopped by the Normans. William was at Berkhampstead, still threatening London. An embassy was despatched with a view to conciliate him. Soon afterwards the young king Edgar and all his counsellors, including Stigand, Edwin, and Morcar, presented themselves before the Norman—the king to renounce his empty title, the earls to swear fidelity to the conqueror. The duke received them affably: he promised in his turn to govern with mildness, in accordance with the ancient laws, and raising his camp at Berkhampstead he advanced towards London. For a moment he had appeared to hesitate with regard to the opportunity for his coronation; but his barons urged him to take the title which he had won at the point of the sword, and William voluntarily allowed himself to be guided by them, though only consenting to stay in London after he should have built a fortress for his residence.

He had need to defend himself: for at every step the hostility of the people over whom he sought to rule displayed itself energetically. On arriving at St. Alban's the Normans found the way obstructed by a number of large trees thrown across the road. "Who has done this?" inquired William angrily. "I," replied the Abbot of St. Alban's, presenting himself before him; "and if others of my rank and profession had done as much, you would not have advanced as far as this." The conqueror did no harm to the proud abbot; but on the day of his coronation he surrounded Westminster Abbey with battalions of his Normans before entering beneath its majestic roof, attended by his barons and by the Saxons who in a small number had rallied round him. Stigand had submitted; but he had refused to crown the usurper. This duty, therefore, fell upon the Archbishop of York, Aldred, a prudent man, who was able to discern the signs of the times. At the moment when the duke entered the church the acclamations of the bystanders were so noisy that the Normans posted outside, believing that they were fighting in the sacred edifice, rushed into the neighboring houses and set them afire. The cries of the inhabitants, the clatter of arms, frightened in their turn the spectators of the ceremony; they hurried in a crowd to the door, hastening to get out, and William soon found himself almost alone in the church with the priests and some devoted friends. The coronation ceremony, however, continued, and when the Duke of Normandy had issued from the church to appease the tumult he had become king of England. The Normans had dispersed to extinguish the fires or pillage the houses; the Saxons murmured against them under the sombre prognostications of a reign thus inaugurated by fire and sword. William left London almost immediately, and his first measures, mild and conciliatory in their nature, attracted around him a considerable number of Saxon chiefs, to whom he confirmed the title to their domains. A great extent of territory had already fallen into his hands, but the time for dividing the spoil had not yet arrived. In the month of March, 1067, William crossed over into Normandy, having entrusted the government of England to his brother, the Bishop of Bayeux.

Was his object to place in security the treasures which he had acquired, or to give time for insurrections to break out in order to suppress them energetically? Whatever may have been his motives he remained eight months in Normandy, enriching the churches and abbeys with the spoils gathered in England, and conducting through his hereditary states the dangerous subjects whom he had brought in his suite, Stigand, Edwin, Morcar, and the youthful Edgar Atheling.

Meanwhile the Saxons were groaning under the exactions of Odo of Bayeux, and did not confine themselves to groans. The risings became numerous; the inhabitants of Kent had called to their assistance Eustace of Boulogne, who had previously been the cause of the discontent of the English with Edward the Confessor, and who was now at enmity with the Conqueror. He came; but Dover Castle opposed to his attacks an unexpected resistance, which allowed the Normans time to arrive and repulse him. William had returned to England when, in 1068, the ill-feeling of the population of Devon drew upon that county the attention of the conquerors. The aged Githa, the mother of Harold, was living at Exeter, whither she had carried all her wealth. The fortress refused to receive William and his garrison, offering only to pay the taxes which were wont to be paid to the Saxon kings. "I desire subjects, and do not accept their conditions," said William, who ordered the assault to be commenced. The city was well defended; it resisted for eighteen days. At length the magistrates, less firm than the citizens, opened the gates, and the inhabitants paid cruelly for their obstinacy. Githa, and the ladies of her suite, succeeded in escaping, and in concealing themselves in the little islands at the mouth of the Severn, whence they set sail for Flanders. But scarcely was the outbreak extinguished in the South when it broke forth in the North. Earl Edwin, to whom William had lately refused to give the hand of one of his daughters, as he had previously promised, had withdrawn himself from his court, and the vassals, as well as the friends of the earl, had already gathered around him in Northumbria. The Conqueror at once commenced his march, and entering York took up his position there after expelling the Saxons. While he was pillaging and ravaging the environs the old Archbishop Aldred, whose convoys had been seized, came to make complaint to the king, and reproaching him with the cruelties committed in his name. "Thou art a foreigner. King William," he exclaimed, "yet Heaven desiring to punish our nation, thou hast obtained this kingdom of England at the price of much bloodshed, and I have anointed thee with my own hands. But I now curse thee and thy race, because thou hast persecuted the Church of God and oppressed its servants." Several Normans had already grasped the hilts of their swords; but William restrained them, and permitted the priest to return in safety into his palace, where he fell sick and died soon afterward.

The capture of York had not discouraged the Northumbrians; they attacked the Normans in Durham, and massacred them in numbers; they had also received important reinforcements. Sweyn, king of Denmark, at the solicitation of the sons of Harold, had sent assistance to the insurgents; two hundred and forty Danish vessels were approaching the coasts. Edgar Atheling, having sought refuge in Scotland with King Malcolm, who had married his sister Margaret, had lately joined the Saxon army and promised support to his brother-in-law. Before the Conqueror was apprised of this new danger York was recaptured by the insurgents, and Edgar Atheling had assumed once more the title of king, which he had formerly laid at the feet of the Norman. But winter came, and William was already assembling his army. Settling hastily the affairs which had called him Southward he took once more the road towards the North, and entered into secret negotiations with the Danes, insomuch that at the moment that he appeared under the walls of York the pirates weighed anchor and sailed again down the coast, pillaging the Saxon villages which the king had abandoned to them before taking again the road towards their country.

Malcolm, the king of Scotland, had now come to the assistance of the insurgents. York was again taken and put to fire and sword. King William then carried his anger and his vengeance into all the counties of the North; not a village which was not burnt, not a domain which was not confiscated. The churches, and even the monasteries found no shelter against Norman rapacity. The inhabitants of Beverley had amassed their treasures in the church dedicated to St. John of Beverley, a Saxon like themselves, who owed them protection. This, however, had no effect on the Normans, and Toutain, one of the battle chiefs of William, penetrated on horseback into the church of the monastery, in pursuit of the fugitives who had taken refuge there. His horse slipped upon the marble pavement of the sanctuary and the horseman was killed. St. John of Beverley had protected his countrymen, and the Normans withdrew from his abbey. Edgar Atheling had taken refuge again in Scotland; but this time the insurrection had found a true chief. Hereward, lord of Born, a warrior celebrated by his adventures abroad, had intrenched himself in the isle of Ely, which he called the Camp of Refuge, and from all sides the oppressed English gathered around him. William ordered the Earls Edwin and Morcar, who had returned to his court, to be carefully watched. They were apprised of the fact and secretly fled. Edwin was overtaken and slain by the soldiers who pursued him; but Morcar succeeded in reaching the isle of Ely. Thence Hereward undertook expeditions into the surrounding country, and kept at bay all the troops which William sent against him. He even defied Yves Taillebois, one of the king's favorites, whom William had recently induced to marry Lucy, a sister to Edwin and Morcar, and whose intolerable tyranny contributed to maintain the insurrection in the Eastern counties. But King William caused the little isle to be invested, cutting off from it provisions and reinforcements. The monks of the monastery grew weary of that compulsory fast, and indicated to the Normans the points of attack. The Saxons were beaten: the Bishop of Durham and Earl Morcar were taken and cast into prison for the remainder of their lives. Hereward succeeded in escaping, and in maintaining an irregular warfare; but, won over at last by the proposals of William, who sincerely admired his indomitable courage, he consented to lay down his arms. He lived long afterwards upon his domains, which the Conqueror permitted him to enjoy.

The Camp of Refuge was destroyed, and the county of Northumberland was given by William to the Saxon Waltheof, a warrior esteemed by his countrymen, whom William had attached to him by giving him the hand of his niece Judith. Being called away into Normandy in consequence of a rising of the inhabitants of Maine, the king took with him an English army, which fought as valiantly for him as it had against him shortly before. During his sojourn on the Continent he received into favor Edgar Atheling, who had recently failed in a new attempt instigated by the king of France, Philippe I.; the descendant of King Alfred took up his abode at Rouen, where he passed eleven years of his life in amusing himself with his horses and dogs.

A fresh insurrection recalled William into England. On this occasion it was the Normans themselves who revolted against him. His faithful companion, William FitzOsbern, was dead, and his son Roger, earl of Hereford like his father, had contracted a marriage with the sister of Ralph de Waher, or Guader, a Breton knight, who had accompanied William, and had been created Earl of Norfolk. This union was distasteful to the king, who had endeavored to prevent it, for he did not like the Bretons. After the nuptials the party was excited: FitzOsbern and Waher spoke of the tyranny of King William, and proposed his overthrow. Waltheof, who was present, had listened, but without taking part in the conspiracy. He had merely promised secrecy; but the secret was betrayed by his wife, who disliked him, and desired to rid herself of her husband. Lanfranc, who had become Archbishop of Canterbury upon the deposition of Stigand, and who was invested with power in the absence of his master, despatched an army against the rebels. The latter had been obliged lo declare themselves before their preparations were completed. When the king recrossed the sea the insurrection was already almost suppressed. Waher was banished, together with a great number of Bretons; FitzOsbern was put in prison; the unfortunate Waltheof, who had not taken up arms, but who was a Saxon, son of the glorious Siward, and Earl of Northumbria, was executed, to the great indignation of his fellow-countrymen, who came in crowds to pray at his tomb, and attributed to him numerous miracles. William did not allow Judith to marry the man for whom she had sacrificed her husband. She, on her part, refused the marriage which he offered her; and the king, having stripped her of all her possessions, this wicked woman was reduced to wander sometimes in England, sometimes on the Continent, bearing with her everywhere tokens of her misery and shame.

Thus ended the great insurrection in England. William was master of the country, and the harsh repressive measures which he had employed at length bore their fruits. The Saxons murmured under the weight of their misfortunes, but no longer dared to revolt. The king, frequently called into Normandy by his quarrels with his eldest son, Robert Curthose, was able now to leave England without anxiety. When he arrived at manhood Robert had called on his father to divest himself in his favor of the duchy of Normandy.

Robert's Encounter With His Father.

"I am not accustomed to throw off my clothing before going to bed," replied William, and Robert irritated, had revolted against his father and endeavored to arouse against him embarrassments and enemies on all sides. In vain had his mother Matilda, who loved him tenderly, endeavored many times to reconcile him with his father. Robert could not endure the yoke of paternal authority. He journeyed about the Continent, expatiating on his grievances and squandering the money which his mother sent to him secretly, to the great vexation of William. He received assistance from the king of France, Philippe I., who detested his father, and who installed him in the fortress of Gerberoi, on the confines of Normandy, whence it was easy for him to pillage the neighboring territory. William besieged Gerberoi. During a sortie Robert found himself face to face with a knight of robust form, concealed by his armor, and having his vizor lowered, with whom he contended for some time. At length he unseated him, and was on the point of despatching his antagonist, when the wounded knight called his people to his aid, and Robert recognized the voice of his father. In spite of his vanity Robert's heart was accessible to generous sentiments. He threw himself on his knees before his prostrate father, entreated his pardon, raised him with his own hands and set him on his horse. A reconciliation followed, for Robert was softened and penitent. But a fresh quarrel soon hurried the son out of Normandy. He set forth bearing with him a malediction which his father never revoked.

While the rebellions of his eldest son detained the Conqueror in his Norman domains, his brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, whom he had created Earl of Kent, had made himself detested in England. A brave and able warrior, the bishop had often led to battle the soldiers of William; but he had taken advantage of his influence to oppress the poor Saxons, extorting from them enormous riches. His vast treasures, the grand position which his brother occupied, and the conquests of the Normans in Italy had awakened in the heart of the Bishop of Bayeux the hope of becoming Pope. He had bought a palace in Rome and had sent there a great deal of money; when he resolved to go himself into Italy, and began to make preparations for his journey, gathering around him a number of Norman pilgrims anxious to obtain pardon for their sins by that holy enterprise.

Scarcely, however, had William become cognizant of his brother's project, when he returned from Normandy, and meeting the prelate in the Isle of Wight, caused him to be immediately arrested. Then, reassembling his council, he enumerated before the barons his grievances against the Bishop of Bayeux, his cruelties, his extortions, his secret manœuvres. "What does such a brother deserve?" he asked in conclusion. No one replied. "Let him be arrested," said the king, "and I will see to him." The barons hesitated: William himself advanced towards his brother. "Thou hast not the right to touch me," exclaimed Odo, "I am a priest and a bishop; the Pope alone is empowered to condemn me." "I am not judging the Bishop of Bayeux, but the Earl of Kent," replied William; and having sent him across the sea into Normandy, he imprisoned his brother in a dungeon, to the great satisfaction of the English, who detested him.

William had lost his wife Queen Matilda in 1083; the only softening influence which had tempered that imperious will had disappeared. His two remaining sons, William and Henry, quarrelled with each other: the Danes were again threatening the shores of England, where they could easily have found support, and the English, sullen and subjected, nourished in their hearts a deep hatred towards the sovereign who had despoiled them, not only to enrich his Norman adherents, but in favor of the stags and deer, "whom (says the chronicle) he loved like his children," and for whose sake he had created or enlarged forests, while he had destroyed towns, villages, and monasteries which interfered with the preservation of game, or the pleasures of the chase, the passion for which he transmitted to his descendants.

It was during these years of doubtful repose that William caused to be compiled the Domesday Book, a complete record of the state of property in England, in repute to this day, and an indispensable labor after a conquest which had resulted in the transfer of nearly all the domains to other hands. William had divided the immense territories of which he had possessed himself into 60,215 fees of knights who had all sworn to him the oath of fidelity. Six hundred great vassals holding directly from the crown had also sworn to him faith and homage as their suzerain lord; and lest their united influence should become dangerous, the king had scattered their fiefs in different parts of the country among their enemies the Saxons. Perhaps unconsciously William had thus obviated the greater part of the inconveniences of the conquest. This was not like the case of a feeble and effeminate people exhausted by oppression as were the Gauls at the moment of the invasion of the Germans. In England, two nations of the same origin and the same religion, equally brave and obstinate, had found themselves face to face. The Saxons were strong enough to resist their conquerors step by step. The Normans could not completely oppress a people always ready to revolt, who had long possessed institutions fitted for developing individual liberty.

Thus compelled to reckon with the conquered, the Normans necessarily acquired by degrees a greater respect for liberty than they had felt under the Norman feudal régime. The persecuted Saxons remained united in order to preserve some power of resistance: the Normans triumphant, but few in number among their enemies, were in their turn compelled to agree together, that they might not be crushed. Governed by the feudal law, they owed to the king their lord feudal service and certain gifts or dues under definite conditions: the Saxons, who by degrees allied themselves with William, accepted the same conditions on receiving their fiefs, without, however, renouncing the laws peculiar to their race or the rural institutions which the conquerors did not use themselves, and did not always permit to be freely exercised. It was nevertheless to this assemblage of confused regulations, requiring long years to bring them into accord, that the two nations owed the preservation of their strength and their liberties during the fusion which was slowly in progress. In England, as on the Continent, the feudal lords were grand justiciaries upon their lands, but they had acquired the habit of summoning eight or ten of the principal inhabitants of the neighborhood in testimony to the truth of the facts alleged, according to the ancient Saxon custom, which is the origin of juries. When the criminal could not be found, the parish remained responsible for fines and costs. Thus the Saxons and the Normans came to perform themselves the duties of police and of maintaining order. Instead of succumbing, the liberties of England developed and fortified themselves by the conquest. It was a struggle, but not an oppression.

Meanwhile William the Conqueror grew weary of his inaction. Gloomy and alone, he felt the need of the noise of combat and the excitement of war. Philippe I. had refused to yield up to him the town of Mantes, and a portion of the French Vexin over which he claimed to have right as duke of Normandy. Philippe had even encouraged his barons to make incursions into William's territory. Uniting his Norman barons and his English vassals, whose valor he knew, against his enemies, he crossed the sea in the latter days of the year 1086, to seize by force of arms what the King of France refused to yield to negotiations. On arriving in France, William had been taken ill, and it was not till the month of June that he was at length able to march against Mantes, which he captured and cruelly pillaged. While in the midst of the burning town he was encouraging his soldiers when his horse slipped. The king was an old man of heavy frame; he fell and was seriously injured. They carried him to Rouen, where he languished six weeks. Remorse now seized him; all the cruelties of his life rose up before him; he endeavored to expiate them by gifts to the poor and endowments of the churches. His two younger sons were there, anxious to know in what way the king was about to divide his heritage. In spite of his anger against Robert, the king would not deprive him of the duchy of Normandy, where he had been able to make friends. "I leave to no one the kingdom of England," he said, "for I did not receive it as a heritage, but won it by my sword, at the price of much bloodshed. I confide it therefore to the good-will of God, desiring nevertheless that it should go to my son William, who has always obeyed and served me in all things;" and he wrote to the Archbishop Lanfranc, to recommend him to crown his son.

Henry approached his father's bed. "And I?" said he. "Do you leave me nothing?" "Five thousand pounds' weight of silver from my treasury," replied the king, who was now dying. "And what shall I do with this silver if I have neither house nor land?" cried the young man. "Be patient, my son," said the king, "and thou shalt perhaps, be greater than all." Henry immediately obtained payment of the money and went his way, while his brother William set out for England in order to accomplish his father's wishes by being crowned as soon as possible. The Conqueror was left alone upon his death-bed.

It was the 9th of September, 1087. William was sleeping heavily when he was awakened by the sound of bells. "What is that?" he inquired. "The bells of St. Mary sounding the prime," was the answer. "I commend my soul to Our Lady, the sainted Mary, and to God," said the king, raising his hand towards heaven, and he expired. His sons had left him when dying: his attendants abandoned him when dead. A sudden stupor seized on the entire city upon the death of this powerful and terrible ruler. When the monks recovered themselves, and flocked into the royal palace to fulfil the duties of their office, they found the chamber stripped and the body of the Conqueror almost naked, stretched upon the ground. The king's sons troubled themselves no more with the funeral of their father than they had done with regard to his last moments. His body was conveyed to Caen, and it was a country gentleman named Herluin who undertook the expenses, from a kind disposition and for the love of God. At the church of St. Stephen of Caen, which the king had built and endowed, the body of the monarch was on the point of being placed in a grave, when a citizen of Caen, named Azelin, advanced from among the crowd and exclaimed, "Bishop, the man whom you have praised was a robber. The ground on which we stand is mine; it was the site of my father's house, which he took from me to build his church. I claim my right, and in the name of God I forbid you to inter him in my ground, or to cover his body with earth which is mine." It was necessary to pay to Azelin the just compensation which he claimed before the body was allowed to be deposited in the grave that awaited it. It was found to be too narrow, and they were compelled to place the coffin in it by force, to the great horror of the bystanders; and not till then was the Conqueror able to enjoy in peace the six feet of earth required for his last resting-place.

Azelin Forbidding The Burial Of William The Conqueror.

Chapter VI.
The Norman Kings. (1087-1154.)
William Rufus
Henry I.
Stephen.

William Rufus had not yet set sail from Wissant, near Calais, when he received intelligence of the death of his father. He kept the news secret; and obtained possession of several important places on the pretext of orders which he had received from the deceased king. It was not until he had helped himself freely to the treasure of the Conqueror at Winchester, and had made arrangements with the Archbishop Lanfranc, that he proclaimed the death of his father and his own claim to the crown. The bishop had been careful to administer to the king an oath binding him to observe the laws before consenting to give him his support; but oaths cost little to William. Scarcely had he been declared king by a council of barons and prelates, hurriedly assembled on the 26th of September, 1087, than he violated his original engagements, and cast the Saxon prisoners, whom his father had liberated on his death-bed, again into prisons, together with his Norman captives.

The new monarch would have acted more wisely if he had decided on a directly opposite course. Scarcely had the Bishop of Bayeux and his companions in captivity been set at liberty than they placed themselves at the head of the malcontents. The great barons all possessed fiefs in Normandy and in England: the separation of the two States, therefore, displeased them. Many of them resolved to depose William in order to secure to Robert an undivided paternal inheritance. In consequence of their manœuvres a serious insurrection broke out simultaneously in several parts of England. Robert Curthose had promised to support his partisans with a Norman army, and already some small bodies of troops had put to sea, confident of meeting with no resistance on the part of the king, who was without a fleet. William Rufus took his measures, and called round him that English nation which his father had scarcely subjected. "Let him who is not a man of nothing, either in the towns or in the country, leave his home and come." Such was the proclamation in all the counties according to the ancient Saxon custom. The Saxons obeyed: thirty thousand men assembled round King William., while the merchant ships, already numerous, were cruising in the Channel and destroying, one after the other, the little flotillas which were bringing over the Normans. Bishop Odo had fortified himself in Rochester: the king attacked him there with his Saxon army, and would have compelled him to surrender at discretion, if the Normans who had remained faithful to William had not interceded on his behalf. "We assisted thee in the time of danger," said they; "we beg thee now to spare our fellow-countrymen; our relations, who are also thine, and who aided thy father to possess himself of England." The king consented to allow the garrison to march out with arms and baggage; but the arrogant prelate demanded that the trumpets should not celebrate his defeat. "I would not consent for a thousand marks of gold," exclaimed William angrily, and above the sound of the trumpets arose the cries of the Saxons. "Bring us a halter that we may hang this traitor bishop and his accomplices. O king, why do you allow him to retire thus safe and sound?"

Odo returned to Normandy, Duke Robert negotiated with his brother, and the Saxons had already lost the advantages which William had accorded or promised to them in order to secure their co-operation. Lanfranc was dead: and the oppression had become more burdensome, the exactions more odious since his influence had disappeared. The king delayed long to appoint his successor, taking himself possession of the rich domains and revenues of the diocese of Canterbury in contempt of ecclesiastical pretensions. He had for minister and confidant a Norman priest, Ralph Flambard, whom he had made Bishop of Lincoln, and whose tyranny was so great that the inhabitants of his diocese, says the chronicle, "desired his death rather than live under his power." The hereditary passion of King William for the chase, and the rigor of the forest laws, were among the most frequent causes of persecution. "The guardian of the forests and the pastor of the wild beasts," as the Saxons called him, "took advantage of the least offence against his tyrannical ordinances to crush the thanes, who had preserved some remains of power." Fifty Saxons of considerable influence were accused of having taken, killed, and eaten deer. They denied the charge, and the Norman judges compelled them to undergo the ordeal of red hot iron; but their hands were untouched. When the fact was announced to the king he burst into laughter. "What matters that?" said he; "God is no good judge of such matters; it is I who am most concerned in such affairs, and I will judge these fellows." The chronicle does not say what became of the poor Saxons.

Several times war had broken out between William and his brother Robert. Rufus had conceived the hope of expelling Curthose from Normandy. He had numerous partisans on the Continent, and but for the support of the king of France, and the alliance with his brother Henry, Curthose must soon have succumbed. But in 1096, after a great insurrection in England, and at the moment when King William, triumphant over internal commotions, was probably about to renew his attacks upon Normandy, Duke Robert, seized with a passion for the Crusades, which were beginning then to agitate Christendom, suddenly proposed to his brother to mortgage his duchy for some years for a large sum of money which would enable him to equip troops and to set out with éclat for the East. The coffers of the king were no better filled than were those of the duke, but he was more skilful in replenishing them at the expense of his subjects. The monasteries and the churches were taxed like the Saxons. "Have you not coffers of gold and silver filled with the bones of the dead?" exclaimed Rufus, and he laid his hand upon the shrines containing the reliques. Robert received the sums agreed upon and set out joyfully for Palestine, while William crossed into Normandy, and without meeting resistance took possession of the duchy, where he already possessed numerous fortresses. Maine alone exhibited repugnance, and a revolt broke out there in 1100 while the Red King was enjoying the chase in England, in the hunting-grounds created by his father, which bear to this day the name of the New Forest. He set out instantly for the Continent. His nobles begged him to take time to assemble his forces. "No, no," replied Rufus, "I know the country and shall soon have men enough," and he jumped aboard the first vessel which he met with, in spite of the violence of the wind. "Did you ever hear of a king being drowned?" he said to the sailors who were hesitating to set sail; and he arrived safe and sound at Barfleur. The rumor of his coming terrified the lord of La Flêche, who was the leader of the insurrection; he abandoned the siege of Le Mans and took to flight. The domains of the enemy were soon ravaged, and Rufus returned to England.

Sinister rumors were circulating among the Saxons with regard to the royal forests. One of the sons of William the Conqueror had wounded himself mortally in chasing the deer in the New Forest. In the month of May, 1100, the son of Duke Robert, on a visit to his uncle, was killed there by an arrow. People said that Satan appeared to the Normans and announced the sinister end which awaited them; but the Red King continued to devote himself to the chase.

It was the 1st of August. He had passed the night at Malwood Keep, a castle used as a hunting-seat in the very heart of the forest. His brother Henry, with whom he had become reconciled, was with him. A numerous suite accompanied him, among whom was one of the private friends of William, a great hunter like himself, one Walter Tyrrel, a French nobleman, who possessed large estates in Poix and Ponthieu. During the night the king had been agitated by terrible dreams: he had been heard to invoke "the name of Our Lady, which was not his custom;" but he seemed to have forgotten all this and was preparing cheerfully for the fatigues and pleasures of the day. While he was putting on his buskins a workman approached and presented him with six new arrows. He examined them, and taking four for himself, gave the two others to Walter Tyrrel, with the remark, "The good marksman should have the good weapons." As he was breakfasting with a good appetite, one of the monks of the abbey of St. Peter at Gloucester brought him letters from his abbot. During the night one of the brethren had been tormented with dismal visions. He had seen Jesus Christ seated upon His throne, and at His feet a woman supplicating him on behalf of the human beings who were groaning under the yoke of William. The king laughed at the omen. "Do they take me for an Englishman," said he, "with their dreams? Do they think I am one of those idiots who abandon their course or their affairs because an old woman chances to dream or sneeze? Come, Walter de Poix! To horse!"

The hunting party had dispersed over the forest: Walter Tyrrel alone remained with the king. Their dogs hunted in company. Both were in search of prey when a great stag, disturbed by the commotion, unexpectedly passed between the king and his companion. William immediately drew his bow: the string of his weapon broke, and the arrow did not shoot. The stag had stopped, surprised by the noise, but not perceiving the hunters. The king had made a sign to Tyrrel, but he did not draw his bow. The king became angry. "Shoot, Walter!" he exclaimed; "Shoot, in the devil's name!" An arrow flew, no doubt that of Tyrrel; but instead of striking the stag it buried itself in the breast of the king. He fell without uttering a word. Walter ran to him and found him dead. Fear or remorse seized upon Tyrrel; he mounted his horse again and galloping to the sea coast, got aboard a vessel, passed into Normandy, and did not rest until he had taken refuge upon the territory of the king of France.

The news of this accident had become known in the forest; but no one gave a thought to the dead body of the king. Henry had hastened to Winchester, and had already put his hand upon the keys of the Royal Treasury when William of Breteuil joined him out of breath. "We have all," he said, "thou as well as I and the barons, sworn fidelity and homage to Duke Robert thy brother if the king should die first. Absent or present, right is right."

Death Of William Rufus.

A quarrel ensued, and it was with sword in hand that Henry possessed himself of the treasure and the royal jewels. Meanwhile a charcoal-burner, who had found the corpse of the monarch in the forest, was bringing it to Winchester wrapped in old linen, and leaving on the road behind the cart a long trail of blood.

The partisans of Robert in England were not numerous; they had no leader. The duke was returning from Palestine, but he had stopped on the way with the hospitable Normans, sons of Robert Guiscard, established in Calabria and in Sicily. He had even married there. Henry meantime had taken his measures and had caused himself to be proclaimed there by the barons assembled in London. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, had been expelled from England three years previously; the archbishopric of York was vacant. It was the custom of Rufus to delay as long as possible appointing to the sees, in order that he might himself enjoy their revenues. The Bishop of London crowned the new monarch. Henry Beau-Clerc, as he was called, because he was fond of books and of churchmen, became king under the title of Henry the First.

Henry was more popular among the Saxons than his two brothers had been. Born and bred in England, he was regarded as an Englishman, and his first care was to address himself to the English, who were more powerful than is generally believed, and who after all still formed the mass of the people of the country. "Friends and vassals," said he, "natives of the country in which I was born, you know that my brother has designs upon my kingdom. He is a proud man, who cannot live in peace: his only wish is to trample you under his feet. On the other hand I, as a mild and pacific sovereign, intend to maintain your ancient liberties and to govern you according to your own wishes with wisdom and moderation. I will give you, if you wish it, a record in my own hand. Stand firm for me; for while I am seconded by the valor of the English I have no fear of the foolish menaces of the Normans."

While the king was thus giving to the English a first charter, which proved of short duration, he determined to seal his promises by espousing a Saxon woman. He had cast his eyes on Matilda, daughter of Malcolm, king of Scotland, and of Margaret Atheling. Matilda had been reared in a convent in England by her aunt Christina Atheling, the abbess. The young girl hesitated: she had already been sought in marriage by several noblemen, and it was repugnant to her to unite herself with the enemy of her race and country. The Normans were irritated to see their king seeking support among their enemies, and they spread the report that Matilda had taken the vows as a nun in her infancy. It was necessary to convoke the Bishops to decide the question. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, (afterwards St. Anselm) had returned to England. He had always been just towards the Saxons. When his patron and friend Lanfranc was ridiculing in his presence the Saxon devotion to St. Alphege, the archbishop who was massacred by the Danes, Anselm had said, "For myself I regard that man as a martyr, and a true martyr. He preferred to face death rather than to do a wrong to his countrymen. He died for justice, as John died for the truth, and each alike for Christ, who is truth and justice." At the head of his bishops and on the personal testimony of Matilda, Anselm declared that she had never been consecrated to God, and the marriage took place. The queen was beautiful, charitable, and virtuous; but she exercised little influence over her husband, and was not able to prevent his often oppressing the people.

Henry had banished the favorites of his brother, who were odious to the Saxons, and Ralph Flambard, who had been a prisoner in the Tower, had scarcely escaped from that fortress, when he heard that Duke Robert had arrived in Normandy with his young wife Sibylla, daughter of the Count of Conversano. King Henry was greatly disquieted by the news. He had been careful to spread abroad the report that his brother had accepted the crown of Jerusalem, a worthy prize of his exploits in the Holy Land. The discontent of a certain number of Norman barons, and their disposition to offer their aid to Robert, compelled him more and more to depend upon the English as well as on the Church. He paid court to Anselm, and when Robert, encouraged by Ralph Flambard, published his declaration of war, the bishops and the common people of England were all on the side of King Henry. The Norman barons were divided, and the Saxon sailors, carried away no doubt by the fame which Robert had acquired in the Crusades, deserted with the fleet. It was in vessels constructed by his brother that Robert crossed with his army to English soil.

Duke Robert was undecided and wanting in settled character, but he was brave, and his affection for his family had resisted the disunion which had so long prevailed among these three brothers. Long before, when in company with William Rufus he was besieging their younger brother, now King Henry, but then only an adventurer without lands, who had seized upon Mont St. Michael, the supply of water had failed in the fortress, and the besieged prince sent to ask permission to obtain some. Robert consented, to the great vexation of William; he even sent to Henry wine for his table. "There is nothing now left to do but to send him provisions," said William moodily. "What!" exclaimed the duke, "ought I to let our brother die of thirst? and what other brother should we have if we lost him?"

Scarcely had Robert set foot in England when those among the Normans who were averse to war interposed between the two brothers. Once more Robert renounced his pretensions to the kingdom conquered by his father. Henry ceded to him the fortresses which he still held in Normandy, and promised to pay him a pension of 3000 marks of silver. A general amnesty was agreed upon on both sides.

Treaties, however, were scarcely more effectual than charters in binding King Henry. By degrees the barons who had taken the side of Robert were expelled from their domains and banished from England. The chief of all, Robert of Belesme, earl of Shrewsbury, had given ground of dissatisfaction by raising his standard when he had been called on to appear before the royal tribunal. Besieged in Bridgnorth, he had friends in the royal camp who sought to reconcile him with the king. "Do not listen to them. King Henry," cried the English infantry, "they are desirous of drawing you into a snare. We arc here and will aid thee, and will assault the town for thee. Make no peace with the traitor till you secure him alive or dead." Henry pushed on with the siege; Bridgnorth was taken, and Robert of Belesme, an exile, passed over into Normandy, where he possessed thirty castles and vast domains, which Duke Robert, faithful to the treaty, had begun to ravage as soon as he saw the Earl of Shrewsbury in revolt against his sovereign. In his chagrin at seeing the amnesty promised in his name to the barons violated, Robert went himself to England, placing himself defenceless in the hands of his brother in order to intercede for his friends. He even made a present to Queen Matilda of 1000 marks of silver a year, part of the 3000 marks which her husband had engaged to pay him. He obtained only vague promises, and from the year 1104 the resolution of King Henry to possess himself of Normandy began again to show itself clearly.

Robert had lost his wife, and disorder reigned in his court. He was still in want of money; affairs were unsettled, and Normandy was suffering all the evils of a weak and capricious government. Henry openly declared himself the protector of the duchy against the maladministration of his brother. "I will give thee money," he wrote to him, "but yield to me the land. Thou hast the title of chief, but in reality thou rulest no longer, for those who owe thee obedience ridicule thee." Robert refused this proposal with indignation, and Henry began his preparations for invading Normandy with an armed force.

The wars were always a cruel burden for the people; the levies of money necessary for the equipment of soldiers were ruinous to the poor citizens and the unfortunate peasants. Before the departure of Henry for Normandy crowds of country people presented themselves on the road by which the king passed, casting at his feet their ploughshares in token of distress. Nevertheless the king set out and met his brother at Tinchebrai, not far from Mortagne. The struggle was fierce. The military talents of Robert were much superior to those of his brother, but his army was less considerable, and there were traitors in the camp. In the very heat of the contest Robert of Belesme took to flight with his division. The duke was made prisoner, and his forces were completely defeated. Henry at the same time seized Edgar Atheling, once the legitimate pretender to the crown, the uncle of Queen Matilda. In consideration of these facts he was allowed his liberty in England, and received from the king a small pension, which enabled him to end his days in such complete obscurity that we are even ignorant of the date of his death.