13. Eadmund (940-946) and Eadred (946-955).—AEthelstan died in 940. He was succeeded by his young brother, Eadmund, who had fought bravely at Brunanburh. Eadmund had to meet a general rising of the Danes of Mercia as well as of those of the north. After he had suppressed the rising he showed himself to be a great statesman as well as a great warrior. The relations between the king of the English and the king of the Scots had for some time been very uncertain. Little is definitely known about them but it looks as if they joined the English whenever they were afraid of the Danes, and joined the Danes whenever they were afraid of the English. Eadmund took an opportunity of making it to be the interest of the Scottish king permanently to join the English. The southern part of the kingdom of Strathclyde had for some time been under the English kings. In 945 Eadmund overran the remainder, but gave it to Malcolm on condition that he should be his fellow-worker by sea and land. The king of Scots thus entered into a position of dependent alliance towards Eadmund. A great step was thus taken in the direction in which the inhabitants of Britain afterwards walked. The dominant powers in the island were to be English and Scots, not English and Danes. Eadmund thought it worth while to conciliate the Scottish Celts rather than to endeavour to conquer them. The result of Eadmund's statesmanship was soon made manifest. He himself did not live to gather its fruits. In 946 an outlaw who had taken his seat at a feast in his hall slew him as he was attempting to drag him out by the hair. The next king, Eadred, the last of Eadward's sons, though sickly, had all the spirit of his race. He had another sharp struggle with the Danes, but in 954 he made himself their master. North-humberland was now thoroughly amalgamated with the English kingdom, and was to be governed by an Englishman, Oswulf, with the title of Earl, an old Danish title equivalent to the English Ealdorman, having nothing to do, except philologically, with the old English word Eorl.

14. Danes and English.—In 955 Eadred died, having completed the work which AElfred had begun, and which had been carried on by his son and his three grandsons. England, from the Forth to the Channel, was under one ruler. Even the contrast between Englishmen and Danes was soon, for the most part, wiped out. They were both of the same Teutonic stock, and therefore their languages were akin to one another and their institutions very similar. The Danes of the north were for some time fiercer and less easily controlled than the English of the south, but there was little national distinction between them, and what little there was gradually passed away.

15. Eadwig. 955—959.—Eadred was succeeded by Eadwig, the eldest son of his brother Eadmund. Eadwig was hardly more than fifteen years old, and it would be difficult for a boy to keep order amongst the great ealdormen and earls. At his coronation feast he gave deep offence by leaving his place to amuse himself with a young kinswoman, AElfgifu, in her mother's room, whence he was followed and dragged back by two ecclesiastics, one of whom was Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury.

16. Dunstan.—Dunstan in his boyhood had been attached to Eadmund's court, but he had been driven off by the rivalry of other youths. He was in no way fitted to be a warrior. He loved art and song, and preferred a book to a sword. For such youths there was no place amongst the fighting laymen, and Dunstan early found the peace which he sought as a monk at Glastonbury. Eadmund made him abbot, but Dunstan had almost to create his monastery before he could rule it. Monasteries had nearly vanished from England in the time of the Danish plunderings, and the few monks who remained had very little that was monastic about them. Dunstan brought the old monks into order, and attracted new ones, but to the end of his days he was conspicuous rather as a scholar than as an ascetic. From Glastonbury he carried on the work of teaching an ignorant generation, just as AElfred had done in an earlier time. AElfred, however, was a warrior and a ruler first, and then a teacher. Dunstan was a teacher first, and then a ruler. Eadred took counsel with him, and Dunstan became thus the first example of a class of men which afterwards rose to power—that, namely, of ecclesiastical statesmen. Up to that time all who had governed had been warriors.

17. Archbishop Oda.—Another side of the Church's work, the maintenance of a high standard of morality, was, in the time of Eadred, represented by Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury. The accepted standard of morality differs in different ages, and, for many reasons, it was held by the purer minds in the tenth century that celibacy was nobler than marriage. If our opinion is changed now, it is because many things have changed. No one then thought of teaching a girl anything, except to sew and to look after the house, and an ignorant and untrained wife could only be a burden to a man who was intent upon the growth of the spiritual or intellectual life in himself and in others. At all times the monks, who were often called the regular clergy, because they lived according to a certain rule, had been unmarried, and attempts had frequently been made by councils of the Church to compel the parish priests, or secular clergy, to follow their example. In England, however, and on the Continent as well, these orders were seldom heeded, and a married clergy was everywhere to be found. Of late, however, there had sprung up in the monastery of Cluny, in Burgundy, a zeal for the establishment of universal clerical celibacy, and this zeal was shared by Archbishop Oda, though he found it impossible to overcome the stubborn resistance of the secular clergy.



18. Eadwig's Marriage.—In its eagerness to set up a pure standard of morality, the Church had made rules against the marriage of even distant relations. Eadwig offended against these rules by marrying his kinswoman, AElfgifu. A quarrel arose on this account between Dunstan and the young king, and Dunstan was driven into banishment. Such a quarrel was sure to weaken the king, because the support of the bishops was usually given to him, for the sake of the maintenance of peace and order. The dispute came at a bad time, because there was also a quarrel among the ealdormen and other great men. At last the ealdormen of the north and centre of England revolted and set up the king's brother, Eadgar, to be king of all England north of the Thames. Upon this, Oda, taking courage, declared Eadwig and his young wife to be separated as too near of kin, and even seized her and had her carried beyond sea. In 959 Eadwig died, and Eadgar succeeded to the whole kingdom.



CHAPTER V.

EADGAR'S ENGLAND.

1. Eadgar and Dunstan. 959—975.—Eadgar was known as the Peaceful King. He had the advantage, which Eadwig had not, of having the Church on his side. He maintained order, with the help of Dunstan as his principal adviser. Not long after his accession Dunstan became Archbishop of Canterbury. His policy was that of a man who knows that he cannot do everything and is content to do what he can. The Danes were to keep their own laws, and not to have English laws forced upon them. The great ealdormen were to be conciliated, not to be repressed. Everything was to be done to raise the standard of morality and knowledge. Foreign teachers were brought in to set up schools. More than this Dunstan did not attempt. It is true that in his time an effort was made to found monasteries, which should be filled with monks living after the stricter rule of which the example had been set at Cluny, but the man who did most to establish monasteries again in England was not Dunstan, but AEthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. AEthelwold, however, was not content with founding monasteries. He also drove out the secular canons from his own cathedral of Winchester and filled their places with monks. His example was followed by Oswald, Bishop of Worcester. Dunstan did not introduce monks even into his own cathedrals at Worcester and Canterbury. As far as it is now possible to understand the matter, the change, though it provoked great hostility, was for the better. The secular canons were often married, connected with the laity of the neighbourhood, and living an easy life. The monks were celibate, living according to a strict rule, and conforming themselves to what, according to the standard of the age, was the highest ideal of religion. By a life of complete self-denial they were able to act as examples to a generation which needed teaching by example more than by word. How completely monasticism was associated with learning is shown by the fact that the monks now established at Worcester took up the work of continuing the Chronicle which had been begun under AElfred (see p. 61).

2. The Cession of Lothian.—It is said that Eadgar was once rowed by six kings on the river Dee. The story, though probably untrue, sets forth his power not only over his own immediate subjects but over the whole island. His title of Peaceful shows that at least he lived on good terms with his neighbours. There is reason to believe that he was able to do this because he followed out the policy of Eadmund in singling out the king of Scots as the ruler whom it was most worth his while to conciliate. Eadmund had given over Strathclyde to one king of Scots. Eadgar, it is said—and probably with truth—gave over Lothian to another. Lothian was then the name of the whole of the northern part of Bernicia stretching from the Cheviots to the Forth. In Eadred's time the Scots had occupied Eadwinesburh (Edinburgh), the northern border fortress of Bernicia (see p. 43), and after this the land to the south of that fortress must have been difficult to defend against them. It is therefore likely that the story is true that Eadgar ceded Lothian to Kenneth, who was then king of the Scots, especially as it would account for the peaceful character of his reign. Kenneth in accepting the gift no doubt engaged to be faithful to Eadgar, though it is impossible to say what was the exact nature of his obligation. It is of more importance that a Celtic king ruled thenceforward over an English people as well as over his own Celtic Scots, and that ultimately his descendants became more English than Celtic in character, through the attraction exercised upon them by their English subjects.

3. Changes in English Institutions.—The long struggle with the Danes could not fail to leave its mark upon English society. The history of the changes which took place is difficult to trace; in the first place because our information is scanty, in the second because things happened in one part of the country which did not happen in another. Yet there were two changes which were widely felt: the growth of the king's authority, and the acceleration of the process which was reducing to bondage the ceorl, or simple freeman.

4. Growth of the King's Power.—In the early days of the English conquest the kings and other great men had around them their war-bands, composed of gesiths or thegns, personally attached to themselves, and ready, if need were, to die on their lord's behalf. Very early these thegns were rewarded by grants of land on condition of continuing military service. Every extension of the king's power over fresh territory made their services more important. It had always been difficult to bring together the fyrd, or general army of the freemen, even of a small district, and it was quite impossible to bring together the fyrd of a kingdom reaching from the Channel to the Firth of Forth. AElfred's division of the fyrd into two parts, one to fight and the other to stay at home, may have served when all the fighting had to be done in the western part of Wessex. AEthelstan or Eadmund could not possibly make even half of the men of Devonshire or Essex fight in his battles north of the Humber. The kings therefore had to rely more and more upon their thegns, who in turn had thegns of their own whom they could bring with them; and thus was formed an army ready for military service in any part of the kingdom. A king who could command such an army was even more powerful than one who could command the whole of the forces of a smaller territory.



5. Conversion of the Freemen into Serfs.—It is impossible to give a certain account of the changes which passed over the English freemen, but there can be little doubt that a process had been for some time going on which converted them into bondmen, and that this process was greatly accelerated by the Danish wars. When a district was being plundered the peasant holders of the strips of village land suffered most, and needed the protection of the neighbouring thegn, who was better skilled in war than themselves, and this protection they could only obtain on condition of becoming bondmen themselves—that is to say, of giving certain days in the week to work on the special estate of the lord. A bondman differed both from a slave and from a modern farmer. Though he was bound to the soil and could not go away if he wished to do so, yet he could not be sold as though he were a slave; nor, on the other hand, could he, like a farmer, be turned out of his holding so long as he fulfilled his obligation of cultivating his lord's demesne. The lord was almost invariably a thegn, either of the king or of some superior thegn, and there thus arose in England, as there arose about the same time on the Continent, a chain of personal relationships. The king was no longer merely the head of the whole people. He was the personal lord of his own thegns, and they again were the lords of other thegns. The serfs cultivated their lands, and thereby set them free to fight for the king on behalf of the whole nation. It seems at first sight as if the English people had fallen into a worse condition. An organisation, partly military and partly servile, was substituted for an organisation of free men. Yet only in this way could the whole of England be amalgamated. The nation gained in unity what it lost in freedom.

6. The Hundred-moot and the Lord's Court.—In another way the condition of the peasants was altered for the worse by the growth of the king's power. In former days land was held as 'folkland,' granted by the people at the original conquest, passing to the kinsmen of the holder if he died without children. Afterwards the clergy introduced a system by which the owner could grant the 'bookland,' held by book or charter, setting at nought the claim of his kinsmen, and in order to give validity to the arrangement, obtained the consent of the king and his Witenagemot (see p. 45). In time, the king and the Witenagemot granted charters in other cases, and the new 'bookland' to a great extent superseded the old 'folkland,' accompanied by a grant of the right of holding special courts. In this manner the old hundred-moots became neglected, people seeking for justice in the courts of the lords. Yet those who lived on the lord's land attended his court, appeared as compurgators, and directed the ordeal just as they had once done in the hundred-moot.

7. The Towns.—The towns had grown up in various ways. Some were of old Roman foundation, such as Lincoln and Gloucester. Others, like Nottingham and Bristol, had come into existence since the English settlement. Others again gathered round monasteries, like Bury St. Edmunds and Peterborough. The inhabitants met to consult about their own affairs, sometimes in dependence on a lord. Where there was no lord they held a court which was composed in the same way as the hundred-moots outside. The townsmen had the right of holding a market. Every sale had to take place in the presence of witnesses who could prove, if called upon to do so, that the sale had really taken place, and markets were therefore usually to be found in towns, because it was there that witnesses could most easily be found.

8. The Origin of the Shires.—Shires, which were divisions larger than the hundreds, and smaller than the larger kingdoms, originated in various ways. In the south, and on the east coast as far north as the Wash, they were either old kingdoms like Kent and Essex, or settlements forming part of old kingdoms, as Norfolk (the north folk) formed part of East Anglia, and Dorset or Somerset, the lands of the Dorsaetan or the Somersaetan, formed part of the kingdom of Wessex. In the centre and north they were of more recent origin, and were probably formed as those parts of England were gradually reconquered from the Danes. The fact that most of these shires are named from towns—as Derbyshire from Derby, and Warwickshire from Warwick—shows that they came into existence after towns had become of importance.

9. The Shire-moot.—Whilst the hundred-moot decayed, the folk-moot continued to flourish under a new name, as the shire-moot. This moot was still attended by the freemen of the shire though the thegns were more numerous and the simple freemen less numerous than they had once been. Still the continued existence of the shire-moot kept up the custom of self-government more than anything else in England. The ordeals were witnessed, the weregild inflicted, and rights to land adjudged, not by an officer of the king, but by the landowners of the shire assembled for the purpose. These meetings were ordinarily presided over by the ealdorman, who appeared as the military commander and the official head of the shire, and by the bishop, who represented the Church. Another most important personage was the sheriff, or shire-reeve, whose business it was to see that the king had all his rights, to preside over the shire-moot when it sat as a judicial court, and to take care that its sentences were put in execution.



10. The Ealdormen and the Witenagemot.—During the long fight with the Danes commanders were needed who could lead the forces of more than a single shire. Before the end of Eadred's reign there were ealdormen who ruled over many shires. One of them for instance, AEthelstan, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and of the shires immediately to the west of East Anglia, was so powerful that he was popularly known as the Half-King. Such ealdormen had great influence in their own districts, and they also were very powerful about the king. The king could not perform any important act without the consent of the Witenagemot, which was made up of three classes—the Ealdormen, the Bishops, and the greater Thegns. When a king died the Witenagemot chose his successor out of the kingly family; its members appeared as witnesses whenever the king 'booked' land to any one; and it even, on rare occasions, deposed a king who was unfit for his post. In the days of a great warrior king like Eadward or Eadmund, members of the Witenagemot were but instruments in his hands, but if a weak king came upon the throne, each member usually took his own way and pursued his own interest rather than that of the king and kingdom.

11. The Land.—The cultivated land was surrounded either by wood or by pasture and open commons. Every cottager kept his hive of bees, to produce the honey which was then used as we now use sugar, and drove his swine into the woods to fatten on the acorns and beech nuts which strewed the ground in the autumn. Sheep and cattle were fed on the pastures, and horses were so abundant that when the Danish pirates landed they found it easy to set every man on horseback. Yet neither the Danes nor the English ever learnt to fight on horseback. They rode to battle, but as soon as they approached the enemy they dismounted to fight on foot.

12. Domestic Life.—The huts of the villagers clustered round the house of the lord. His abode was built in a yard surrounded for protection by a mound and fence, whilst very great men often established themselves in burhs, surrounded by earthworks, either of their own raising or the work of earlier times. Its principal feature was the hall, in which the whole family with the guests and the thegns of the lord met for their meals. The walls were covered with curtains worked in patterns of bright colours. The fire was lighted on the hearth, a broad stone in the middle, over which was a hole in the roof through which the smoke of the hall escaped. The windows were narrow, and were either unclosed holes in the wall, or covered with oiled linen which would admit a certain amount of light.



13. Food and Drink.—In a great house at meal-time boards were brought forward and placed on tressels. Bread was to be had in plenty, and salt butter. Meat too, in winter, was always salted, as turnips and other roots upon which cattle are now fed in winter were wholly unknown, and it was therefore necessary to kill large numbers of sheep and oxen when the cold weather set in. There were dishes, but neither plates nor forks. Each man took the meat in his fingers and either bit off a piece or cut it off with a knife. The master of the house sat at the head of the table, and the lady handed round the drink, and afterwards sat down by her husband's side. She, however, with any other ladies who might be present, soon departed to the chamber which was their own apartment. The men continued drinking long. The cups or glasses which they used were often made with the bottoms rounded so as to force the guests to keep them in their hands till they were empty. The usual drink was mead, that is to say, fermented honey, or ale brewed from malt alone, as hops were not introduced till many centuries later. In wealthy houses imported wine was to be had. English wine was not unknown, but it was so sour that it had to be sweetened with honey. It was held to be disgraceful to leave the company as long as the drinking lasted, and drunkenness and quarrels were not unfrequent. Wandering minstrels who could play and sing or tell stories were always welcome, especially if they were jugglers as well, and could amuse the company by throwing knives in the air and catching them as they fell, or could dance on their hands with their legs in the air. When the feast was over, the guests and dependents slept on the floor on rugs or straw, each man taking care to hang his weapons close to his head on the wall, to defend himself in case of an attack by robbers in the night. The lord retired to his chamber, whilst the unmarried ladies occupied bowers, or small rooms, each with a separate door opening on to the yard. Their only beds were bags of straw. Neither men nor women wore night-dresses of any kind, but if they took off their clothes at all, wrapped themselves in rugs.



CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND AND NORMANDY.

LEADING DATES

Death of Eadgar 975 Accession of AEthelred 979 Accession of Cnut 1016 Accession of Eadward the Confessor 1035 Banishment of Godwine 1051 Accession of Harold and Battle of Senlac 1066

1. Eadward the Martyr. 975—979.—Eadgar died in 975, leaving two boys, Eadward and AEthelred.[4] On his death a quarrel broke out amongst the ealdormen, some declaring for the succession of Eadward and others for the succession of AEthelred. The political quarrel was complicated by an ecclesiastical quarrel. The supporters of Eadward were the friends of the secular clergy; the supporters of AEthelred were the friends of the monks. Dunstan, with his usual moderation, gave his voice for the eldest son, and Eadward was chosen king and crowned. Not only had he a strong party opposed to him, but he had a dissatisfied step-mother in AElfthryth, the mother of AEthelred, whilst his own mother, who had probably been married to Eadgar without full marriage rites, had been long since dead. After reigning for four years Eadward was murdered near Corfe by some of the opposite party, and, as was commonly supposed, by his step-mother's directions.

[Footnote 4: Genealogy of the English kings from Eadgar to Eadgar the AEtheling:—

EADGAR 959-975 - EADWARD AETHELRED the Martyr the Unready 975-979 979-1016 - EADMUND EADWARD Ironside the Confessor 1016 1042-1066 Eadward the AEtheling Eadgar the AEtheling]

2. AEthelred's Early Years. 979—988.—AEthelred, now a boy of ten, became king in 979. The epithet the Unready, which is usually assigned to him, is a mistranslation of a word which properly means the Rede-less, or the man without counsel. He was entirely without the qualities which befit a king. Eadmund had kept the great chieftains in subordination to himself because he was a successful leader. Eadgar had kept them in subordination because he treated them with respect. AEthelred could neither lead nor show respect. He was always picking quarrels when he ought to have been making peace, and always making peace when he ought to have been fighting. What he tried to do was to lessen the power of the great ealdormen, and bring the whole country more directly under his own authority. In 985 he drove out AElfric, the Ealdorman of the Mercians. In 988 Dunstan died, and AEthelred had no longer a wise adviser by his side.

3. The Return of the Danes. 984.—It would have been difficult for AEthelred to overpower the ealdormen even if he had had no other enemies to deal with. Unluckily for him, new swarms of Danes and Norwegians had already appeared in England. They began by plundering the country, without attempting to settle in it. In 991 Brihtnoth, Ealdorman of the East Saxons, was defeated and slain by them at Maldon. AEthelred could think of no better counsel than to pay them 10,000l., a sum of money which was then of much greater value than it is now, to abstain from plundering. It was not necessarily a bad thing to do. One of the greatest of the kings of the Germans, Henry the Fowler, had paid money for a truce to barbarians whom he was not strong enough to fight. But when the truce had been bought Henry took care to make himself strong enough to destroy them when they came again. AEthelred was never ready to fight the Danes and Norwegians at any time. In 994 Olaf Trygvasson, who had been driven from the kingship of Norway, and Svend, who had been driven from the kingship of Denmark, joined forces to attack London. The London citizens fought better than the English king, and the two chieftains failed to take the town. 'They went thence, and wrought the greatest evil that ever any army could do, in burning, and harrying, and in man-slaying, as in Essex, and in Kent, and in Sussex, and in Hampshire. And at last they took their horses and rode as far as they could, and did unspeakable evil.' The plunderers were now known as 'the army,' moving about where they would. AEthelred this time gave them 16,000l. He got rid of Olaf, who sailed away and was slain by his enemies, but he could not permanently get rid of Svend. Svend, about the year 1000, recovered his kingship in Denmark, and was more formidable than he had been before. Plunderings went on as usual, and AEthelred had no resource but to pay money to the plunderers to buy a short respite. He then looked across the sea for an ally, and hoped to find one by connecting himself with the Duke of the Normans.

4. The Norman Dukes. 912—1002.—The country which lies on both sides of the lower course of the Seine formed, at the beginning of the tenth century, part of the dominions of Charles the Simple, king of the West Franks, who had inherited so much of the dominions of Charles the Great as lay west of a line roughly drawn from the Scheldt to the Mediterranean through the lower course of the Rhone. Danes and Norwegians, known on the Continent as Normans, plundered Charles's dominions as they had plundered England, and at last settled in them as they had settled in parts of England. In 912 Charles the Simple ceded to their leader, Hrolf, a territory of which the capital was Rouen, and which became known as Normandy—the land of the Normans. Hrolf became the first Duke of the Normans, but his men were fierce and rugged, and for some time their southern neighbours scornfully called him and his descendants Dukes of the Pirates. In process of time a change took place which affected both Normandy and other countries as well. The West Frankish kings were descended from Charles the Great; but they had failed to defend their subjects from the Normans, and they thereby lost hold upon their people. One of their dependent nobles, the Duke of the French, whose chief city, Paris, formed a bulwark against the Normans advancing up the Seine, grew more powerful than themselves. At the same time the Normans were becoming more and more French in their speech and customs. At last an alliance was made between Hugh Capet, the son of Hugh the Great, Duke of the French (see p. 63), and Richard the Fearless, Duke of the Normans. The race of Charles the Great was dethroned, and Hugh became king of the French. In name he was king over all the territory which had been governed by Charles the Simple. In reality that happened in France which AEthelred had been trying to prevent in England. Hugh ruled directly over his own duchy of France, a patch of land of which Paris was the capital. The great vassals of the crown, who answered to the English ealdormen, only obeyed him when it was their interest to do so. The most powerful of these vassals was the Duke of the Normans. In 1002 the duke was Richard II.—the Good—the son of Richard the Fearless. In that year AEthelred, who was a widower, married Richard's sister, Emma. It was the beginning of a connection with Normandy which never ceased till a Norman duke made himself by conquest king of the English.

5. Political Contrast between Normandy and England.—The causes which were making the English thegnhood a military aristocracy acted with still greater force in Normandy. The tillers of the soil, sprung from the old inhabitants of the land, were kept by their Norman lords in even harsher bondage than the English serfs. The Norman warriors held their land by military service, each one being bound to fight for his lord, and the lord in turn being bound, together with his dependents, to fight for a higher lord, and all at last for the Duke himself. In England, though, in theory, the relations between the king and his ealdormen were not very different from those existing between the Norman duke and his immediate vassals, the connection between them was far looser. The kingdom as a whole had no general unity. The king could not control the ealdormen, and the ealdormen could not control the king. Even when ealdormen, bishops, and thegns met in the Witenagemot they could not speak in the name of the nation. A nation in any true sense hardly existed at all, and they were not chosen as representatives of any part of it. Each one stood for himself, and it was only natural that men who during the greater part of the year were ruling in their own districts like little kings should think more of keeping up their own almost independent power at home than of the common interests of all England, which they had to consider when they met—and that for a few days only at a time—in the Witenagemot. AEthelred at least was not the man to keep them united.

6. Svend's Conquest. 1002—1013.—AEthelred, having failed to buy off the Danes, tried to murder them. In 1002, on St. Brice's Day, there was a general massacre of all the Danes—not of the old inhabitants of Danish blood who had settled in AElfred's time—but of the new-comers. Svend returned to avenge his countrymen. AEthelred had in an earlier part of his reign levied a land-tax known as the Danegeld to pay off the Danes—the first instance of a general tax in England. He now called on all the shires to furnish ships for a fleet; but he could not trust his ealdormen. Some of the stories told of these times may be exaggerated, and some may be merely idle tales, but we know enough to be sure that England was a kingdom divided against itself. Svend, ravaging as he went, beat down resistance everywhere. In 1012 the Danes seized AElfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, and offered to set him free if he would pay a ransom for his life. He refused to do so, lest he should have to wring money from the poor in order to pay it. The drunken Danes pelted him with bones till one of the number clave his skull with an axe. He was soon counted as a martyr. Long afterwards one of the most famous of his successors, the Norman Lanfranc, doubted whether he was really a martyr, as he had not died for the faith. 'He that dies for righteousness,' answered the gentle Anselm, 'dies for the faith,' and to this day the name of AElfheah is retained as St. Alphege in the list of English saints. In 1013 Svend appeared no longer as a plunderer but as a conqueror. First the old Danish districts of the north and east, and then the Anglo-Saxon realm of AElfred—Mercia and Wessex—submitted to him to avoid destruction. In 1013 AEthelred fled to Normandy.



7. AEthelred Restored. 1014—1016.—In 1014 Svend died suddenly as he was riding at the head of his troops to the attack of the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds. A legend soon arose as to the manner of his death. St. Edmund himself, the East Anglian king Eadmund who had once been martyred by Danes (see p. 58), now appeared, it was said, to protect the monastery founded in his honour. 'Help, fellow soldiers!' cried Svend, as he caught sight of the saint. 'St. Edmund is coming to slay me.' St. Edmund, we are told, ran his spear through the body of the aggressor, and Svend died that night in torments. His Danish warriors chose his son Cnut king of England.[5] The English Witenagemot sent for AEthelred to return. At last, in 1016, AEthelred died before he had conquered Cnut or Cnut conquered him.

[Footnote 5: Genealogy of the Danish kings:—

Svend (1) AElfgifu = CNUT = (2) Emma 1016-1035 HAROLD HARTHACNUT Harefoot 1040-1042 1035-1040]

8. Eadmund Ironside. 1016.—AEthelred's eldest son—not the son of Emma—Eadmund Ironside, succeeded him. He did all that could be done to restore the English kingship by his vigour. In a single year he fought six battles; but the treachery of the ealdormen was not at an end, and at Assandun (? Ashington), in Essex, he was completely overthrown. He and Cnut agreed to divide the kingdom, but before the end of the year the heroic Eadmund died, and Cnut the Dane became king of England without a rival.

9. Cnut and the Earldoms. 1016—1035.—Cnut was one of those rulers who, like the Emperor Augustus, shrink from no barbarity in gaining power, but when once they have acquired it exercise their authority with moderation and gentleness. He began by outlawing or putting to death men whom he considered dangerous, but when this had once been done he ruled as a thoroughly English king of the best type. The Danes who had hitherto fought for him had come not as settlers, but as an army, and soon after Eadmund's death he sent most of them home, retaining a force, variously stated as 3,000 or 6,000, warriors known as his House-carls (House-men), who formed a small standing army depending entirely on himself. They were not enough to keep down a general rising of the whole of England, but they were quite enough to prevent any single great man from rebelling against him. Cnut therefore was, what AEthelred had wished to be, really master of his kingdom. Under him ruled the ealdormen, who from this time were known as Earls, from the Danish title of Jarl (see p. 64), and of these Earls the principal were the three who governed Mercia, North-humberland, and Wessex, the last named now including the old kingdoms of Kent and Sussex. There was a fourth in East Anglia, but the limits of this earldom varied from time to time, and there were sometimes other earldoms set up in the neighbouring shires, whereas the first-named three remained as they were for some time after Cnut's death. It is characteristic of Cnut that the one of the Earls to whom he gave his greatest confidence was Godwine, an Englishman, who was Earl of the West Saxons. Another Englishman, Leofwine, became Earl of the Mercians. A Dane obtained the earldom of the North-humbrians, but the land was barbarous, and its Earls were frequently murdered. Sometimes there was one Earl of the whole territory, sometimes two. It was not till after the end of Cnut's reign that Siward became Earl of Deira, and at a later time of all North-humberland as far as the Tweed. The descendants of two of these Earls, Godwine and Leofwine, leave their mark on the history for some time to come.

10. Cnut's Empire.—Beyond the Tweed Malcolm, king of the Scots, ruled. He defeated the North-humbrians at Carham, and Cnut ceded Lothian to him, either doing so for the first time or repeating the act of Eadgar, if the story of Eadgar's cession is true. At all events the king of the Scots from this time ruled as far south as the Tweed, and acknowledged Cnut's superiority. Cnut also became king of Denmark by his brother's death, and king of Norway by conquest. He entered into friendly relations with Richard II., Duke of the Normans, by marrying his sister Emma, the widow of AEthelred.[6]

[Footnote 6: Genealogical connection between the Houses of England and Normandy:—

Dukes of Normandy Richard I. the Fearless - Richard II. (1) AETHELREDEmma = (2) CNUT, 1016-1035 the Good the Unready Godwine 979-1016 - Richard III. Robert AElfred EADWARDEadgyth HAROLD the Confessor 1066 WILLIAM 1042-1066 the Conqueror 1066-1087]

11. Cnut's Government.—Cnut had thus made himself master of a great empire, and yet, Dane as he was, though he treated Englishmen and Danes as equals, he gave his special favour to Englishmen. He restored, as men said, the laws of Eadgar—that is to say, he kept peace and restored order as in the days of Eadgar. He reverenced monks, and once as he was rowing on the waters of the fens, he heard the monks of Ely singing. He bade the boatmen row him to the shore that he might listen to the song of praise and prayer. He even went on a pilgrimage to Rome, to humble himself in that city which contained the burial places of the Apostles Peter and Paul. From Rome he sent a letter to his subjects. 'I have vowed to God,' he wrote, 'to live a right life in all things; to rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer just judgment to all. If heretofore I have done aught beyond what is just, through headiness or negligence of youth, I am ready, with God's help, to amend it utterly.' With Cnut these were not mere words. It is not likely that there is any truth in the story how his flattering courtiers told him to sit by the sea-shore and bade the inflowing tide refrain from wetting his feet, and how when the waves rose over the spot on which his chair was placed he refused to wear his crown again, because that honour belonged to God alone, the true Ruler of the world. Yet the story would not have been invented except of one who was believed to have been clothed with real humility.

12. The Sons of Cnut. 1035—1042.—Cnut died in 1035. Godwine and the West Saxons chose Harthacnut, the son of Cnut and Emma to take his father's place, whilst the north and centre, headed by Leofwine's son, Leofric,[7] Earl of the Mercians, chose Harold, the son of Cnut by an earlier wife or concubine. Godwine perhaps hoped that Harthacnut would make the West Saxon earldom the centre of the empire which had been his father's. Cnut's empire was, however, breaking up. The Norwegians chose Magnus, a king of their own race, and Harthacnut remained in Denmark to defend it against the attacks of Magnus. In Normandy there were two English Ethelings, AElfred and Eadward, the sons of AEthelred by Emma, who seem to have thought that the absence of Harthacnut gave them a chance of returning to England. AElfred landed, but was seized by Harold. He was blinded with such cruelty that he died. His death was, truly or falsely, attributed to Godwine. As Harthacnut still remained in Denmark, the West Saxons deposed him and gave themselves to Harold, since which time England has never been divided. In 1040 Harold died, and Harthacnut came at last to England to claim the crown. He brought with him a Danish fleet, and with his sailors and his house-carls he ruled England as a conquered land. He raised a Danegeld to satisfy his men, and sent his house-carls to force the people to pay the heavy tax. Two of them were killed at Worcester, and he burnt Worcester to the ground. In 1042 he died 'as he stood at his drink' at a bridal.

[Footnote 7: Genealogy of the Mercian earls:—

Leofwine Leofric AElfgar - Eadwine, Morkere, Earl of Mercia Earl of North-humberland]



13. Eadward the Confessor and Earl Godwine. 1042—1051.—The English were tired of foreign rulers. 'All folk chose Eadward king.' Eadward, the son of AEthelred and the brother of the murdered AElfred, though an Englishman on his father's side, was also the son of the Norman Emma, and had been brought up in Normandy from his childhood. The Normans were now men of French speech, and they were more polite and cultivated than Englishmen. Eadward filled his court with Normans. He disliked the roughness of the English, but instead of attempting to improve them as the great AElfred had formerly done, he stood entirely aloof from them. The name of the Confessor by which he was afterwards known was given him on account of his piety, but his piety was not of that sort which is associated with active usefulness. He was fond of hunting, but was not active in any other way, and he left others to govern rather than himself. For some years the real governor of England was Earl Godwine, who kept his own earldom of Wessex, and managed to procure other smaller earldoms for his sons. As the Mercia over which Leofric ruled was only the north-western part of the old kingdom, and as Siward (see p. 84) had enough to do to keep the fierce men of North-humberland in order, Godwine had as yet no competitor to fear. In 1045 he became the king's father-in-law by the marriage of Eadward with his daughter, Eadgyth. Eadward, however, did his best for his Norman favourites, and appointed one of them, Robert of Jumieges, to the bishopric of London, and afterwards raised him to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. Between Godwine and the Normans there was no goodwill, and though Godwine was himself of fair repute, his eldest son, Swegen, a young man of brutal nature, alienated the goodwill of his countrymen by seducing the Abbess of Leominster, and by murdering his cousin Beorn. Godwine, in his blind family affection, clung to his wicked son and insisted on his being allowed to retain his earldom.



14. The Banishment of Godwine. 1051.—At last, in 1051, the strife between the king and the Earl broke out openly. Eadward's brother-in-law, Eustace, Count of Boulogne, visited England. On his return his men made a disturbance at Dover, and in the riot which ensued some of the townsmen as well as some of his own men were slain. Eadward called on Godwine, in whose earldom Dover was, to punish the townsmen. Godwine refused, and Eadward summoned him to Gloucester to account for his refusal. He came attended by an armed host, but Leofric and Siward, who were jealous of Godwine's power, came with their armed followers to support the king. Leofric mediated, and it was arranged that the question should be settled at a Witenagemot to be held in London. In the end Godwine was outlawed and banished with all his family. Swegen went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and died on the way back.

15. Visit of Duke William. 1051.—In Godwine's absence Eadward received a visit from the Duke of the Normans, William, the bastard son of Duke Robert and the daughter of a tanner of Falaise. Robert was a son of Richard II., and William was thus the grandson of the brother of Eadward's mother, Emma. Such a relationship gave him no title whatever to the English throne, as Emma was not descended from the English kings, and as, even if she had been, no one could be lawfully king in England who was not chosen by the Witenagemot. Eadward, however, had no children or brothers, and though he had no right to give away the crown, he now promised William that he should succeed him. William, indeed, was just the man to attract one whose character was as weak as Eadward's. Since he received the dukedom he had beaten down the opposition of a fierce and discontented nobility at Val-es-dunes (1047). From that day peace and order prevailed in Normandy. Law in Normandy did not come as in England from the traditions of the shire-moot or the Witenagemot, where men met to consult together. It was the Duke's law, and if the Duke was a strong man he kept peace in the land. If he was a weak man, the lords fought against one another and plundered and oppressed the poor. William was strong and wily, and it was this combination of strength and wiliness which enabled him to bear down all opposition.

16. William and the Norman Church.—An Englishman, who saw much of William in after-life, declared that, severe as he was, he was mild to good men who loved God. The Church was in his days assuming a new place in Europe. The monastic revival which had originated at Cluny (see p. 67) had led to a revival of the Papacy. In 1049, for the first time, a Pope, Leo IX., travelled through Western Europe, holding councils and inflicting punishments upon the married clergy and upon priests who took arms and shed blood. With this improvement in discipline came a voluntary turning of the better clergy to an ascetic life, and increased devotion was accompanied, as it always was in the middle ages, with an increase of learning. William, who by the strength of his will brought peace into the state, also brought men of devotion and learning into the high places of the Church. His chief confidant was Lanfranc, an Italian who had taken refuge in the abbey of Bec, and, having become its prior, had made it the central school of Normandy and the parts around. With the improvement of learning came the improvement of art, and churches arose in Normandy, as in other parts of Western Europe, which still preserved the old round arch derived from the Romans, though both the arches themselves and the columns on which they were borne were lighter and more graceful than the heavy work which had hitherto been employed. Of all this Englishmen as yet knew nothing. They went on in their old ways, cut off from the European influences of the time. It was no wonder that Eadward yearned after the splendour and the culture of the land in which he had been brought up, or even that, in defiance of English law, he now promised to Duke William the succession to the English crown.

17. The Return and Death of Godwine. 1052—1053.—After William had departed Englishmen became discontented at Eadward's increasing favour to the Norman strangers. In 1052 Godwine and his sons—Swegen only excepted—returned from exile. They sailed up the Thames and landed at Southwark. The foreigners hastily fled, and Eadward was unable to resist the popular feeling. Godwine was restored to his earldom, and an Englishman, Stigand, was made Archbishop of Canterbury in the place of Robert of Jumieges, who escaped to the Continent. As it was the law of the Church that a bishop once appointed could not be deposed except by the ecclesiastical authorities, offence was in this way given to the Pope. Godwine did not long outlive his restoration. He was struck down by apoplexy at the king's table in 1053. Harold, who, after Swegen's death, was his eldest son, succeeded to his earldom of Wessex, and practically managed the affairs of the kingdom in Eadward's name.[8]

[Footnote 8: Genealogy of the family of Godwine:—

Godwine - - - - Swegen HAROLD Tostig Leofwine Gyrth Wulfnoth Eadgyth = Eadward 1066 the Confessor]

18. Harold's Greatness. 1053—1066.—Harold was a brave and energetic man, but Eadward preferred his brother Tostig, and on the death of Siward appointed him Earl of North-humberland. A little later Gyrth, another brother of Harold, became Earl of East Anglia, together with Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire, and a fourth brother, Leofwine, Earl of a district formed of the eastern shires on either side of the Thames. All the richest and most thickly populated part of England was governed by Harold and his brothers. Mercia was the only large earldom not under their rule. It was now under AElfgar, the son of Leofric, who had lately died.

19. Harold and Eadward. 1057—1065.—It became necessary to arrange for the succession to the throne, as Eadward was childless, and as Englishmen were not likely to acquiesce in his bequest to William. In 1057 the AEtheling Eadward, a son of Eadmund Ironside, was fetched back from Hungary, where he had long lived in exile, and was accepted as the heir. Eadward, however, died almost immediately after his arrival. He left but one son, Eadgar the AEtheling (see genealogy at p. 78), who was far too young to be accepted as a king for many years to come. Naturally the thought arose of looking on Harold as Eadward's successor. It was contrary to all custom to give the throne to any one not of the royal line, but the custom had been necessarily broken in favour of Cnut, the Danish conqueror, and it might be better to break it in favour of an English earl rather than to place a child on the throne, when danger threatened from Normandy. During the remainder of Eadward's reign Harold showed himself a warrior worthy of the crown. In 1063 he invaded Wales and reduced it to submission. About the same time AElfgar died, and was succeeded by his son, Eadwine, in the earldom of the Mercians. In 1065 the men of North-humberland revolted against Tostig, who had governed them harshly, and who was probably unpopular as a West Saxon amongst a population of Danes and Angles. The North-humbrians chose Eadwine's brother, Morkere, as his successor, and Harold advised Eadward to acquiesce in what they had done. Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire were committed to Waltheof, a son of Siward (see p. 84), and the modern Northumberland was committed to a native ruler, Oswulf.

20. Death of Eadward. 1066.—England was therefore ruled by two great families. Eadwine and Morkere, the grandsons of Leofric, governed the Midlands and almost the whole of North-humberland. Harold and his brothers, the sons of Godwine, governed the south and the east. The two houses had long been rivals, and after Eadward's death there would be no one in the country to whom they could even nominally submit. Eadward, whose life was almost at an end, was filled with gloomy forebodings. His thoughts, however, turned aside from the contemplation of earthly things, and he was only anxious that the great abbey church of Westminster, which he had been building hard by his own new palace on what was then a lonely place outside London, should be consecrated before his death. The church, afterwards superseded by the structure which now stands there, was built in the new and lighter form of round-arched architecture which Eadward had learned to admire from his Norman friends. It was consecrated on December 28, 1065, but the king was too ill to be present, and on January 5, 1066, he died, and was buried in the church which he had founded. Harold was at once chosen king, and crowned at Westminster.



21. Harold and William. 1066.—William, as soon as he heard of his rival's coronation, claimed the crown. He was now even mightier than he had been when he visited Eadward. In 1063 he had conquered Maine, and, secure on his southern frontier, he was able to turn his undivided attention to England. According to the principles accepted in England, he had no right to it whatever; but he contrived to put together a good many reasons which seemed, in the eyes of those who were not Englishmen, to give him a good case. In the first place he had been selected by Eadward as his heir. In the second place the deprivation of Robert of Jumieges was an offence against the Church law of the Continent, and William was therefore able to obtain from the Pope a consecrated banner, and to speak of an attack upon England as an attempt to uphold the righteous laws of the Church. In the third place, Harold had at some former time been wrecked upon the French coast, and had been delivered up to William, who had refused to let him go till he had sworn solemnly, placing his hand on a chest which contained the relics of the most holy Norman saints, to do some act, the nature of which is diversely related, but which Harold never did. Consequently William could speak of himself as going to take vengeance on a perjurer. With some difficulty William persuaded the Norman barons to follow him, and he attracted a mixed multitude of adventurers from all the neighbouring nations by promising them the plunder of England, an argument which every one could understand. During the whole of the spring and the summer ships for the invasion of England were being built in the Norman harbours.



22. Stamford Bridge. 1066.—All through the summer Harold was watching for his rival's coming. The military organisation of England, however, was inferior to that of Normandy. The Norman barons and their vassals were always ready for war, and they could support on their estates the foreign adventurers who were placed under their orders till the time of battle came. Harold had his house-carls, the constant guard of picked troops which had been instituted by Cnut, and his thegns, who, like the Norman barons, were bound to serve their lord in war. The greater part of his force, however, was composed of the peasants of the fyrd, and when September came they must needs be sent home to attend to their harvest, which seems to have been late this year. Scarcely were they gone when Harold received news that his brother Tostig, angry with him for having consented to his deposition from the North-humbrian earldom, had allied himself to Harold Hardrada, the fierce sea-rover, who was king of Norway, and that the two, with a mighty host, after wasting the Yorkshire coast, had sailed up the Humber. The two Northern Earls, Eadwine and Morkere, were hard pressed. Harold had not long before married their sister, and, whatever might be the risk, he was bound as the king of all England to aid them. Marching swiftly northwards with his house-carls and the thegns who joined him on the way, he hastened to their succour. On the way worse tidings reached him. The Earls had been defeated, and York had agreed to submit to the Norsemen. Harold hurried on the faster, and came upon the invaders unawares as they lay heedlessly on both sides of the Derwent at Stamford Bridge. Those on the western side, unprepared as they were, were soon overpowered. One brave Norseman, like Horatius and his comrades in the Roman legend, kept the narrow bridge against the army, till an Englishman crept under it and stabbed him from below through a gap in the woodwork. The battle rolled across the Derwent, and when evening came Harold Hardrada, and Tostig himself, with the bulk of the invaders, had been slain. For the last time an English king overthrew a foreign host in battle on English soil.



23. The Landing of William. 1066.—Harold had shown what an English king could do, who fought not for this or that part of the country, but for all England. It was the lack of this national spirit in Englishmen which caused his ruin. As Harold was feasting at York in celebration of his victory, a messenger told him of the landing of the Norman host at Pevensey. He had saved Eadwine and Morkere from destruction, but Eadwine and Morkere gave him no help in return. He had to hurry back to defend Sussex without a single man from the north or the Midlands, except those whom he collected on his line of march. The House of Leofric bore no goodwill to the House of Godwine. England was a kingdom divided against itself.



24. The Battle of Senlac. 1066.—Harold, as soon as he reached the point of danger, drew up his army on the long hill of Senlac on which Battle Abbey now stands. On October 14 William marched forth to attack him. The military equipment of the Normans was better than that of the English. Where the weapons on either side are unlike, battles are decided by the momentum—that is to say, by the combined weight and speed of the weapons employed. The English fought on foot mostly with two-handed axes; the Normans fought not only on horseback with lances, but also with infantry, some of them being archers. A horse, the principal weapon of a horseman, has more momentum than an armed footman, whilst an arrow can reach the object at which it is aimed long before a horse. Harold, however, had in his favour the slope of the hill up which the Normans would have to ride, and he took advantage of the lie of the ground by posting his men with their shields before them on the edge of the hill. The position was a strong one for purposes of defence, but it was not one that made it easy for Harold to change his arrangements as the fortunes of the day might need. William, on the other hand, had not only a better armed force, but a more flexible one. He had to attack, and, versed as he was in all the operations of war, he could move his men from place to place and make use of each opportunity as it arrived. The English were brave enough, but William was a more intelligent leader than Harold, and his men were better under control. Twice after the battle had begun the Norman horsemen charged up the hill only to be driven back. The wily William, finding that the hill was not to be stormed by a direct attack, met the difficulty by galling the English with a shower of arrows and ordering his left wing to turn and fly. The stratagem was successful. Some of the English rushed down the hill in pursuit. The fugitives faced round and charged the pursuers, following them up the slope. The English on the height were thus thrown into confusion; but they held out stoutly, and as the Norman horsemen now in occupation of one end of the hill charged fiercely along its crest, they locked their shields together and fought desperately for life, if no longer for victory. Slowly and steadily the Normans pressed on, till they reached the spot where Harold, surrounded by his house-carls, fought beneath his standard. There all their attacks were in vain, till William, calling for his bowmen, bade them shoot their arrows into the air. Down came the arrows in showers upon the heads of the English warriors, and one of them pierced Harold's eye, stretching him lifeless on the ground. In a series of representations in worsted work, known as the Bayeux Tapestry, which was wrought by the needle of some unknown woman and is now exhibited in the museum of that city, the scenes of the battle and the events preceding it are pictorially recorded.



25. William's Coronation. 1066.—William had destroyed both the English king and the English army. It is possible that England, if united, might still have resisted. The great men at London chose for their king Eadgar the AEtheling, the grandson of Eadmund Ironside. Eadwine and Morkere were present at the election, but left London as soon as it was over. They would look after their own earldoms; they would not join others, as Harold had done, in defending England as a whole. Divided England would sooner or later be a prey to William. He wanted, however, not merely to reign as a conqueror, but to be lawfully elected as king, that he might have on his side law as well as force. He first struck terror into Kent and Sussex by ravaging the lands of all who held out against him. Then he marched to the Thames and burnt Southwark. He did not, however, try to force his way into London, as he wanted to induce the citizens to submit voluntarily to him, or at least in a way which might seem voluntary. He therefore marched westwards, crossed the Thames at Wallingford, and wheeled round to Berkhampstead. His presence there made the Londoners feel utterly isolated. Even if Eadwine and Morkere wished to do anything for them, they could not come from the north or north-west without meeting William's victorious army. The great men and citizens alike gave up all thought of resistance, abandoned Eadgar, and promised to take William for their king. On Christmas Day, 1066, William was chosen with acclamation in Eadward's abbey at Westminster, where Harold had been chosen less than a year before. The Normans outside mistook the shouts of applause for a tumult against their Duke, and set fire to the houses around. The English rushed out to save their property, and William, frightened for the only time in his life, was left alone with the priests. Not knowing what was next to follow, he was crowned king of the English by Ealdred, Archbishop of York, in an empty church, amidst the crackling of flames and the shouts of men striving for the mastery.



Books recommended for further study of Part I.

DAWKINS, W. Boyd. Early Man in Britain.

RHYS, J. Early Britain.

ELTON, C. J. Origins of English History.

GUEST, E. Origines Celticae. Vol. ii. pp. 121-408.

FREEMAN. History of the Norman Conquest. Vols. i.-iii.

GREEN, J. R. The Making of England.

—— The Conquest of England.

—— History of the English People. Vol. i. pp. 1-114.

BRIGHT, W. Chapters of English Church History.

STUBBS, W. The Constitutional History of England. Chaps. I.-IX.

CUNNINGHAM, W. The Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages. pp. 1-128.

HODGKIN, T. The Political History of England. Vol i. From the Earliest Times to 1066.



PART II.

THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS.



CHAPTER VII.

WILLIAM I. 1066—1087.

LEADING DATES

William's coronation 1066 Completion of the Conquest 1070 The rising of the Earls 1075 The Gemot at Salisbury 1086 Death of William I. 1087



1. The First Months of the Conquest. 1066—1067.—Though at the time when William was crowned he had gained actual possession of no more than the south-eastern part of England, he claimed a right to rule the whole as lawful king of the English, not merely by Eadward's bequest, but by election and coronation. In reality, he came as a conqueror, whilst the Normans by whose aid he gained the victory at Senlac left their homes not merely to turn their Duke into a king, but also to acquire lands and wealth for themselves. William could not act justly and kindly to his new subjects even if he wished. What he did was to clothe real violence with the appearance of law. He gave out that as he had been the lawful king of the English ever since Eadward's death, Harold and all who fought under him at Senlac had forfeited their lands by their treason to himself as their lawful king. These lands he distributed amongst his Normans. The English indeed were not entirely dispossessed. Sometimes the son of a warrior who had been slain was allowed to retain a small portion of his father's land. Sometimes the daughter or the widow of one of Harold's comrades was compelled to marry a Norman whom William wished to favour. Yet, for all that, a vast number of estates in the southern and eastern counties passed from English into Norman hands. The bulk of the population, the serfs—or, as they were now called by a Norman name, the villeins—were not affected by the change, except so far as they found a foreign lord less willing than a native one to hearken to their complaints. The changes which took place were limited as yet to a small part of England. In three months after his coronation William was still without authority beyond an irregular line running from the Wash to the western border of Hampshire, except that he held some outlying posts in Herefordshire. It is true that Eadwine and Morkere had acknowledged him as king, but they were still practically independent. Even where William actually ruled he allowed all Englishmen who had not fought on Harold's side to keep their lands, though he made them redeem them by the payment of a fine, on the principle that all lands in the country, except those of the Church, were the king's lands, and that it was right to fine those who had not come to Senlac to help him as their proper lord.

2. The Conquest of the West and North. 1067—1069.—In March 1067 William returned to Normandy. In his absence the Normans left behind in England oppressed the English, and were supported in their oppression by the two regents appointed to govern in William's name, his half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, whom he had made Earl of Kent, and William Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford. In some parts the English rose in rebellion. In December William returned, and after putting down resistance in the south-eastern counties, set himself to conquer the rest of England. It took him more than two years to complete his task. Perhaps he would have failed even then if the whole of the unconquered part of the country had risen against him at the same time. Each district, however, resisted separately, and he was strong enough to beat them down one by one. In the spring of 1068 he besieged and took Exeter, and subdued the West to the Land's End. When this had been accomplished he turned northwards against Eadwine and Morkere, who had declared against him. William soon frightened them into submission, and seized on York and all the country to the south of York on the eastern side of England. In 1069 the English of the North rose once more and summoned to their aid Svend, king of Denmark, a nephew of the great Cnut. Svend sent a Danish fleet, and the Danes were joined by Eadgar the AEtheling and by other English chiefs. They burnt and plundered York, but could do no more. Their great host melted away. The Danes went off with their booty to their ships, and the English returned to their homes. William found no army to oppose him, and he not only regained the lands which he had occupied the year before, but added to them the whole country up to the Tweed.

3. The Completion of the Conquest. 1070.—William was never cruel without an object, but there was no cruelty which he would not commit if it would serve his purpose. He resolved to make all further resistance impossible. The Vale of York, a long and wide stretch of fertile ground running northwards from the city to the Tees, was laid waste by William's orders. The men who had joined in the revolt were slain. The stored-up crops, the ploughs, the carts, the oxen and sheep were destroyed by fire. Men, women, and children dropped dead of starvation, and their corpses lay unburied in the wasted fields. Some prolonged life by feeding on the flesh of horses, or even of men. Others sold themselves into slavery, bowing their heads, as was said, in the evil days for meat. "Waste! waste! waste!" was the account given long afterwards of field after field in what had once been one of the most fertile districts in England. William's work of conquest was almost over. Early in 1070 he crossed the hills amidst frost and snow, and descended upon Chester. Chester submitted, and with it the shires on the Welsh border. The whole of England was at last subdued.

4. Hereward's Revolt and the Homage of Malcolm. 1070—1072.—Only one serious attempt to revolt was afterwards made, but this was no more than a local rising. The Isle of Ely was in those days a real island in the midst of the waters of the fens. Hereward, with a band of followers, threw himself into the island, and it was only after a year's attack that he was driven out. When the revolt was at its height, Eadwine and Morkere fled from William's court to join the insurgents. Eadwine was murdered by his own attendants. Morkere reached Ely, and when resistance was at an end was banished to Normandy. No man ever deserved less pity than these two brothers. They had never sought any one's advantage but their own, and they had been faithless to every cause which they had pretended to adopt. Before Hereward was overpowered, Malcolm, king of the Scots, ravaged northern England, carrying off with him droves of English slaves. In 1072 William, who had by that time subdued Hereward, marched into Scotland as far as the Tay. Malcolm submitted to him at Abernethy, and acknowledged him to be his lord. Malcolm's acknowledgment was only a repetition of the acknowledgment made by his predecessors the Scottish kings, to Eadward and Cnut (see pp. 63, 84); but William was more powerful than Eadward or Cnut had been, and was likely to construe the obligation more strictly.

5. How William kept down the English.—William, having conquered England, had now to govern it. His first object was to keep the English in subjection.

(a) The Confiscation of Land.—In the first place he continued to treat all who had resisted him as rebels, confiscating their land and giving it to some Norman follower. In almost every district there was at least one Norman landowner, who was on the watch against any attempt of his English neighbours to revolt, and who knew that he would lose his land if William lost his crown.

(b) Building Castles.—In the second place William built a castle in every town of importance, which he garrisoned with his own men. The most notable example of these castles is the Tower of London.

(c) The Feudal Army.—In the third place, though the diffusion of Norman landowners and of William's castles made a general revolt of the English difficult, it did not make it impossible, and William took care to have an army always ready to put down a revolt if it occurred. No king in those days could have a constantly paid army, such as exists in all European countries at the present day, because there was not much money anywhere. Some men had land and some men had bodily strength, and they bartered one for the other. The villein gave his strength to plough and reap for his lord, in return for the land which he held from him. The fighting man gave his strength to his lord, to serve him with his horse and his spear, in return for the land which he held from him. This system, which is known as feudal, had been growing up in England before the Conquest, but it was perfected on the Continent, and William brought it with him in its perfected shape. The warrior who served on horseback was called a knight, and when a knight received land from a lord on military tenure—that is to say, on condition of military service—he was called the vassal of his lord. When he became a vassal he knelt, and, placing his hands between those of his lord, swore to be his man. This act was called doing homage. The land which he received as sufficient to maintain him was called a knight's fee. After this homage the vassal was bound to serve his lord in arms, this service being the rent payable for his land. If the vassal broke his oath and fought against his lord, he was regarded as a traitor, or a betrayer of his trust, and could be turned out of his land. The whole land of England being regarded as the king's, all land was held from the king. Sometimes the knights held their fees directly from the king and did homage to him. These knights were known as tenants in chief (in capite), however small their estates might be. Usually, however, the tenants in chief were large landowners, to whom the king had granted vast estates; and these when they did homage engaged not merely to fight for him in person, but to bring some hundreds of knights with them. To enable them to do this they had to give out portions of their land to sub-tenants, each engaging to bring himself and a specified number of knights. There might thus be a regular chain of sub-tenants, A engaging to serve under B, B under C, C under D, and so on till the tenant-in-chief was reached, who engaged to bring them all to serve the king. Almost all the larger tenants-in-chief were Normans, though Englishmen were still to be found amongst the sub-tenants, and even amongst the smaller tenants-in-chief. The whole body, however, was preponderantly Norman, and William could therefore depend upon it to serve him as an army in the field in case of an English rising.

6. How William kept down the Normans.—William was not afraid only of the English. He had cause to fear lest the feudal army, which was to keep down the English, might be strong enough to be turned against himself, and that the barons—as the greater tenants-in-chief were usually called—might set him at naught as Eadwine and Morkere had set Harold at naught, and as the Dukes of Normandy had set at naught the kings of France. To prevent this he adopted various contrivances.

(a) Abolition of the great Earldoms.—In the first place he abolished the great earldoms. In most counties there were to be no earls at all, and no one was to be earl of more than one county. There was never again to be an Earl of the West Saxons like Godwine, or an Earl of the Mercians like Leofric.

(b) The Estates of the Barons scattered.—- Not only did William diminish the official authority of the earls, he also weakened the territorial authority of the barons. Even when he granted to one man estates so numerous that if they had been close together they would have extended at least over a whole county, he took care to scatter them over England, allowing only a few to be held by a single owner in any one county. If, therefore, a great baron took it into his head to levy war against the king, he would have to collect his vassals from the most distant counties, and his intentions would thus be known before they could be put in practice.

(c) The Fyrd kept in readiness.—Still more important was William's resolution to be the real head of the English nation. He had weakened it enough to fear it no longer, but he kept it strong enough to use it, if need came, against the Norman barons. He won Englishmen to his side by the knowledge that he was ready to do them justice whenever they were wronged, and he could therefore venture to summon the fyrd whenever he needed support, without having cause to fear that it would turn against him.

7. Ecclesiastical Organisation.—Before the Conquest the English Church had been altogether national. Its bishops had sat side by side with the ealdormen or earls in the shire-moots, and in the Witenagemot itself. They had been named, like the ealdormen or earls, by the king with the consent of the Witenagemot. Ecclesiastical questions had been decided and ecclesiastical offences punished not by any special ecclesiastical court, but by the shire-moot or Witenagemot, in which the laity and the clergy were both to be found. William resolved to change all this. The bishops and abbots whom he found were Englishmen, and he replaced most of them by Normans. The new Norman bishops and abbots were dependent on the king. They looked on the English as barbarians, and would certainly not support them in any revolt, as their English predecessors might have done. Thurstan, indeed, the Norman Abbot of Glastonbury, was so angry with his English monks because they refused to change their style of music that he called in Norman archers to shoot them down on the steps of the altar. Such brutality, however, was exceptional, and, as a rule, even Norman bishops and abbots were well disposed towards their English neighbours, all the more because they were not very friendly with the Norman nobles, who often attempted to encroach on the lands of the Church. Many a king in William's position would have been content to fill the sees with creatures of his own, who would have done what they were bidden and have thought of no one's interest but his. William knew, as he had already shown in Normandy, that he would be far better served if the clergy were not only dependent on himself but deserving the respect of others. He made his old friend Lanfranc (see p. 88) Archbishop of Canterbury. Lanfranc had, like William, the mind of a ruler, and under him bishops and abbots were appointed who enforced discipline. The monks were compelled to keep the rules of their order, the canons of cathedrals were forced to send away their wives, and though the married clergy in the country were allowed to keep theirs, orders were given that in future no priest should marry. Everywhere the Church gave signs of new vigour. The monasteries became again the seats of study and learning. The sees of bishops were transferred from villages to populous towns, as when the Bishop of Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, migrated to Lincoln, and the Bishop of Thetford to Norwich. New churches were built and old ones restored after the new Continental style, which is known in England as Norman, and which Eadward had introduced in his abbey of Westminster. The Church, though made dependent on William, was independent, so far as its spiritual rights were concerned, of the civil courts. Ecclesiastical matters were discussed, not in the Witenagemot, but in a Church synod, and, in course of time, punishments were inflicted by Church courts on ecclesiastical offenders. The power of William was strengthened by the change. That power rested on three supports—the Norman conquerors, the English nation, and the Church, and each one of these three had reason to distrust the other two.



8. Pope Gregory VII.—The strength which William had acquired showed itself in his bearing towards the Pope. In 1073 Archdeacon Hildebrand, who for some years had been more powerful at Rome than the Popes themselves, himself became Pope under the name of Gregory VII. Gregory was as stern a ruler of the Church as William was of the State. He was an uncompromising champion of the Cluniac reforms (see p. 67). His object was to moderate the cruelty and sinfulness of the feudal warriors of Europe by making the Church a light to guide the world to piety and self-denial. As matters stood on the Continent, it had been impossible for the Church to attain to so high a standard. The clergy bought their places and fought and killed like the laymen around them. The Cluniac monks, therefore, thought it best to separate the clergy entirely from the world. In the first place they were to be celibate, that they might not be entangled in the cares of life. In the second place they were to refrain from simony, or the purchase of ecclesiastical preferment, that they might not be dependent on the great men of the world. A third demand was added later, that bishops and abbots should not receive from laymen the ring and staff which were the signs of their authority—the ring as the symbol of marriage to their churches; the staff or crozier, in the shape of a shepherd's crook, as the symbol of their pastoral authority. The Church, in fact, was to be governed by its own laws in perfect independence, that it might become more pure itself, and thus capable of setting a better example to the laity. As might have been expected, though the internal condition of the Church was greatly improved, yet when Gregory attempted entirely to free ecclesiastics from the influence and authority of the State, he found himself involved in endless quarrels. Clergy and laity alike resisted him, and they were supported by the Emperor Henry IV., whose rule extended over Germany and the greater part of Italy. Gregory next claimed the right of excommunicating kings and emperors, and of deposing them if they did not repent after excommunication. The State, he declared, was as the moon, receiving light from the Church, which shone like the sun in heaven. The whole of the remainder of Gregory's life was spent in a struggle with the Emperor, and the struggle was carried on by the successors of both.



9. William and Gregory VII.—It is remarkable that such a Pope as Gregory never came into conflict with William. William appointed bishops and abbots by giving them investiture, as the presenting of the ring and staff was called. He declared that no Pope should be obeyed in England who was not acknowledged by himself, that no papal bulls or letters should have any force till he had allowed them, and that the decrees of an ecclesiastical synod should bind no one till he had confirmed them. When, at a later time, Gregory required William to do homage to the see of Rome, William refused, on the ground that homage had never been rendered by his predecessors. To all this Gregory submitted. No doubt Gregory was prudent in not provoking William's anger; but that he should have refrained from even finding fault with William may perhaps be set down to the credit of his honesty. He claimed to make himself the master of kings because as a rule they did not care to advance the purity of the Church. William did care to advance it. He chose virtuous and learned bishops, and defended the clergy against aggression from without and corruption within. Gregory may well have been content to leave power over the Church in the hands of a king who ruled it in such a fashion.

10. The Rising of the Earls. 1075.—Of the three classes of men over which William ruled, the great Norman barons imagined themselves to be the strongest, and were most inclined to throw off his yoke. The chief feature of the reigns of William and of his successors for three generations was the struggle which scarcely ever ceased between the Norman barons on the one side, and the king supported by the English and the clergy on the other. It was to the advantage of the king that he had not to contend against the whole of the Normans. Normans with small estates clung for support, like their English neighbours, to the crown. The first of many risings of the barons took place in 1075. Roger, Earl of Hereford, in spite of William's prohibition, gave his sister in marriage to Ralph of Wader, Earl of Norfolk, who, though of English birth on his father's side, had fought for William at Senlac, and may practically be counted as a Norman. As the chronicler expressed it:

There was that bride-ale To many men's bale.

The two earls plotted a rising against William and the revivals of the old independent earldoms. They took arms and were beaten. Ralph fled the country, and Roger was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. His followers were blinded or had their feet cut off. It was the Norman custom not to put criminals to death. To this rule, however, William made one exception. Waltheof, the last earl of purely English race, had been present at the fatal bride-ale, but though he had listened to the plottings of the conspirators, he had revealed all that he knew to William. His wife, Judith, a niece of the Conqueror, accused him of actual treason, and he was beheaded at Winchester. By the English he was regarded as a martyr, and it was probably his popularity amongst them which made William resolve upon his death.

11. The New Forest.—Only once did William cause misery amongst his subjects for the sake of his own enjoyment. Many kings before him had taken pleasure in hunting, but William was the first who claimed the right of hunting over large tracts of country exclusively for himself. He made, as the chronicler says, 'mickle deer-frith'—a tract, that is to say, in which the deer might have peace—'and laid laws therewith that he who slew hart or hind that man should blind him.... In sooth he loved the high deer as though he were their father.' He forbade, in short, all men, except those to whom he gave permission, to hunt within the limits of the royal forests. In the south-west of Hampshire, near his favourite abode at Winchester, he enlarged the New Forest. The soil is poor, and it can never have been covered by cultivated fields, but here and there, by the sides of streams, there were scattered hamlets, and these were destroyed and the dwellers in them driven off by William's orders, that there might be a 'mickle deer-frith.' We may be sure that there was not nearly as much misery caused by the making of the New Forest as was caused by the harrying of the Vale of York, but popular tradition rightly held in more abhorrence the lesser cruelty for the sake of pleasure than the greater cruelty for the sake of policy. It told how the New Forest was accursed for William's family. In his own lifetime a son and a grandson of his were cut off within it by unknown hands, probably falling before the vengeance of some who had lost home and substance through the creation of the Forest, and in due time another son, who succeeded him on the throne, was to meet with a similar fate.