WILLIAM GKOKOh'S SONS,
L.
'
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
THE
MAKING OF ENGLAND
JOHN RICHARD JSREEN, M.A., LL.D.
HONORARY FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD
IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II
WITH MAPS
Eontion
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 1904
A II right i reserved
\J-3_
/<Vr.r£ Edition, i no/., Z)«;y 8z»tf, January i88a Second Edition, December 1882
Third Edition, 1885
Fourth Edition (Eversley Series), 2 zW.1., G/o/k 8z/<?, 1897 Reprinted 1900, 1904
CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
THE NOKTHUMBRIAX SUPREMACY
617-659
A.D.
PAGE
617-633. Eadwine established as king of Northumbria . . 1
The kingdom of Elmet 4
Eadwine's conquest of Elmet ..... 7 His power at sea, and conquests of Anglebua ami Mali 9 He establishes his supremacy over Mid-Britain . . 9
626. His victory over the West-Saxons .... 11 Eadwine supreme over all the English save Kent . 11 Character of his rule over Northumbria . . .11 He is pressed by his Kentish wife to become a Christian 14
627. The Northumbrian Witan accept Christianity . . 15 The new faith rejected in East-Anglia . . .17 Rising of the Mercians . . . . . .17
626-655. Penda king of the Mercian.-, 18
Penda becomes supreme over Mid-Britain ... 19
628- His battle with the West-Saxons at Cirencester . . 19
Probable annexation of the Hwiccan country . . 20
Strife between Penda and Eadwine for East-Anglia . 20
Alliance of Penda with Cadwallon .... 21
The Hatfield Fen 22
633. Eadwine defeated and slain by Penda at iiattielJ. . 24
vi CONTENTS
MOB
Northumbria broken up into its two kingdoms . . 25
634.' Penda conquers East-Anglia 26
635-642. Oswald king of the Bernicians ..... 26
635. Battle of the Hevenfeld 28
From this time the struggle of the Welsh is a mere
struggle of self-defence 29
635. Oswald calls for missionaries from Ireland ... 30 Influence of its physical characteristics on the history
of Ireland 31
Early Ireland a huge grazing-ground .... 32
Its primitive institutions .32
Its contrast with the rest of Europe .... 34
Story of Patrick 36
The conversion of Ireland .37
The Irish Church moulded by the social condition of
Ireland 38
Influence of the Celtic temper on Irish Christianity . 40 Its poetic and romantic temper ..... 42 The foreign missions of the Irish Church . . . 43
635. Aidan summoned by Oswald to Lindisfarne . . 44 The Irish missionaries in Northumbria . . .45 Oswald re-establishes the Northumbrian supremacy . 46
642. Oswald slain by Penda at the Maserfeld ... 50
Northumbria again broken up . . . . .50
642-670. Oswiu king of the Bernicians . . . . .51
Penda ravages Bernicia ...... 51
651. Oswiu reconquers Deira 52
Final restoration of Northumbria .... 54
652. Conversion of Penda's son Peada .... 55 Conversion of the East-Saxons ..... 56
654. Penda reconquers East-Anglia ..... 58 Penda attacks Oswiu ....... 59
655. Penda defeated and slain at the Wimvwd ... 60 Wreck of the Mercian state ... . .62 Oswiu supreme over all the English .... 63
653. Revolt of the Mercians under Wulfhere ... 64 Abandonment by Northumbria of her effort after
supremacy ........ 66
(Note on the Imperium of tlie early kings) . . GG
CONTENTS VU CHAPTER VII
THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOMS
659-690
PAGE
With the failure of Northumbria national union seems
impossible . 70
Entry of a new element into English life in the Church 70
All the English states save Sussex now Christian . 71
The organizing force of Roman Christianity . . 71
But the dominant Christianity in Britain now Irish . 72 Activity of the Irish Church in the north after the
Winwsed 73
651-676. The mission work of Cuthbert ..... 74
The Irish Church devoid of organizing power . . 79 Its success would have brought about a religious
schism in Britain ...... 80
The Roman party in Northumbria .... 81
Benedict Biscop its head ...... 82
Still more energetic action of Wilfrid ... 84
664. The Irish party defeated at the Synod of Whitby . 85 The Synod averted the religious isolation and secured
the religious oneness of England .... 87
Importance of the Primacy in the re-united Church . 88 669. Theodore, named Primate by the Pope, lands in
Britain 89
Mercia now the most active English state ... 90
659 675. Wulfhere king of the Mercians ..... 91
lie-establishes the Mercian supremacy in Mid-Britain 91
661. Extends it over Essex, Surrey, and Sussex . . 93
669-672. Theodore journeys over all England . . . .94
He is everywhere received as Primate ... 94
His first ordering of the English dioceses ... 95
673. Calls a council at Hertford 96
Influence of these councils on national development . 96 Establishes a school at Canterbury ... .98
viii CONTENTS
PAOE
Influence of this school on English literature . . 99
c. 660-690. Ealdhelm in Wessex 100
652. Conquest of the Forest of Braden by the West- Saxons 101
Maidulf sets up his " burh " of Malmesbury . . 105
Ealdhelm's work in this forest tract .... 105
Theodore's second organization of the dioceses . . 106
The English dioceses co-extensive with the kingdoms 108 Theodore subdivides them by falling back on the tribal
demarcations .108
673. He divides the see of East-Auglia .... 108 675-678. His division of the Mercian see . . . . .110
675-704. Mercia under king .ffithelred Ill
The monastic movement of this time based on —
(1) A passion for solitude .... Ill
(2) Social impulse which followed it . . 112 The monasteries rather social and industrial centres
than religious . . . . . . .113
Effect of this impulse in reclaiming the country . 114
The Forest of Ard en 114
709. The foundation of Evesham 118
The Fens of the Wash 119
Guthlac at Crowland 121
The Thames valley 122
The nuns of Barking . ...... 124
Survey of the rest of Mid- Britain .... 125
678. Theodore invited to organize the Church in North-
umbria . . 127
670-685. Ecgfrith king of the Northumbrians . . . . 127 670-675. His conquest of Northern Lancashire and the Lake
district 127
Carlisle and its continuous life . . . . .130
Ecgfrith's triumphs over the Picts .... 130
675. Ecgfrith defeats Wulfhere and recovers Lindsey . . 131
Condition of Northumbria . . . . . .132
Monastic colonies along the coast; .... 133
Ebba's house at Coldingham 134
Relations of these monastic colonies to the realm and
its defence 135
CONTENTS ix
PAOE
They bring labour again into honour . . . .136
Influence of the movement on poetry . . . 139
Hilda's house at Streoneshealh 139
Story of Caedmon . . . . . . .141
Character of Csedmon's poem . . . . .142
Influence of the monastic movement on art . . 145
A D Greatness of Bishop "Wilfrid . . . . .147
678. Theodore divides the Northumbrian dioceses . . 148 Wilfrid appeals to Rome and is exiled from North -
umbtia 148
He takes refuge among and converts the South-Saxons 149 682. Theodore creates two fresh bishoprics in the North . 151
679. War between Mercia and Northumbria . . .152 Ecgfrith forced to cede Lindsey . . . . .152
684. Attack of the Northumbrian fleet on the shores of
Ireland 152
686. Rising of the Picts against Ecgfrith . . . 152
Cuthbert's words of ill-omen ..... 153
685. Ecgfrith and his army slain by the Picts at Nectans-
mere . . . . . . . . .154
Wilfrid submits to Theodore and is restored to York . 154
690. Theodore dies 155
Later completion of the work of organization by the development of a parochial system, by the endow- ment of the clergy, and by the provision of dis- cipline within the Church ..... 155
CHAPTER VIII
THE THREE KINGDOMS
690-829
Silent influence of Theodore's work in promoting
national unity .157
The political disunion seems greater than ever . . 157 Weakness and anarchy of tho West- Saxons since
Faddiley 158
x CONTENTS
nun
A D But their real strength not diminished . . . 159
682. King Centwine drives the Britons to the Quantocks . 159
685. Ceadwalla unites all the West-Saxons under his rule . 161
Conquers Sussex and the Isle of Wight . . .162
688. Fails in an attack on Kent and withdraws to Rome . 162
688-726. Ine re -unites the West -Saxons after an interval of
anarchy 162
688-694. Forces Kent, Essex, and London to own his supremacy 163
710. Attacks the kingdom of Dyvnaint .... 164
Founds Taunton in the conquered territory . . 164
Somerset after its conquest 165
Mingling of the two races seen at Glastonbury . . 166
Seen too in the double city of Exeter . . .167
Ine divides the bishopric of Wessex .... 168
715. He repulses the Mercian king Ceolred at Wanborough 169
Fresh outbreak of anarchy in Wessex . . .169
726. Ine dies on pilgrimage to Rome . . . . .170
716-757. .ffithelbald king of Mercia 1 70
728-733. ^Ethelbald overruns all Wessex 172
733-754. His supremacy owned by all the southern English . 172 754. The West-Saxons rise and defeat .ffithelbald at Bur ford 172 Meanwhile Northumbria stands apart from the rest of
Britain 173
685-705. Aldfrith king of Northumbria 173
Peaceful growth of learning under his rule . . . 174 673-735. This learning summed up in Breda . . . .175
His life at Jarrow . ..... 175
His learning and works ...... 176
His Ecclesiastical History ...... 178
The story of his death 180
His scheme of religious reformation in the North . 182
735. Ecgberht becomes Archbishop of York . . .182
738-758. His brother Eadberht king of the Northumbrians . 182
740. Eadberht repulses both the Mercians and the Picts . 183
750. Takes Kyle from the Britons of Strathclyde . . 183
York under Eadberh* 183
The school of York under Ecgberht .... 184
756. Eadberht defeated by the Picts 186
758. Eadberht and Ecgberht both withdraw to a monastery 186
CONTENTS xi
PAGE
The after-history of Northumbria one of weakness and
anarchy 186
Change in the character of our history . . . 187 England becomes linked to the rest of Western
Christendom 187
The change brought about by the joint work of English
missionaries and the Franks .... 187
Growth of the Frankish kingdom .... 188 The Franks under Pippin support the English mis-
A D sionaries ........ 190
690.' Mission of Willibrord 191
718-753. Mission work of Boniface 191
Conversion of Germany by the English missionaries . 193
Its results on the history of the Papacy and the Empire 194 It draws the Frankish power into connexion with the
English kingdoms 196
Britain now definitely parted into three kingdoms . 196
Losses of Mercia after the battle of Burford . . 196
768-796. Offa king of Mercia 197
775. Offa recovers Kent, Essex, and London . . . 197 779. Drives the West-Saxons from the district of the Four
Towns 198
c. 779. Drives the Welsh from Shropshire .... 198
754-786. The West-Saxons conquer Devon .... 200 787. Ecgberht, driven out of Wessex, takes refuge at the
Frankish court . 200
787. Offa creates the archbishopric of Lich field . . . 201
Effect of this had it lasted 202
Policy of the Franks towards the English kingdoms . 203
Friendly relations of Charles the Great iind Ofl'a . 204
Otfa, however, on his guard against Charles . . 206
English exiles at the Frankish court .... 207
794. Offa seizes East-Anglia 208
803. His successor Cenwulf suppresses the Mercian arch- bishopric 210
802. Ecgberht becomes king of Wessex .... 210 808. The Northumbrian king Eardwulf restored by Pope and
Emperor 211
315-825. Ecgberht's conquest of Cornwall .... 213
xii CONTENTS
PAGE
Close of the struggle with the Britons . . . 215 825. Beornwulf of Mercia attacks Ecgberht . . . 215
His defeat at Ellandun 215
Ecgberht seizes Kent and Essex . . . . .216 825-827. East-Anglia rises and defeats the Mercians . .216
828. Ecgberht conquers Mercia 216
829. Northumbria submits to Ecgberht .... 217 All Englishmen in Britain united under one ruler . 217
LIST OF MAPS
NO. PAGE
1. Britain before the English Conquest . . . xvi
2. Britain in 616 3
3. Deira and the Trent Valley ..... 5
4. Britain in 626 13
5. Britain in 634 27
6. Britain in 640 48
7. Britain north of the Wash 53
8. East Britain 57
9. Mid-Britain 61
10. Britain in 658 Go
11. Britain north of the Wash ..... 75
12. Britain in 665 92
13. South Britain . . .... 102
14. South-Western Britain ... . 104
15. Mid-Britain 109
16. West Britain 116
17. East Britain 120
18. Britain north of the Wash 129
19. Deira and the Trent Valley . 138
20. South Britain 150
21. South- Western Britain 160
22. Britain in 750 171
23. Early English Settlements . . . .209
24. South- Western Britain 214
CHAPTER VI
617—659
THE gathering of the conquering peoples who had Eadwine in encamped on the soil of Britain into three great umbna. kingdoms, a process which we may look on as fairly completed at the time of the battle of the Idle, seemed the natural prelude to a fusion of these kingdoms themselves into a single England. It is indeed the effort to bring about this union that forms the history of the English people for the next forty years, and that gives meaning and interest to what Milton scorned as "battles of kites and crows," the long struggles of North- umbrian, Mercian, and West -Saxon kings to establish their supremacy over the general mass of Englishmen. In this struggle Northumbria took the lead. The attack of ^Ethelfrith upon Riedwald was, in fact, the opening of such a contest. But
VOL. II 32 B
2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vr. its issue seemed to have been fatal to any projects The North- of establishing a supremacy, for the fall of ^Ethel- Supremacy frith not only preserved the independence of Mid- 617-659. Britain, but it broke up for the moment the kingdom which his sword had held together. On his defeat Deira rose against her Bernician masters, and again called the line of ^Ella in its representa- tive, Eadwine, to its throne. Eadwine, however, was as resolute to hold the two realms together as ^Ethelfrith had been ; and he was no sooner welcomed back by his people of Yorkshire than he marched northward to make the whole of North- umbria his own. As it had been originally created by the subjection of Deira to the king of the Bernicians, so it was now held together by the subjection of Bernicia to the king of the Deirans. The march of Eadwine drove ^thelfrith's seven sons from their father's realm ; and followed by a train of young thegns, whose exile was probably the result of a fruitless struggle, the descendants of Ida found refuge over the Forth among the Picts.1 Eimet. Nor was there any loss of strength for the realm under its new ruler. Eadwine was in the prime of life 2 when he mounted the throne, and the work of government was carried on with as cease- less an energy as that of ^Ethelfrith himself. On his northern border, if we may trust a tradition drawn from its name, Eadwine crowned a hill
1 Bseda, H. E. in. c. 1. 2 He must have been at his accession about thirty years old.
4 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. which overlooks the Firth of Forth with his The North- own "Eadwine's burh," or Edinburgh, which was
umbrian
supremacy to grow from a mere border post against the Picts 617-659. into the capital of a northern kingdom. But it was not in the north or in the north-west that his main work seems to have been done. To the Bernician house of Ida, the most pressing foes would be the Britons of Cumbria and Strathclyde; but to the Deiran house of ^Ella the most pressing foes were the Britons of Elmet. York, and not Bamborough, was the centre of Eadwine's king- dom, and from any of the Roman towers which still recalled the older glories of that city, the young king could see rising but a few miles off to the westward the woodlands and moorlands of a British realm. The kingdom which thus fronted Eadwine covered no small space of the present Yorkshire. On the south it extended to the fast- nesses of the Peak, where the Pecsetan of the middle English were still no doubt pressing slowly up the valleys of the Derwent and the Dove. To the west its border can hardly have run in any other line than along the higher moorlands of the chain that parts our Yorkshire from our Lanca- shire. How far Elmet extended to the north we have nothing to tell us ; but from the character of the ground itself we may fairly gather that the later forest of Knaresborough formed a portion of its area, and that it extended in this direction as far as the upper valleys of the Wharfe and the
DEIRA
and the TRENT VALLEY
Walker Q-lioutali tc.
6 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vr. Nidd. Its eastern boundary, which is more im- The North- portant for our story, can luckily be fixed with
umbrian r »
Supremacy greater precision ; for the road which the Roman 617-659. engineers drew northward from their bridge over the Don at Danum or Doncaster, and which bent in a shallow curve by Castleford and by Tadcaster to York, skirted the very edge of the forest tract which remained in possession of the Britons. Here Leeds itself preserves the name of Loidis, by which Elmet seems also to have been known, Avhile Barwick in Elmet shows by its position how closely the edge of the British kingdom must have run to the Roman road.
The kingdom of Elmet then answered, roughly speaking, to the present West-Riding of Yorkshire, but no contrast can be imagined more complete than the contrast between the district of to-day, with its huge towns and busy industries, and the Elmet of Ead wine's day. The bulk of its area must then have been, as it remained indeed down to the seventeenth century, among the loneliest and most desolate parts of Britain. In the south the great woodland which covered it long remained unchanged. As late as Henry the Eighth's days, Sir Thomas Wortley could set his lodge on the crag of Wharncliffe in the midst of the huge oak forest through which the Don, here little more than a mountain torrent, hurries down to the plain, "for his plesor to hear the harte's bell "amidst the stillness of the woods. More to the north by
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 7
Wakefield the priory of Nostell, in the vale of CHAP. vi.
Calder. tells in its name that the place was still The North- umbrian a North Stall of foresters in the woodland when, Supremacy
in the days of the Norman kings, a royal chaplain 617-659. gathered the hermits whom he found dwelling in its quiet glades into a religious house ; while along the skirts of this district stretched the Barnsdale whose " merry greenwood " gave a home to the outlaws and broken men of Robin Hood. To the north was a vast reach of bare moorlands scored with the deep and grassy vales of the Wharfe and the Nidd, while in the very heart of the kingdom thickets and forests, in which the last wolf ever seen in Yorkshire is said to have been killed by John of Gaunt, formed a screen for the town which still, after so many changes and chances, preserves its original British name of Loidis or Leeds.1
A few miles to the northward, indeed, of Leeds Conquest of
. Elmet.
traces have been found of Roman ironworks, but all signs of industrial life had probably long dis- appeared when Eadwine marched from York for the conquest of Elmet.2 His immediate ground of attack was possibly a wish to avenge the poisoning of his uncle, Hereric, by its king, Cerdic ;
1 When the Cistercians settled at Kirk stall close to Leeds in the twelfth century, they found nothing there " putter ligiia et lapides."
2 The only authority for the date of this conquest is Nennius, e. 63. "Eoguin, filius Alii, .... occujiavit Elmet, et expulit Certic, regern illius regionis." But we know from Breda that Elmet was iii Eadwiue's hands before his death.
8 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. but we know nothing of the winning of this dis- The North- trict or of its settlement. On the very edge of
umbrian
Supremacy the British kingdom, however, on a rise of 617-669. ground westward of the road from Castleford to Tadcaster, we find what is probably a memorial of this conquest in the group of earthworks at Barwick in Elmet, entrenchments and ditches in- closing a large area with a mound in its centre, which probably marks the site of one of the burns or fortified houses with which Eadwine held down the country he had subdued. At Leeds itself too, the king seems to have established a royal vill, which would be of the same military character; while yet further to the westward in the upper valley of the Calder, where no " Othere " had as yet settled in the " field " of the coming Hudders- field, but through which a solitary track struck to the border moorlands, we may perhaps find the site of another of Eadwine's dwellings and fortresses beside the site of the ruins of Campodunum.1
Conquest of But in such a region we naturally find scanty
the South. J J
traces of English settlement. The importance of
1 After his conversion, Eadwine "in Campodimo, ubi tune villa regia erat, fecit basilicam " (Bseda, ii. xiv.). (Alfred's paraphrase however gives for Campodunum " Donafelda," which Gale believes to be Tanfield by Ripon near the Swale.) It was burnt after Eadwine's fall, but its altar was preserved in Bseda's day in the monastery of Abbot Thrydulf, " quod est in silva Elmete " (ibid.) ; and in its stead "pro qua reges posteriores fecere sibi villam in regione quse vocatur Loidis" (ibid.). The " Elmedsaetna," with their territory of six hundred hides men- tioned in the old list given by Kemble (" Saxons in England," vol. i. p. 81), are probably the settlers in Elmet after its con- quest.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 9
the conquest, indeed, lay not so much in its addi- CHAP. vi.
tion of lon^ ranges of moorland and woodland to The North- umbrian Eadwine's realm, as in its clearing away the barrier Supremacy
which this British kingdom interposed between 617-659. Northumbria and ^Ethelfrith's conquests to the south of the Eibble. The kingdom of Eadwine thus stretched without a break from the eastern to the western sea, and Chester must have acquired a new importance as the western seaport of Eadwine's realm, for it can only have been in the harbour of Chester that the king can have equipped the fleet which he needed to subdue the isles of Anglesea and Man.1 But the conquest of Elmet did more than raise Northumbria into a sea-power. With the reduction of this district the border of the northern kingdom stretched without a break along the border of Mid-Britain, and the pressure of Eadwine upon the southern Engle became irresistible. Eaedwald's death followed imme- diately after his victory at the Idle,2 and the dominion he had built up may have fallen to pieces in the hands of his son Eorpwald ; it is at any rate certain that before the close of Eorpwald's reign the tribes of the Trent valley 3 had come to
1 " Mevanias Brittonum insulas, quae inter Hiberniam et Brittanniam sitae suut, Anglorum subjecit imperio." — Bteda, H. E. lib. ii. c. f>.
2 Eorpwald succeeded him in 617. — Bseda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 15 ; see Hussey's note.
3 Paulinus baptized "prsesente rege Eadwine" in the Trent valley at Tiovulfingacacster, and this conversion of the Lindsey folk with the establishment of a bishop's see at Lincoln must Lave been brought about by the same iuilueuce (Baeda, II. K
10 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. own the supremacy of Eadwine. It was in fact The North- his mastery over Mid- Britain that brought the
umbrian •
supremacy Northumbrian king to the borders of Wessex. 617-659. Eadwine prepared for a struggle with this last rival by a marriage with the sister of the Kentish king, Eadbald, which, if it did not imply the subjection of the Kentish kingdom, in any case bound it to his side. In the summer of 625 l the priest Paulinus brought ^thelburh or Tate to the Northumbrian court at York. The marriage was taken by the West-Saxons as a signal of the coming attack ; and a story preserved by Baeda tells something of the fierceness of the struggle which ended in the subjection of the conquerors of Southern Britain to the supremacy of North- umbria. In the Easter-court of 626,2 which he held in a king's town near the river Derwent, Eadwine gave audience to Eumer, an envoy of the West-Saxons. Eumer brought a message from Cwichelm, who was now joined in their kingship with his brother Cynegils, but in the midst of the conference he started to his feet, drew a dagger from his robe, and flung himself on the North- umbrian sovereign. Lilla, a thegn of the royal war-band, threw himself between Eadwine and the assassin ; but so fell was the stroke that even through Lilla's body the dagger still reached the
lib. ii. c. 16), as well as the conversion of the East- Anglian king Eorpwald (ibid. c. 15).
1 Baeda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 9.
2 Bseda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 9.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 11
king. The wound however was slight, and Eadwine CHAP. vi. was soon able to avenge it by marching on the TheNorth-
umbrian
West-Saxons and slaying or subduing all who had supremacy conspired against him.1 The issue of such a 617-659. triumph was the recognition of his supremacy by Cynegils : 2 and with the submission of Cynegils the overlordship of Eadwine practically stretched over the whole of Britain.
In the nine eventful years Avhich had passed Eadwine's since he mounted his father's throne Eadwine had thus gathered the whole English race into a single political body.3 He was king or overlord of every English kingdom, save of Kent ; and Kent was knit to him by his marriage with u^Ethelburh. The gathering of the English conquerors into the three great southern, midland, and northern groups, which had characterized the past forty years, from the battle of Deorham to the battle of the Idle, seemed to have ended in their gathering into a single people in the hand of Eadwine. Under Eadwine, indeed, the greatness of Northumbria reached its height. Within his own dominions the king displayed a genius for civil government which shows how utterly the mere age of conquest had passed away. With him began an English proverb
1 Engl. Chron. a. 626 ; Breda, H. E. ii. 9.
2 " In deditionem recepit." — B;eda, H. E. ii. 9.
3 " Ita ut, quod nemo Angloruin ante euin, oimiesBrittannice fines, qua vel ipsorum vel Brittomim provinciu; habitant, sub ditione acceperit."— Biwla, H. E. ii. 9. " Majore potentia cunctis qui Brittanniam ineolunt, Angloruin pariter et Brittonum, popu- lis pra;fiiit pritter Cautuariis tautuiu." — Baxla, II. E. lib. ii. c. 5.
12 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. often applied to after kings, " A woman with her The North- babe might walk scatheless from sea to sea in
umbrian
Supremacy Eadwine's days.' Peaceful communication re- 617-669. vived along the deserted highways ; the springs by the roadside were marked with stakes, and a cup was set beside each for the traveller's refresh- ment. Some faint traditions of the Roman past may have flung their glory round what Bseda ventures to call this "Empire of the English"; some of the Roman majesty had at any rate come back with its long-lost peace. Nor is it without significance that we find Eadwine's capital estab- lished at York. A hundred years had passed since its conquest by the Deirans had left the city a desolate ruin; but its natural advantages as the centre of a fertile tract and as the highest point to which sea-traversing boats could find their way up the Ouse must soon have begun to draw population again to its site. We do not, however, hear of its new life till we find Eadwine established at York as his capital,2 and the choice of such a settlement in a spot where so much remained to tell of the greatness of Rome can hardly have failed to connect itself with the imperial dreams which were stirring in the mind of Eadwine. In his wide rule over the whole of Britain Eadwine seems to have felt him-
1 Bseda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 16. The words "from sea to sea" show that this order was not confined to Eadwine's own Deira, but extended over his newer conquests of Elmet and the Ribble country.
2 Bsda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 14.
ll'atkcr & Bautail s
14 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. self a successor to its Roman masters. A standard
The North- of purple and gold floated before him as he rode umbrian Supremacy through village and township, while a feather-tuft
617-669. attached to a spear, the Eoman tufa, was borne in
front of him as he walked through their streets.1 Conversion But the effort for a political unity was a pre- umbria. mature effort. Not till two hundred years were past were the English peoples to be really gathered into a single realm. Not till three hundred years were gone by was a real national life to develop itself in a single England. The work was indeed to be in great measure brought about by the very agency which at this moment came to wreck the work of Eadwine. Though Christianity had shrunk back since the death of ^Ethelberht within the bounds of the Kentish kingdom, the hope of carrying out Gregory's wider plans of conversion had never been abandoned, and in the marriage of ^thelburh with Eadwine, Archbishop Justus saw an opening for attempting the conquest of the north. The new queen brought with her as her chaplain Paulinus, whom we have already seen in East-Anglia. He had been consecrated as Bishop of York in preparation for this journey, and his tall, stooping form, slender, aquiline nose, and black hair falling round a thin, worn face, were long remembered in the north. JEthelburh's zeal for her faith reaped its reward, for, moved by her prayers, Eadwine promised to believe in her God if
1 Baeda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 16.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 15
he returned successful from the fight with the CHAP. vi.
West-Saxons. But he was slow to redeem his The North- umbrian pledge. Whether the fate of ^Ethelberht had Supremacy
warned him or no, he spent the Avhole winter in 617-659. silent musing,1 till Paulinus, laying his hand on his head, revealed himself as the stranger who had promised Eadwine deliverance in Ksedwald's court, and claimed the fulfilment of the pledge which the exile had given.2 Moved, it may be, by the appeal or convinced by the long musings of the winter-tide, Eadwine declared himself a Christian, and in the spring of 627 he gathered the Wise Men of North- umbria to give their rede on the faith he had embraced. The record of the debate which followed is of singular interest as revealing the sides of Christianity which pressed most on our forefathers. To finer minds its charms lay, then as now, in the light it threw on the darkness which encompassed men's lives — the darkness of the future as of the past. "So seems the life of man, O king," burst forth an aged Ealdorman, " as a sparrow's flight through the hall when one is sitting at meat in winter-tide, with the warm fire lighted on the hearth but the icy rain-storm without. The sparrow flies in at one door, and tarries for a moment in the light and heat of the hearth-fire, and then flying forth from the other vanishes into
1 "Sanpe din solus residens, ore quidem tacito, sed in intimls cordis nuilta secum conloquens." — I5uxl:i, II. E. lib. ii. c. 9.
2 Bieda, H. E. lil). ii. e. 12.
16 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. the darkness whence it came. So tarries for a The North- moment the life of man in our sight : but what is
umbrirui
supremacy before it, what after it, we know not. If this new 617-669. teaching tells us aught certainly of these, let us follow it." Coarser argument told on the crowd. " None of your folk, Eadwine, have worshipped the gods more busily than I," said Coifi the priest, "yet there are many more favoured and more fortunate. Were these gods good for anything they would help their worshippers." Then leaping on horseback he hurled a spear into the sacred temple at Godmanham, and with the rest of the Witan embraced the religion of the king.1
its results. But hardly had the change been made, when its issues justified the king's long hesitation. Easily as it was brought about in Ead wine's court, the religious revolution gave a shock to the power which he had built up in Britain at large. Though Paulinus baptized among the Cheviots as on the Swale, it was only in Deira that the Northumbrians really followed the bidding of their king. If Eadwine reared anew a church at York, no church, no altar, rose in Bernicia from the Forth to the Tees.2 Nor was the new faith more fortunate in the subject kingdoms. Lindsey indeed hearkened to the preaching of Paulinus,3 and Rsedwald's son, Eorpwald of East Anglia, bent to baptism soon
H. E. lib. ii. c. 13.
2 Bseda, H. E. iii. 2.
3 Baeda, H. E. lib. ii. 16.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 17
after the conversion of Eadwine.1 But even here CHAP. vi. the faith of Woden and Thunder was not to fall The Nortii-
umbrian
without a struggle. Korpwald was at once slain supremacy by a pagan thegn; and his people returned to their 617-659. old heathendom. Such a rejection of the faith of their overlord marks, no doubt, a throwing off of Eadwine's supremacy by the men of East Anglia, and thus prepares us for the revolution which must have taken place at the same moment throughout the valley of the Trent, and above all among the West Engle, or Mercians.
Till now the Mercians had in no wise been -me distinguished from the other Engle tribes. Their station, indeed, on the Welsh border had invited them to widen their possessions by conquest, while the rest of the Anglian peoples of Mid -Britain Avere shut off from any chance of expansion ; and this frontier position must have kept their warlike energy at its height. But nothing had yet shown in them a power which could match even that of the Engle on the eastern coast. It was only at the close of the sixth century indeed that .the settlers along the march had drawn together into a kingdom : and the bounds of the Kentish and East-Anglian overlordships show that the two earliest Mercian kings, Crida and Wibba, must have owned the supremacy of ./Ethelberht, and bowed beneath the supremacy of Rjedwald. When
1 Breda, II. E. lib. ii. lf>. For the date of Eorpwald's liaptism, sec Husscy's note iu bis Basila, p. 105.
VOL. ii c
18
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. East Anglia fell from her pride of place into sub- The North- jection to Eadwine, we can hardly doubt that a Supremacy third king, Cearl, who seems to have seized the 617-669. throne in spite of the claims of Wibba's son, Penda, submitted with small reluctance to an overlord who had wedded his daughter while in exile at his court. But Qusenburg and Cearl had alike passed away ; and at this moment the old relations of friendship between Northumbria and these Western Engle were changed into an attitude of mutual hostility by the accession of Penda. Penda. It was in 626, on the very eve of Eadwine's conversion, that Penda the son of Wibba became king of the Mercians.1 Penda was already a man of fifty years old; and famous for the daring of his raids on the neighbours of his people during the years of his exclusion from the throne.2 He seems to have seized the kingship at last after a violent struggle, in which the sympathies if not the actual aid of the Northumbrian overlord must, from his ties of kindred, have been with Cearl and his house. With Penda's success, therefore, Eadwine saw himself fronted by a formidable foe in the upper Trent valley. But, vigorous as the new Mercian king was, we can hardly doubt that it was not so much his vigour as the conversion
1 Malm. Gest. Reg. i. sec. 74. According to Henry of Huntingdon, Criila was the first Mercian king ; on his death in 600 he was followed by Wibba for ten years, to 610 ; then by Cearl from 610 to 626 ; then by Wibba's son, Penda.
2 Ibid.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 19
of Eadwine Avhich shook the Northumbrian power CHAP. vi. over Mid-Britain, and enabled Penda at once to TheNortii-
,1 -n i TT- umbrian
seize the supremacy over its Jungle peoples. His supremacy efforts would no doubt be aided by the tendency 617-659. of these peoples themselves to fall back on their older grouping in the days of Rsedwald, if not of ^Ethelberht, and by their preference of a South- Humbrian to a North -Humbrian overlord. But whatever was the cause of his success, he must have already asserted his superiority over the English tribes about him before he could have ventured to attack the West-Saxons as he attacked them only two years after his accession, in 628.1 The strife, however, of the West- Saxon tribes among themselves, as well as the terrible overthrow they had lately suffered at the hands of Eadwine, favoured their assailant ; and their defeat at Cirencester seems to have been a decisive one. The locality of the battle, in the territory not of the original West -Saxon kingdom, but of the Hwiccas, who, as we have seen, still remained as late as ^Ethelberht's days a separate people from their fellow-Gewissas, may perhaps explain Penda's success, if, like the Britons at Wanborough, he fought as an ally of the Hwiccas against Cynegils and Cwichelm. The strife in any case ended in a formal treaty,2 whose provisions we may perhaps guess from what we find soon after to be the
1 Engl. Chron. a. 628. 2 And gcthingodan ]?a. — Eng. Chron. a. C28.
20 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. bounds of the Mercian rule. In the days of
The North- Penda's son, Wulfhere, the whole territory of the
Supremacy Hwiccas had become part of the Mercian realm ;
617-659. and there is no recorded event by which we can
account for this great change of boundaries save
the battle of Cirencester.
Pendaand Such a triumph at once changed the political aspect of Britain. Not only had Mercia risen to supremacy over the valley of the Trent, but her conquest had carried her dominion to the mouth of the Severn and added to her realm our Wor- cestershire, our Gloucestershire, and our Hereford- shire. The West- Saxons, stripped of Ceawlin's winnings, not only shrank into a lesser power, but necessarily passed from their subjection under Eadwine to a virtual submission to Penda. The 'Northumbrian king was in fact thrown suddenly back across the Humber; and the work of his earlier years was undone at a blow. But Eadwine was far from relinquishing his aims. The religion he had embraced was used to restore his shaken power ; and a Burgundian bishop, Felix, was sent by his brother-in-law, the Kentish king, to again attempt the conversion of the East -Angles.1 Eadwine however had a stronger arrow in his quiver. Another son of Raedwald, Sigeberht, had been driven under Eorpwald from East-Anglia, and had taken refuge among the Franks over sea. There he had become a Christian ; and Eadwine II. E. lib. ii. c. 15.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 21
was thus enabled to bring a Christian king of CHAP. vi.
their own stock to the East-Anglians in 631. l The North- umbrian The reception of Sigeberht involved a fresh re- Supremacy
ception of Christianity, and doubtless of the 617-659. overlordship of Northumbria with it. But the winning of East-Anglia made a war with Penda inevitable. East-Engle and West-Engle had in fact to settle which should be supreme over their fellow -peoples about them, and around which should be built up the great Engle state of Mid- Britain. And beyond this strife lay the greater struggle which was to decide whether the Engle of Mid-Britain could hold their own against the Engle of the North.
In such a strife the odds were heavy against Penda and
' the Welsh.
Penda, had he waited to encounter the hosts of East-Anglia and of Northumbria at once. To crush the northern state, and then deal singly with his rival in Mid-Britain, was his obvious policy, and accounts for his choosing the part of assailant in the coming struggle. But even single- handed Northumbria was more than his match, and he could hardly have ventured on an attack on Eadwine had he not found aid in the people which had till now been the special enemies of his own border-folk. Cadwallon, the Welsh king of Gwynedd, may have seen in Eadwine's diffi- culties a chance of avenging his race for the conquest of Elmet, as well us of winning back the 1 Baeda, II. E. lib. ii. c. 15.
22
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. country which ^Ethelfrith had reft away ; and it
The North- was with Cadwallon that Penda leagued himself umDrian . . , .
supremacy against their common foe. I he absolute severance
617-659. between conquerors and conquered, which had played so great a part in the events of the last two hundred years, was, as we have seen, fast breaking down. The union of Britons with the Hwiccas in their attack on Ceawlin, the home which the house of ^Ella found among the Welsh of Elmet, as well as the home which the house of ^Ethelf rith found among the Picts, were indications that the Britons would henceforth look for help in their struggle to divisions among the English- men themselves, and that Englishmen in their turn were willing to seek British aid against their countrymen. Penda boldly recognized this fact as an element in English politics, when his host marched with the host of Cadwallon to attack the Northumbrian king.1
The district in which Eadwine took post to meet Penda's attack was on the northernmost skirt of that vast tract of fen-land which formed a natural barrier for Northumbria against any assailant from Mid -Britain. Even the Roman engineers failed to carry a causeway directly from the south across the marshes of the Trent, and the traveller on his way to Eburacum was forced to make a circuit from Leicester to Lincoln, and to cross the fen, perhaps by a ferry, at some dis- 1 Bffida, H. E. lib. ii. c. 20.
Battle of Hatfield.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 23
tance south of Gainsborough, ere he could reach a CHAP. vr. firmer road at Bawtrey, and strike directly for The North-
J . umbrian
the north. But even this firmer road was little supremacy more than a strip of ground hard pressed between 617-659. forest and fen ; for on one side, as we have seen, it was closely bordered by the oak-woods of Elmet, while on the other the fen stretched onward with- out a break from the course of the Trent to the lower channels of the Don, the Aire, the Dervvent, and the Ouse. And not only was this gateway into the Northumbrian territory a narrow one, but it had from very ancient times been barred by strong defences. The British tribe of the Brigantes had drawn across this strip of land, behind the upper course of the Don, so strong a line of entrenchments that they seem to have held for a time even the Romans in check ; and this work, which may still be traced after the waste of a thousand years, would if manned by the soldiers of Eadwine have been too formidable a barrier for Penda to face. To right or left, however, advance was scarcely less difficult; for it would have been hard to force a way through the southern fastnesses of Elmet, and it seemed even harder to find a road through the skirts of the fen which stretched away to the east. It was into the fen, however, that Penda plunged. Its wide reaches of mere marsh and broad pools of water swarming with eels were broken by lifts of slightly higher ground, covered by turf which
24 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. rose and fell, so ran the popular belief, with the The North- rise and fall of the rivers that ran through the
umbrian
Supremacy district, and whose soil was so soft that it was 617-669. easy to thrust a pole through it into the waters beneath. The rises, however, were firm enough to afford covert for vast herds of deer,1 and it was from one such rise to another that the Mercian army must have made its way along the fen-tracks that threaded this desolate region. Hatfield, or the Heathfield, was one of the northernmost of these reaches of soppy moor ; it lay in fact just south of the Don ; and Eadwine, crossing that river by the paved ford which has left its mark on the name of Stainford, may have hoped by the seizure of this position to crush his assailant as he struggled through the pools and moor-paths of the fen. It was here at any rate, somewhere near the present town of Hatfield, that the two armies met; but in the fight which followed the Deiran king was defeated and slain.2
its results. Eadwine's overthrow proved the ruin of his house. Of his elder sons by the Mercian Qusenburg one fell on the field, and another took refuge with Penda : while his wife ^Ethelburh fled with her
1 In 1609 Prince Henry slew five hundred deer in a single day's hunting here ; and before the draining of these feus in the civil wars deer were said to be as plentiful in Hatfield Chase as " sheep upon a hill." Smiles, in his " Lives of the Engineers " (Brindley and Early Engineers, ch. ii.), gives an account of this draining.
2 Baeda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 20 ;. Eugl. Chron. a. 633.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 25
own two younger children to her brother in Kent.1 CHAP. vi.
With her fled Paulinus, for the battle was at once The North- umbrian followed by a revival of the old heathendom ; supremacy
and Osric, a son of JElla's brother JElivic, who 617-659. mounted the throne on Eadwine's fall, threw off Christianity and set up again the faith of Woden.2 But Osric reigned over Deira alone ; for the Englishmen of Bernicia seized on the defeat to break up the Northumbrian realm by throwing off the overlordship of their southern neighbours. They recalled the house of Ida ; and Eanfrith, • a son of ^Ethelfrith, returned from his refuge among the Picts to be welcomed as their king. Bernicia, as we saw, had never received the faith of Eadwine ; and Eanfrith, though he had become a Christian at Hii, no sooner found himself among his people than like Osric he threw off the faith of Christ. The reigns of the two kings lasted one miserable year, a year whose shame was never forgotten among the Englishmen of the North. Penda indeed showed no inclination to follow up his victory by any attack on Northumbria; he even gave shelter to one of Eadwine's sons, when he was driven out, after some vain struggle perhaps with Osric for the Deiran throne.3 His aim was to complete his dominion over Mid- Britain ; he had in fact fought with Eadwine only
1 Bseda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 20.
2 Bteda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 1.
3 Bseda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 20.
26 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. to isolate East-Anglia ; and it was East-Anglia that The North- he attacked in the year after the battle at Hatfield,
umbrian
Supremacy in 634. Before the threat of his attack King 617-669. Sigeberht had withdrawn from his throne to a monastery. His people dragged him back however from his cell as Penda approached, in faith that his presence would bring them the favour of Heaven ; but though the monk-king was set in the forefront of the host he would bear no weapon save a wand ; and his fall was followed by the rout of his army and the submission of his kingdom.1 It remained Christian indeed, for his brother Anna who followed him on the throne was as zealous for the faith as Sigeberht; but Anna only reigned as an under-king ; and East- Anglia became part of the overlordship of Penda.
Battle of the If Penda had withdrawn however, Cadwallon
Hevenfeld. . . __ . ,
remained harrying in the heart of Deira, and made himself master even of York.2 Osric fell in an attempt to recover the town ; and even the Bernician Eanfrith, while suing for peace, was murdered by the British king. But the triumph of the Britons was as brief as it was strange. Oswald, a second son of ^Ethelfrith, left Hii on his brother's death to place himself at the head of his race ; and in 635 a small force gathered round the new king near the Roman wall.3 The
1 Bseda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 18, 19.
2 Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 1. I take the "Oppido municipio" here to be York.
3 Bseda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 2.
BRITAIN IN 634.
Walker Or liOHtall si
28 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. host of the Bernicians was heathen as of old, and The North- of Oswald's force none were Christians save twelve
umbriau
Supremacy nobles who had followed him from Hii, and who, 617-659. like himself, had heen converted during their exile. But Oswald had no mind to cast away his faith like his brother Eanfrith. On the night before the battle a dream came to his aid. He saw the tall form of the founder of Hii, Columba, shrouding with its mantle almost the whole English camp, while his mighty voice bade the king "Be strong, and do like a man; lo ! I am with thee."1 As Oswald woke he gathered his Witan to tell them the vision ; and with the quick enthusiasm of a moment of peril the whole host pledged itself to become Christian if it conquered in the fight. Obedient to the counsel Columba had given him in his dream, the king stole out from his camp on the following night, and fell with the dawn on the host of Cadwallon. Legend told how Oswald set up a cross of wood as his standard ere the fight began,2 holding it with his own hands till the hollow in which it was fixed was filled by his soldiers, and how then, throwing himself on his knees, the king cried to his host to pray to the living God. They rose to fall upon the Britons. The surprise seems to have been complete. The Welsh were cut to pieces. Cadwallon fell fighting on the "Heaven's field,"
1 Adamnan, "Life of Columba," ed. Reeves, pp. 14-16. 2 This cross was still standing iu Breda's time (H. E. iii. 2).
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 29
as after times called the field of battle, and the CHAP. vi.
fall of this last great hero of the British race The North- umbrian left the Englishmen of Bernicia supreme in the supremacy
north.1 617-659.
The victory of the Heaven -field indeed is its results. memorable as the close of the last rally which the Britons ever made against their conquerors. Through more than fifty years, from the battle of Faddiley to the fall of Cadwallon, they had seemed at last strong enough to turn the tide of victory. In the south they had struck down Ceawlin and penetrated to the very heart of Wessex. In Central Britain they had long held the Mercians at bay even along the weak frontier of the watershed of the Trent. Even in the north, though their strongest combination had been crushed at Daegsastan, and their line fatally broken by the overthrow of Chester, they had at last succeeded in defeating Eadwine, in breaking up the realm of Northumbria, and in encamping as victors for a whole year on its soil. But with the battle of the Heaven-field this rally came to an end. The strength of the Welsh was exhausted ; and henceforth their work was simply a long struggle of self-defence. To England the battle was of even larger import. It restored in great part the political work of Eadwine ; for Deira submitted to ^Ethelric's grandson as it had sub- mitted to ./Ethelric, and the Northumbrian kingdom
1 Engl. Chron. a. G3.r) ; Bocda, H. E. lib. Hi. c. 1.
30 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. found itself restored in the firm hands of Oswald.1 The North- But it did more than restore his religious work.
umbrian . . . .
Supremacy ihe conversion of the Bermcians gave .Nortnumbria 617-659. a religious unity such as it had never known till now, and with this unity Christianity rose to a yet more vigorous life. It came indeed in a different form from the Christianity of Eadwine ; for it was not the Church of Paulinus which had nerved Oswald to his struggle for the cross, or which carried out in Bernicia the work of Christianization which his victory began. Paulinus, as we have seen, had fled southwards at Eadwine's fall ; and the Roman Church, though safely established in Kent, ceased to struggle else- where against the heathen reaction. From that moment its place in the conversion of northern England was taken by missionaries from a land which was henceforth to play a part in English history.
Ireland. A Roman general, Agricola, as he gazed from the western coast of Britain across the channel which parted the two countries, had planned, as the last of his exploits, the conquest of Ireland. But the threat of Roman invasion was never carried out; and no foreign influence disturbed till a far later time the social and political development of the Irish people. In
1 As a son of Eadwine's sister, Acha, Oswald partly shared the royal blood of Deira, and would thus be more acceptable to the Deirans than his father.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 31
this way the tribal life which the Celts brought CHAP. vi. with them from the plains of Asia went on in TiieNorth-
T i 1-1 umbrian
Ireland as it went on nowhere else in the western supremacy world. Two of the great physical agents indeed 617-659. which brought about its modification elsewhere were wanting, or all but wanting, there. In other lands mountain ranges, great river valleys, a varied distribution of hill and plain, tended to tthrow smaller tribes together into peoples and nations, and to form from their union a corporate organization which widened and elevated the sphere of human life and human action. Within the tribe itself, on the other hand, an increase in the culture of grain, above all in the culture of wheat, did much to fix what had been a mere mass of wandering herdsmen to particular spots, to make land rather than kinship the basis of society, to turn the sept into a village community, and thus to create new and higher types of social and domestic life. But the form and climate of Ireland offered almost insuperable obstacles to the full development of either of these processes of social growth. Ireland was an immense plain, set indeed within a hilly coast-line and broken by the course of the Shannon, by some lakes in the north, and by wide tracts of bog-land in the centre, but presenting over a vast area few of those natural features which could isolate one group of tribes from another. On the other hand, its moist climate and ceaseless rain made wheat-
32 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. culture uncertain and profitless, while it spread The North- before the herdsman the greenest and most Supremacy tempting of pasture lands. Throughout its history 617-659. therefore the island remained a huge grazing ground. The most famous of the old Irish tales is the story of a cattle -raid ; to drive off kine, indeed, was the main aim of the forays of trihe upon tribe. In Irish law fines, dues, rents, were all paid in live stock and generally in kine. Cattle were, in fact, to a very late time the chief Irish medium of exchange ; and even at the opening of the sixteenth century we find an Earl of Kildare paying twenty cows as the price of a book. It was by taking a grant, not as elsewhere of land, but of cattle, that the free tribesman became the man or vassal of an Irish chief. In all of this we have no doubt indications of a system of property which was common at some time of their history to every Aryan nation. The peculiarity of Ireland lay in the preservation of such a social state when it had passed away elsewhere ; and this preserva- tion sprang from the nature of its climate and its soil. its How primitive were the social institutions of
institutions. , , r ^i i t -^
the country may be seen from the character of its family life. Of polygamy indeed in households held together by the despotic power of the father, such as existed among the Celts in Gaul, we hear nothing among the Celts in Ireland. But temporary cohabitation remained even to the
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 33
sixteenth century a recognized social usage, CHAP. vi. though no doubt an exceptional one, while TheNorth-
7. .... umbrian
provision was made for the legitimization, not supremacy only of bastards, but of a wife's children by other 617-659. fathers than her husband. It was from usages such as these that domestic life rose throughout Europe to its later and more elevated forms ; but in Ireland the evolution was -so slow as to remain for centuries almost imperceptible. In the same way life remained wholly pastoral or agricultural. Among the native tribes no approach was made to collective life in towns. Though the Irish village system differed little in form from the system which was a general heritage of the Aryan race, and which we have seen prevailing among our English forefathers, it remained based more on community of kindred than on community of land. Political life showed the same slowness of advance as social life. In the earlier Aryan community the chief seems to have been at once ruler, priest, and judge. In Ireland, as in Gaul, he remained simply ruler, while the professional lawmen or Brehons preserved and declared the mass of traditional customs which constituted Irish law. The structure of the nation remained purely tribal to the last days of its independence. We see indeed a faint tendency to union which elsewhere would have brought about a real national life. Common ties of descent sometimes bound tribes in confederacies like those which
VOL. II D
34 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. gathered at an early date round a common king of The North- Cashel; sometimes weak tribes grouped themselves Supremacy round stronger, such as the O'Neils or the O'Donels 617-669. at a later day in the north. From time to time even the promise of a national sovereignty rose out of the chaos of political life. But it never proved more than a promise. Traditional feel- ing owned the right to a general overlordship as existing in descendants of the house of Nial ; legal theory gave this king of Ireland a king's seat at Tara, assigned to him Meath as his special domain, and asserted his right to receive tributes of cattle from lower chieftains. But strong as was the hold of this tradition, the supremacy of the King of Meath never became a lasting or effective force in Irish history.
Their slow The result of this peculiar temper of the Irish ment. people was fated to be seen long ages after the time we have reached in the violent contrast which Ireland presented with other countries of the western world. To the Europe of the twelfth or the sixteenth century the island appeared simply a country of uncivilized barbarians. But neither in Irish politics nor in Irish society was there anything radically different from the political and social organization which we find in the early stages of other European communities. What distinguished Ireland from other nations was the slowness of its development as compared with theirs. Usages which elsewhere marked a remote
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 35
antiquity lingered on here into historic time. The CHAP. vi. Brehon of the thirteenth century defined the law The North- which applied to the bastard child of a married supremacy woman as minutely as his predecessor had done 617-659. in the fifth. Though private possession slowly made its way, the system of common possession lasted up to the age of the Tudors as the main Asocial feature of the country, and then was only violently put an end to by the English lawyers. Law went on in a customary form with little or no tendency to take statutory shape. The system of justice never advanced from the blood-fine which was originally common in all early races to any general jurisdiction of the tribe. Submission indeed even to the blood-fine, as to any form of judicial interposition, remained voluntary to the last among Irish disputants ; and it was only by a complicated system of distress that they could be forced within the pale of the laMr. It was the same, as we have seen, with political life. In no tribe did any principle of real cohesion develope itself which could serve as the ground- work of national union. As in other lands, the chief increased in power as time went on by the creation of a class of vassals out of free tribesmen who sought or were forced to take grants of cattle, as well as from the settlement of refugees from one tribe within the boundaries of another. But to the last the power of the Irish chieftains remained as weak for any real purposes
36 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. of government as it was effective for purposes of The North- oppression.1
umbrian
Supremacy At the time when the first Englishmen invaded 617-659. Britain, the Scots, as the people of Ireland were Patrick, then called, were among the most formidable assailants of the island. In the raids of their pirate fleets on its shores or on those of Gaul thousands of the wretched provincials were swept off into slavery. Among these captives was a boy whose work was destined to leave a deep mark on the history and character of the wild tribesmen who carried him from his native land. At the time of his capture Patricius, or as the more modern form of his name runs, Patrick,2 was nearly sixteen years old ; and for ten more years he remained in Ireland as a slave. The years were years of conversion to a deeper sense of heavenly things. As he tended his master's kine, the young herdsman would often rise before daylight to pray in woods and mountain, even amidst frost and snow; "and I felt no ill," he says, " nor was there any sloth within me, because, as I see now, the Spirit was burning in me." 3 At last a dream raised in him the longing for freedom ; he fled from his master's hand ; and after hard
1 For the social condition of Ireland in these early times sec Sir Henry Maine's " Early History of Institutions. "
2 For a full criticism of the materials for Patrick's life, see Dr. Todd's " St. Patrick."
3 Confessio S. Patricii, ap. S. Patricii Opuscula, ed. Villa- nueva (Dublin, 1835), p. 190.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 37
wanderings found himself at home again. But, CHAP. vr. years later, he was driven to return to the land of The North-
* umbrian
his slavery. "In dead of night," he writes, "I Supremacy saw a man coming to me as if from Ireland, whose 617-659. name was Victorinus, and who bore countless letters. And he gave me one of them, and I read "the beginning of it, which contained the words, 'The voice of the Irish.' And while I was repeating the words of this beginning I thought I heard the voice of those who were near the wood Foclut, which is nigh to the western sea; and they cried thus : ' We pray thee, holy youth, to come and live among us henceforth.' And I was greatly pricked in heart, and could read no more."1
Patrick woke to obey the words of his dream. Conversion
. of Ireland.
He was ordained priest and bishop, and again landed on the shores of Ireland. But from the moment of his landing his life is lost in clouds of poetic legend. His work, however, was manfully done. By him or by his followers the island was quickly won for the faith of Christ : chieftains were converted, schools, churches, and monasteries were set up in every quarter. But the form which the new communion took was widely different from that which it took in other countries of the West. .Elsewhere Christianity had been above all the religion of the Roman Empire. As it mastered the Roman provinces its organization moulded
1 Confessio S. Patricii, ibid. p. 194.
38 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. itself on the organization of the state. The The North- administrative divisions of the one became the
umbriaii
supremacy ecclesiastical divisions of the other. The prefect 617-669. and vicar of the Empire were reflected in the archbishop and bishop of the Church. The town with its dependent tract of country became the diocese. The law-court was often turned into the church. Christianity was localized, organized, with officers, law, and discipline of its own, working side by side with and in fixed relation to the civil organization of the empire which adopted it. But in Ireland it found a very different sphere of action. Ireland had never formed a part of the Empire ; and instead of the centralized system of Imperial government, the missionaries found there, as we have seen, a mass of tribes linked together only by force or a vague tradition into varying groups around a central king, chieftains whose authority was personal over their clansmen rather than territorial over any definite tract of country, a land without towns or centres of civil judicature, or more than a crude though minute system of traditional law.
Character Little as we know of the first Christian mission-
of Irish .
Church, aries in Ireland, we see from its results that their work moulded itself with a curious fidelity on the social forms which the island offered.1 The con- version of every chieftain was followed by the adhesion of his tribe, and a tribal character was
1 Todd, " Life of St. Patrick," Introd.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 39
given from the outset to the nascent church. The CHAP. vi. monastic impulse which was becoming dominant The North-
umbrian
in the Christian world at the time told nowhere supremacy with greater force. The Irish churches took a 617-659. monastic form ; and the helpers and successors of Patrick became from the first abbots, each of them surrounded by a community of monks. But these monastic bodies were only centres of a tribal organization. In other countries of the West endowments of land fell to the local churches as they fell to guilds and voluntary civil societies of a similar class, and these endowments set them in the same rank of local corporations. In Ireland the grants given to the new monasteries and their superiors raised the abbot into the head of an artificial clan. He and his successors were not only heads of the spiritual community which gathered around them and was supported by these endowments, but chiefs of the new family in its civil capacity, and its bishops in a more spiritual aspect. As these ecclesiastical clans grew larger and more numerous their form modified itself, but still in the same peculiar way. Sometimes the successors of the original abbot divided his lay and spiritual authority. In such a case the community owned both a religious and a secular head. The spiritual coarb or heir, as the abbot was significantly called, was chosen by the monks over whom he presided, and the secular coarb by the tribesmen at large ; though in both instances
40 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. custom tended to restrict the choice to the family The North- of the original founder. The office of bishop, too.
umbrian
supremacy generally detached itself from that of abbot and 617-669. sank into a subordinate position. Without defined diocese or territorial position, the Irish bishops were at last distinguished from the rest of the clergy by no other marks than their possession of the strictly spiritual powers of consecration. Their number was enormous. Patrick Avas said to have consecrated more than three hundred, and a few centuries later they were believed to have reached seven hundred. As they had neither settled dioceses nor settled endowments their life was one of poverty and lowliness. A bishop might be found ploughing his own field by his own church. Another might be seen wandering with a pet cow at his heels through the country, without support save from the fees he charged for ordination. On the other hand, abbots of great monasteries like those of Durrow or Clonmacnois ranked among the great powers of the land. Kings quailed before their spiritual threats ; they formed political com- binations, and at need led kinsfolk or tribesmen to the field. Character "While other churches of "Western Christendom
of Irish
Christianity were organized on a national and episcopal basis, the Irish Church was thus at once tribal and monastic. Nor was it less different from them in character than in form. In its temper as in its organization it was purely Celtic. The work of
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 41
its conversion was hardly over when the conquest CHAP. vi.
of Britain by the English cut off Ireland from the The North- umbrian western world, and hindered the new community Supremacy
of religion from bringing it into contact with the 617-659. general temper of European civilization. Save the little group of its first missionaries, even its earliest preachers were pure Irishmen, and the Church they founded grew up purely Irish in spirit as in form. The Celtic passion, like the Celtic anarchy, stamped itself on Irish religion. There was something strangely picturesque in its asceticism, in its terrible penances, its life-long fasts, its sudden contrasts of wrath and pity, the sweetness and tenderness of its legends and hymns, the awful vindictiveness of its curses. But in good as in ill its type of moral conduct was utterly unlike that which Christianity elsewhere developed. It was wanting in moral earnestness, in the sense of human dignity, in self-command ; it showed little power over the passions of anger and re- venge ; it recognized spiritual excellence in a rigid abstinence from sensual excess and the repetition of countless hymns and countless litanies. But on the other hand Ireland gave to Christianity a force, a passionateness, a restless energy, such as it had never known before. It threw around it something of the grace, the witchery, the romance of the Irish temper. It coloured even its tender- ness with the peculiar pathos of the Celt.
The extravagance of the Irish saint-legends is its poetry.
42 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. broken everywhere by gleams of a delicate evan-
The North- escent poetry. When the host of King Loegaire umbrlan Supremacy closes round Patrick to kill him and his comrades,
617-659. the eight missionaries vanish with the boy, who followed them, and the host sees but eight roe- deer and a fawn tripping away to pasture. At another time two of the king's daughters, Fedelm the Red and Ethne the White, come down to a river-side to wash after the manner of women, and find there the group of wandering preachers.1 "They knew not whence they came nor from what people, but took them for fairy-folk of the hills or earth, gods or phantoms." Patrick taught them his faith and baptized them ; but his words woke a strange longing in the girls' hearts, and they asked to see the face of Christ. " And Patrick said : ' Ye cannot see the face of Christ save ye taste of death and take the Sacrifice of the Lord.' Then they bade him give it them. And they received God's eucharist and slept in death ; and they were laid out both in one bed covered with their garments, and men made great dole and weeping over them." It is this peculiar tenderness that gives its charm to the love of living things that colours the legends of Celtic saints. The Irish hermit talks with the sea-birds who scream round his strip of sand-bank. Columba sits watching his reapers in the field and caressing
1 Extract from Book of Armagh, in Todd's "St. Patrick," p. 452.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
43
Irish Missions.
the head which a horse that had been feeding CHAP. vi. hard by comes to thrust into his lap.1 The legend TheNorth-
. umbrian
of Patrick linked an instance of his charity to supremacy animals with the foundation of Armagh. When 617-659. he came to the spot he had chosen for his settle- ment, he found a roe with her fawn lying in the place where the altar of his church was afterwards to stand. His followers would have slain them, " but Patrick would not." He took up the fawn himself, carrying it on his shoulder ; and the roc followed him like a pet lamb till he had laid down her fawn in another field.
It was this strange Christianity, strange alike in temper and in form, which began in the seventh century to leaven in a hundred different ways the Christianity of the West. When it burst upon Western Christendom, it brought with it an enthu- siasm, an energy, a learning greater than any that it found there. For Avhlle in Italy or Gaul or Spain Christianity had spent its vigour in a struggle for self-preservation against the heathen invaders, in winning them to its creed, in taming them by its discipline, in bringing to bear on them the civilization which it had alone preserved through the storm of conquest, Ireland, unscourged by assailants, drew from its conversion a life and movement such as it has never known since. The science and Biblical knowledge which fled from the Continent took refuge in famous schools
1 Adamnan, "Life of Columba," cd. Reeves, p. 231.
44 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. which made Durrow and Armagh Universities of The North- the West. The new Christian life soon beat too
umbrian
Supremacy strongly to brook confinement within the bounds 617-669. of Ireland itself. Patrick had not been a century dead when Irish Christianity flung itself with a fiery zeal into battle with the mass of heathenism Avhich was rolling in elsewhere upon the Christian world. Irish missionaries laboured among the Picts of the Highlands and among the Frisians of the northern seas. An Irish missionary, Columban, founded monasteries in Burgundy and the Apen- nines. The Canton of St. Gall still commemorates in its name another Irish missionary before whom the spirits of flood and fell fled wailing over the waters of the Lake of Constance. For a time it seemed as if the course of the world's history was to be changed, as if the older Celtic race that Roman and German had driven before them had turned to the moral conquest of their conquerors, as if Celtic and not Latin Christianity was to mould the destinies of the Churches of the West. Irish On a low island of barren gneiss-rock off the
missionaries
in North- west coast of Scotland the Irishman Colom or
umbria.
Columba set up a mission station for the Picts at Hii ; l and it was within the walls of this monastery that Oswald with his brothers had found refuge on their father's fall.2 As soon as he was master of Northumbria, he naturally called for missionaries
1 Adamnan, " Life of Columba," ed. Reeves, p. 434. 2 Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 3.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 45
from among its monks. The first preacher sent CHAP. vi. in answer to his call obtained small success : he The Nortii-
iii-iii- umbrian
declared indeed on his return that among a people supremacy so stubborn and barbarous as these Northumbrian 617-659. folk success was impossible. "Was it their stubborn- ness, or your harshness 1 " asked Aidan, a brother sitting by ; " did you forget God's word to give them the milk first and then the meat ? " All eyes turned on the speaker as fittest to undertake the abandoned mission, and Aidan, sailing at their bidding, fixed his bishop's stool or see in 635 on the coast of Northumbria, in the island-peninsula of Lindisfarne.2 Thence, from a monastery which gave to the spot its after name of Holy Island, preachers poured forth over the heathen realm. Boisil guided a little troop of missionaries to the valley of the Tweed. Aidan himself wandered on foot, preaching among the peasants of Bernicia. In his own court the king acted as interpreter to the Irish missionaries in their efforts to convert his thegns.3 A new conception of kingship, indeed, began to blend itself with that of the warlike glory of ^Ethelfrith or the wise administration of Eadwine, and the moral power which was to reach its height in ^Elfred first dawns in the story of Oswald. For after times the memory of Oswald's greatness was lost in the memory of his piety. " By reason of
1 Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 5. The name in Irish form is Aedhan.
2 Bceda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 3. 3 Basda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 3.
46 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. his constant habit of praying or giving thanks to
The North- the Lord he was wont wherever he sat to hold his
Supremacy hands upturned on his knees." l As he feasted
617-669. with Bishop Aidan by his side the thegn whom he
had set to give alms to the poor at his gate told
him of a multitude that waited fasting without.
The king at once bade the untasted meat be carried
to the poor and his silver dish be divided piecemeal
among them. Aidan seized the royal hand and
blessed it. "May this hand," he cried, "never
grow old ! " 2
Oswald. But if Oswald was a saint, he was none the less resolved to build up again a power such as that of Eadwine. His earlier efforts to widen his dominion seem to have been mainly in the north-west. Here his sway not only stretched over the Britons who formed the mass of the population in the district between Chester and the Kibble, but it is probable that he was owned as overlord by the "Welsh kingdom of Strath-Clyde ; for otherwise he could hardly have gone on to "receive into his lordship"3 the Picts and the Dalriad Scots across the Forth. In southern Britain his success seems to have been more chequered. It may be doubted whether Mercia or the tribes along the Trent yielded more than a nominal submission to him,4 but Penda must
1 Bseda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 12. 2 Bfeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 6.
3 " Omnes nationes et provincias Brittamriae, quae inquatuor linguas, id est : Brittonum, Pictornm, Scottorum, et Anglorum, divisoe sunt, in ditione accepit." — Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 6.
4 Some submission there must have been, for Baeda says that
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 47
have shrunk for the while from any open struggle, CHAP. vi. for at the pressure of Oswald1 he murdered Eadfrid, The North-
,, ... umbrlan
the second son of Eadwine by his Mercian wife Supremacy Quaenburh, who had for a while found refuge at 617-653. his court. Kent, too, yielded to the same pressure, and drove Eadwine's children by yEthelburh to a refuge in Gaul.2 In these realms, however, Oswald could hardly claim any direct overlordship, but elsewhere he was able to restore the realm of Eadwine. His arms wrested an acknowledgment of subjection from the Lindiswaras, after a struggle whose fierceness was shown by the bitter memory it left behind it among the conquered people.3 East-Anglia, which had remained Christian amidst the heathen reaction elsewhere after the fall of Eadwine, seems still to have remained subject to Penda ; but in the south Oswald succeeded in effectually restoring the Northumbrian supremacy. The battle of Cirencester and the loss of the country of the Hwiccas had taught the West-Saxons to look on Mercia as their most dangerous foe : and they were ready to seek aid against it in recognizing the overlordship of Oswald. Here, again, the new religion served as a prelude to the Northumbrian advance. Immediately after the victory of the Hevenfeld, in 635, Wessex declared itself Christian. The work of a preacher, Birinus, who had pene-
Oswald " iisdem finibus regnum teimit " as Eadwiiie, which he has carefully specified. (H. E. ii. c. 5.)
1 Bctda, II. E. lib. ii. c. 20. 2 Ba-da, TT. E. lib. ii. c. 20. 3 Baala, II. E. lib. iii. c. 11.
English Miles o 20 40 60 80
Walter GrBotitall!,
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 49
trated from Gaul into Wesscx, proved so effective CHAP. vi. that king Cynesrils received baptism in Oswald's The North-
3 r umbrian
presence and established with his assent a see supremacy for his people in the royal city of Dorchester on 617-659. the Thames.1
It was this supremacy over so wide a ring of Battle of the
, Maserfeld.
subject peoples which seemed to lift Oswald out of the rank of Kings. In him, even more than in Eadwine, men saw some faint likeness of the older Emperors. Once, indeed, a writer from the land of the Picts, the abbot Adamnan of Hii, calls Oswald " Emperor of the whole of Britain." 2 But great as he was, the doom of Oswald was fated to be that of Eadwine. Though the conversion of Wessex had prisoned it within the central districts of England, heathendom fought desperately for life. Penda remained its rallying-point ; and the long reign of the Mercian king was, in fact, one con- tinuous battle with the Cross. But so far as we can judge from his acts, Peuda seems to have looked on the strife of religion in a purely political light. Christianity meant, in fact, either subjection to, or alliance with, Oswald; and the Northumbrian supremacy was again threatening his dominion on almost every border when Penda resolved to break through the net which was closing round him. The point of conflict, as before, seems to have been the dominion over East-Anglia. Its possession was as
1 B-p.la, H. E. lib. iii. c. 7.
- Adamnan's " Life of Columba," eil. Iteeves. p. 16. VOL. II E
50 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. vital to Mid-Britain as it was to Northumbria, which The North- needed it to link itself with its West-Saxon subjects
umbrian
Supremacy in the south ; and Oswald must have felt that he 617-669. was challenging his rival to a decisive combat when he marched, in 642, to deliver the East-Anglians from Penda. But his doom was that of Eadwine ; for he was overthrown and slain in a battle called the battle of the Maserf eld. l His last words showed how deeply the spirit of the new faith was telling on the temper of Englishmen. The last thought of every northern warrior as he fell had till now been a hope that kinsmen would avenge his death upon his slayers. The king's last words, as he saw himself girt about with blood-thirsty foes, passed into a proverb : " God have mercy on their souls, as Oswald said ere he fell." 2 His body was mutilated and his limbs set on stakes by the brutal conqueror ; 3 but legend told that, when all else of Oswald had perished, the hand that Aidan had blessed still remained white and uncorrupted.4 Oswiu. For a few years after his victory at the Maser- feld Penda stood supreme in Britain. Wessex must have been forced to own his supremacy ; 5 for its king, Cenwealh, threw off the Christian faith and married Penda's sister. East-Anglia and Central Britain remained under Mercian sway, while the Northumbrian realm was a third time
1 Engl. Chron. a. 642 ; Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 9.
2 Bceda, H. E. iii. 12. 3 Bceda, H. E. iii. 13.
4 Bada, H. E. lib. iii. 6. 5 Basda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 7.
51
broken up, for even the men of Deira seem to CHAP. vi. have bent their necks to Penda, and Oswini, the 'The North-
e r\ • i ir • i • umbrlan
son ot Usric, whom they took for their king in a Supremacy rising on Oswald's fall, was a mere tmder-king of 617-659. the Mercian overlord.1 Bernicia alone refused to yield. Year by year Penda carried his ravages over the north; once he reached even the royal city, the impregnable rock-fortress of Bamborough, Despairing of success in an assault, he pulled down the cottages around, and, piling their wood against its walls, fired the mass in a fair wind that drove the flames on the town. "See, Lord, what ill Penda is doing,"2 cried Aidan from his hermit cell in the islet of Fame, as he saw the smoke drifting over the city ; and a change of wind — so ran the legend of Northumbria's agony — drove back at the words the flames on those who kindled them. But, burnt and harried as it was, Bernicia still clung to
' O
the Cross. Oswiu, a third son of ^Ethelfrith, who had been called from Hii in 642 to fill the throne of his brother Oswald, gave little promise in his earlier days of those qualties which were to make his later reign a landmark in our history.3 During the first nine years of his reign indeed, he was king only of Bernicia, and over Bernicia the host of Penda poured summer after summer in the terrible raids which we have described. But terrible as they were, Oswiu held stoutly to his
1 Baeda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 14. - Bceda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 1G. 3 Bseda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 14.
52 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. ground ; and after some years he found himself The North- not only master of his own people, but able to
umbrian . .
supremacy build up again the wider realm of the Northum- 617-659. brians.
Restoration Oswini, who had occupied the Deiran throne umbria. since the fight at the Maserfeld, was a son of that Osric who had reigned for the miserable year which followed Eadwine's defeat at Hsethfeld. But the religious activity of Oswald and of Aidan had done its work. Unlike his father, Oswini was a Christian to the core ; and his piety and humility won the love of Aidan, as his personal beauty and liberality won the love of his people.1 But neither the one love nor the other could avert the young king's doom. A marriage which Oswiu concluded showed his purpose of recovering Deira. Ead- wine's younger children by his Kentish queen had been carried by her after her fall to her Kentish home ; 2 and the death of two of them left the girl Eanfled the representative of his line. Oswiu took Eanfled to wife as his father ^Ethelfrith had taken her aunt Acha; and in the one case as in the other the match had a political aim, that of neutral- izing the loyalty of the men of Deira to the line of ./Ella. It was in fact followed in 651 by the march of the Bernician king to the south. The news of Oswiu's approach with an overpowering host filled Oswini with despair, a despair quickened
H. E. lib. iii. c. 14. 2 Baeda, ii. 20. Really two children and one grandchild.
BRITAIN NORTH OF THE WASH.
Scale of Miles 9 , io 20 30 40
British Names _____ Brig-antes, Bryneich
Roman Names ............... EBORACUM
English Names ............... Eoforwick
Modern Names ....................... York
Holy I.
Bebbanburh ainborough
SEGEDUNUM, Wallsend ub.rrow
ll'alktr &• ISoutall sc.
54 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. no doubt by consciousness of the treachery which
ThelFor- was at work among his subjects; he fled to the supremacy house of an Ealdorman near Richmond, and was
617^669. betrayed by him to a thegn whom Oswiu despatched to kill him.1 The blow broke Aidan's heart ; and twelve days after it the bishop lay dying among his brethren at Lindisfarne. Far off, on the sheep- walks of the Lammermoor, a shepherd-boy named Cuthbert, destined afterwards to a wider fame, saw stars falling thick over the sky into the sea, and took them for angels carrying homeward the soul of Bishop Aidan. But the fall of Oswini left Oswiu master of Deira ; and Northumbria rose anew from the union of the two northern states, a union which was never henceforth to be dissolved. Oswini was the last male of the old kingly stock of Deira ; and with the extinction of their regal line passed away the reluctance of the Deirans to submit to the house of Ida. The restoration of the Northum- brian realm left Oswiu supreme from the Humber to the Forth ; and a great part of the Welsh, of the Picts, and of the Scots, on his western and northern border, not only bowed to his over- lordship as they had bowed to Oswald's, but even owned their subjection by payment of tribute.2
Oswiu and But the reconstruction of the Northumbrian kingdom was hardly brought about when a suc- cession of events in Central Britain showed that 1 Baeda, H. E. iii. c. 14. 2 Baeda, H. E. ii. 5.
- THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 55
Oswiu had taken up again the wider task of CHAP. vi.
Oswald and Eadwine. In the year after the The North- umbrian annexation of Deira, in 652, Penda's son Peada, Supremacy
whom his father had set as under -king over the 617-659. Middle -English or Leicestermen, sought Oswiu's daughter Alchfleda to wife. The two royal houses were already linked by marriage, for Penda's daughter was the wife of Oswiu's son, Alchf rith ; and Alchfrith's persuasion won over Peada to Christianity as the price of his sister's hand. He was baptized by Bishop Finan, Aidan's successor in the See of Lindisfarne,2 and the priests whom Peada brought back with him preached busily and successfully not only among his own subjects, but ventured in the following year to penetrate even among the Mercians themselves. Penda gave them no hindrance. In words which mark the temper of a man of whom we would willingly know more, Bseda tells us that the old king 3 only " hated and scorned those whom he saw not doing the works of the faith they had received."4 " They were miserable and scornworthy men," he said, " who shrank from obeying the God in whom they
1 Bnfida does not date the wooing of Peada or the conversion of the Mid-Engle, but as they followed the annexation of Deira and preceded the further attempts to convert the Mercians themselves, which he puts in 653 ("coepta sunt ha;c biennio ante mortem Pendse regis, " Bxda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 21), we must assign them to (552.
2 Breda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 21.
3 If he was fifty at his accession in 626, he was nearly eighty when he fell at the Winwaed.
4 Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 21.
56 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. trusted." His attitude proves that Penda looked The North- with the tolerance of his race on all questions of
umbrian '•
Supremacy creed, and that he fought not for heathendom, but 617-669. for independence. If he struck down Eadwine and Oswald, it was not because their missionaries spread along the eastern coast, but because their lordship spread with their missionaries. Quietly therefore as he watched the spread of the new religion among his own people, he may have watched with jealousy the conversion of Essex, which took place in the same year that the North- umbrian preachers appeared on the upper Trent. The throwing off of Christianity and of the Kentish supremacy by the two young kings of the East- Saxons in the days of Bishop Mellitus had been quickly followed by their fall in a disastrous con- flict with the West-Sexe ; l but we do not again catch sight of the little realm till we find at this moment its king Sigeberht a friend and guest of Oswiu's in the king's vill by the Roman Wall. The pressure of Oswiu2 brought about Sigeberht's baptism and conversion, and his return to his people was followed by Oswiu's despatch of the missionary Cedd, who was working among
1 Bseda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 5. The Gewissas may have been tempted to replace ^Ethelberht's overlordship by their own, or it is possible that the strife sprang simply from the loose and unfixed character of the frontier between the two peoples. (See Stubbs in Die. Christ. Biog. vol. ii. 20.) The liberty of S. Alban's may represent the waste "mark" between East- and West-Sexe.
2 Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 22, "instantia regis Oswiu."
EAST BRITAIN.
ritish Names Iceni
Roman Names LINDUM
English Names Bedicanford
Modern Names Lincoln
. -VERUL
\ St.A
«• .8 U L tO NlA C A E
'^•BrocfleyHil
") LONDINIUM
58 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. the Middle-Engle, to this new work on the eastern
The North- coast.1 umbrian supremacy The extension of Oswiu's influence over Essex
617-669. was obviously a prelude to a renewal of the old Penda strife between Penda and Northumbria for the
and the
East-Engie. domination over East-Anglia. Now as before the supremacy over East-Anglia was essential to the wider supremacy of Northumbria over the centre of the island. For the new state of Mid-Britain it was more ; it was a question of life and death. Without the East-Engle the power which had again and again grouped itself round ^Ethelberht and Esedwald and Penda must cease to exist. On the other hand the East-Engle were still averse from the rule of their fellow Engle in the west ; and now that dependencies of Oswiu's lay on either side of them they would naturally begin to stir. There can be little doubt that Penda's fresh2 attack on them in 654, an attack in which Sige- berht's successor Anna was slain and his kingdom cruelly ravaged, was the result of a fresh attempt at revolt. A third brother, ^Ethelhere, bowed anew to the Mercian yoke, and marched among the soldiers of Penda. ^Ethelhere, we know not how, was the cause of the war3 which followed with Northumbria. It is possible that the under- king endeavoured to win independence by playing
1 Bsecla, H. E. lib. iii. c. 22. Cedd's movements fix the date of these events in 653.
2 Bseda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 1 8. For date, see Hussey's note.
3 "Auctor ipse belli." — Bseda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 24.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 59
off the two great powers on either side of him CHAP. vi.
against one another. But that Oswiu strove to The North- umbrian avert the conflict we see from the delivery of his supremacy
youngest son Ecgfrith as a hostage into Penda's 617-659. hands. The sacrifice however proved useless. Penda was again the assailant, and his attack was as vigorous as of old. He was aided too by internal dissension in the Northumbrian realm. Oidilwald, a son of Oswald, had been set by Oswiu1 as an under-king over at least part of Deira ; but in this crisis he joined the Mercians, and his defection opened a way for Penda's march into the heart of the land.
The old king again passed ravaging over the Battle country as far northward as Bamborough, "destroy- Winwsed. ing all he could with fire and sword ; " 2 while Oswiu, unable to meet him in the field, was driven by need to seek for peace. Penda however set roughly aside the gifts which the king offered ; he had resolved, so men believed, to root out and destroy the whole people of the Northumbrians. But broken as they were, despair gave strength to the men of the north. A small host gathered round Oswiu, and the king vowed — should the day be his — to give his daughter to God and to found twelve monasteries. " Since the pagan will not take our gifts," he said, " let us offer them to One that will." Success however seemed hope-
1 Tteik, II. E. lib. iii. c. 23, 24.
2 Baeda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 17.
60 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. less, for when Oswiu met the Mercian army near The North- the river Winwsed in 655 he found it thrice as
umbrian
Supremacy strong as his own. Thirty ealdormen followed 617-659. Penda ; u3Cthelhere brought his East Anglians to his aid, and Oidilwald the men of Eastern Deira. Never had the odds seemed more unequal, but never was an overthrow more complete. Oidil- wald proved as faithless to Penda as he had proved to Oswiu ; he drew off his men in the midst of the fight and waited for its issue. It ended in the rout and slaughter of the Mercians. Great rains hid swelled the river in the rear of their broken host, "and more were drowned in their flight than fell by the sword." But the noblest of the Mercian warriors remained on the field.1 Of the thirty ealdormen who marched at Penda's bidding hardly one was left alive, ^Ethelhere fell fighting in the midst of his East-Englishmen, and Penda himself was slain. " In the river Winwsed," rang out the triumphant battle-song of the con- querors : —
" In the river Winwasd is avenged the slaughter of Anna, The slaughter of the kings Sigberht and Ecgrice, The slaughter of the kings Oswald and Edwine. " 2
Fall of For the moment the ruin of Mercia seemed
Mercia. .11
complete. The supremacy it had won over its neighbours to the south must have passed away
1 Baeda, H. E. lib, iii. c. 24.
2 Huntingdon, Hist. Angl., ed. Arnold, p. CO, has preserved this snatch of English song.
MID BRITAIN.
.*/ O
Wearn Waru/iclfs'0leaftiington
Walker Or Bttttallsc,
62 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. with the great defeat. The West-Saxons resumed The North- their old independence, and the force which they
umtorian . .
supremacy gained from this deliverance spurred them to take 617-669. up again their long interrupted advance against the Britons in the west. In 652 a victory at Bradford on the Avon drove the Welsh from their stronghold in the woodlands which ran like a wedge into West-Saxon land up the valley of the Frome, and a second campaign six years later settled the West-Saxons as conquerors round the sources of the Parrett. But the loss of outer influence was little beside the internal ruin of the Mercian state itself. The power which had grown up in Central Britain crumbled beneath Oswiu's blow. The peoples whom Penda had brought together sheered off into their old isolation. East- Anglia, the actual prize of the contest, naturally found a new overlord in Oswiu. Lindsey passed under the direct rule of the Northumbrian con- queror, and if the Southumbrians about Notting- ham escaped the same fate, it was by their revival as a distinct kingdom, though subject, no doubt, to the overlord in the north. The removal of Peada from his sovereignty over the Middle- English of Leicester shows that these too, pro- bably with their neighbours the South-English of Northampton, were freed from the supremacy of Mercia. The Mercian people itself, reduced as it thus was to its original settlement along the upper Trent, lost its national unity. Its old
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 63
division into a North-Mercian and a South- CHAP^VI.
Mercian folk reappeared,1 whether from civil strife The North- umbrian
which followed on the great defeat, or as a part of supremacy the policy of their conqueror. The larger part of 617-659. the Mercian people, the North-Mercians who dwelt on the north side of the Trent, were made directly subject to Northumbria. The South- Mercians alone remained under the rule of Peada ; but Peada only received his kingship over them as a gift from Oswiu,2 and that not because he was of the kingly stock, but because he was bound to Oswiu by the ties of his marriage and his Christian faith.
Oswiu on the other hand was sovereign over Britain as no English king save Eadwine had been before him.3 The supremacy of Northumbria over the Britons of Cumbria and Strath-Clyde was restored. The Picts and Scots of the north were forced to pay tribute. In Mid-Britain Oswiu no longer saw a power growing fast into a danger, but a mass of broken peoples, all of them in some way owing him obedience. Over Lindsey, the
1 Basda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 24.
2 Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 2-1 : "Donavit (Oswiu) Peada , . . eo quod esset cognatus suus, regiium australium Merciorum."
3 Baeda, lib. iii. c. 24 : " Tribus annis post occisionem Pendan regis, Merciorum geiiti, necnon et caeteris australium provinciaruin populis pr.-cfuit, qui etiam gentem Pictorum maxima ex parte regiio Anglortim subjecit." So Baeda, H. E. ii. 5, says of Oswiu : " ^Equalibus pene terminis (as those of Oswald and Eadwine), regiium nonnullo tempore coercens, Pictorum quoque atque Scottorum gentes, qme septemtrionales Brittaniae fines tenent, maxima ex parte perdomuit ac tribu- tarias fecit."
64 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. men of North-Mercia, and the South-English, The North- he must have ruled for the moment in direct
umbrian
Supremacy sovereignty ; while the petty kingdom of the 617-669. Southumbrians, \he larger realms of the East- Anglians and the East-Saxons, probably the West- Saxons themselves, owned his supremacy. North- umbria itself too was finally made. The royal stock of Deira had come to an end, and with its extinction passed away the strife between the men of Bernicia. From Oswiu's day all the Eng- lishmen of the north were simply Northumbrians, and this inner unity gave fresh weight to the political influence which the kingdom exerted out- side its own bounds.
Revival of But the dream of a single people gathered together around the kings of Northumbria no sooner seemed realized than it vanished for ever away. Peada had scarcely received the gift of the South-Mercian realm when his death tempted Oswiu to complete his mastery of Central Britain by annexing even the small folk that the young king had ruled. For three years the Mercians bore this foreign rule ; but in 659 the whole people broke out in revolt, drove Oswiu's thegns from the land, and raised a younger son of Penda, who had till now remained in hiding, to the throne.2 Under its new king, Wulfhere, Mercia rose at once into a
1 " Ipso (Penda) occiso, cum Oswiu rex Christiauus regnum ejus acciperet. "— Boeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 21.
2 Boeda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 24.
English Miles o «zo 40 60 80
VOL. II
66 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
. vi. power greater than that of Penda ; and which it - would need a greater victory than that of the
supremacy Winwaed to overthrow. But the revolution marked «iT«9. more than the revival of Mercia. It marked the abandonment by Northumbria of her long efforts to carry her supremacy over the rest of Britain. So irresistible had been the movement of revolt that Oswiu seems to have acquiesced without a struggle in the overthrow of his rule, and to have contented himself for the few remaining years of his life with a nominal ovcrlordship across the Humber. Even this passed away at his death in 670 ; and his successors sank into merely local sovereigns.1 Whatever bickerings over a border
1 Rrd.x lib. it. ends his list of those who held an imperium with Oswiu. ^Ethelberht of Kent " tertius quidem iu regibus peutis Anplorum, cunctis australibus eorum provinces quas Humbrae fluvioet contiguis ei termiiiis sequestrautur a borea- libus iinperavit ; sed primus omnium cselestia regua conscendiL Nam primus irnperium hujusmodi JJIli rex Australium Saxonnm ; secundus CaJin rex Occidentaliuin Saxonum, qui lingua eorum Ceaulin vocabatur ; teitius, ut dixi, ./Edilberct rex Oantuariorum ; quartus Ileduald rer Orientalinm Anglo- rnm, <]ui etiam viveute .Cdilbercto eidem su» penti ducat um pr.ebebat, obtiuuit ; quiutiis .£>luiu rex Nordauhymbrorum ge.ntis, id est, ejus qu» ad liorealem Humbne fluminis plagam iuhabitat, majore potentia cunctis <]ui Brittauiaiu incolunt, Anglorum pariter et Brittonum jwpulis prasfuit, pnvter Caiitu- ariis tautum ; necnon et Mevanias Brittonum insulas, quae inter Hiberniam et Brittaniam sit* sunt, Anglorum subjecit imperio ; sextus Ostiald et ipse Nordanhjnubrorum rex Christiaiiissinius, iisdera fiuibus rejnium teuuit ; Septimus Oswiu frater ejus, a-qualibus peue terminis regnuiu nonnullo tempore coercens, Pictorutn quoque atque Scottorum pentes, qu* septemtrionales Brittauiae fines teueut, iiiasinia ex j>arte {>erdomuit, ar tribu- tarias fecit" (Bwda, H. E. lib. iL c. 5). In the middle of the ninth century the clerk of Winchester who threw together the earlier entries of the English Chronicle, when he reached his
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 67
province there might be with Mercia, no North- CHAP. vi. umbrian king from that time made any effort to
umbrian Supremacy
entry for the year 827, " In this year king Ecgberht con- - quered the Mercian kingdom and all that was south of 617-659. Humber," added, " and he was the eighth king that was Bretwalda." Then copying from Baxla this list of names from yElla to Oswiu he adds at the close of it, " the eighth was Ecgberht, king of the West-Saxons." The two passages together form the ground of Sir F. Palgrave's theory of a derivation of the Roman imperial authority through Maxinms, etc., to .<£lla and Ecjrberht, which is examined and dismissed by Mr. Freeman ("Norman Conquest," vol. i. appendix, note B), and of Mr. Freeman's own theory of the Bretwaldadom, in which the imperium of Breda is made to mean "a real though not an abiding or a very well defined supremacy which was often, perhaps generally, held by some one of the Teutonic princes of Britain over as many of his neighbours, Celtic and Teutonic alike, as he could extend it over." The little word Celtic in this very cautiously expressed passage is no doubt big enough to serve as a base for the theory of an imperial character which Mr. Freeman attributes to the rule of the later West-Saxon kings through their supremacy over the Celtic peoples about them. Such a theory in the case of the later monarchy may be true or false ; but in applying it to the kings in Baeda's lift we seem to me to be going beyond the evidence we possess. As to the title Bretwalda, tliere is no ground for assuming it to be earlier than the date at which we first find it in the Chronicle, or for giving it, with Swithuu's clerk, to these earlier rulers. The silence not only of Bieda but of every historical document or charter up to the ninth century is surely fatal to any theory of its ollicial existence at this time. Nor can we attach any great weight to the historical knowledge of the writer who attributes it to /Ella and Oswiu, when we find that as soon as he comes to the end of Bmda's list the chronicler leaps over a century and a half of our history, and over kings such as ^thelbald and Olfci, to pin his own sovereign Ecgberht on to the close of it. But if we set aside the word Bretwalda, and the theories which F believe its incorrect rendering as "ruler of the Britons " first gathered round it, and restrict ourselves to the meaning of Breda's Imperium, the matter becomes very much simpler. Breda himself explains the Imperium as a Duc.'itus, the position that is of a here-toga or war-leader. There is no historic ground in the case of the first four kings in his list for extending such a war-leadership over any
68 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vi. crush the rival states in Central or Southern TheNortb- Britain ; the threefold division of the conquered
umbrian
Supremacy Britons at all. In tlie case of ./Ella, indeed, Mr. Freeman admits such a supposition to be impossible. But the passages which show that in Julia's later days the attacks of the Gewissas on the coast of the Gwent were supported by forces from Kent and Sussex make it at any rate possible that this union of the three peoples in their attack was under the war- leadership of this king, who must at that time have held the highest position among the conquering tribes. Of Ceawlin in this respect we know nothing ; but Bteda has carefully denned for us the limits both of ^Ethelberht's and Raedwald's supremacy, and in neither case is any British people included within it. In their cases the imperium must have meant a supremacy or war-leader- ship over Englishmen alone ; and it is in this sense, therefore, that we must apply the word to Eadwine, Oswald, and Oswiu, though these three Northumbrian kings undoubtedly had British peoples among their tributaries. I am inclined to think that the chronicler's entry came about in a very simple way. In the passage of Baeda which lay before him he read that ^Ethel- berht, " cunctis australibus eorum provinciis qui Humbrse fluvio et contiguis ei terminis sequestrantur a borealibus imperavit." Here, as in so many cases throughout his book, Breda is distinguishing between the " Nordanhymbri " and the " Sudanhymbri," the Engle north of the Humber, and the Engle south of it, to the exclusion of the Kentishmen and the various Saxon tribes. What he points out is, that it was over the southern Engle — the Engle, that is, of Mid-Britain or the later Mercia — that ^Ethelberlit's imperium extended, and it was over the same district that Raedwald's imperium extended after him. Now if we look at the chronicler's entry we shall see that it was not when the Kentishmen submitted to him in 823, or when he completed his conquests by the annexation of Northumbria, that the writer tags Ecgberht on to the Bret- waldas, but when in the interval between them he conquered " the kingdom of the Mercians and all that was south of the Humber." The chronicler's own words probably recalled to him Baeda's phrase about an imperium over " all the provinces south of the Humber," and in a very natural, if pedantic, way he at once linked on his hero to the list of Breda's seven kings. This would account for his omission of names like that of Oifa, so startling to Mr. Kemble ; for from Oswiu's day to Ecgberht's day no one had made this particular conquest of Mercia, just because Mercia during this period had been the dominant power in Southern Britain.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 69
land was accepted as a settled fact by the states- CHAP. vi. men of the north : and if they henceforth sought The North-
. , , . , , . umbrian
to widen their borders it was not by conquests over supremacy Englishmen, but by conquests over Cumbrian or 617-659. Pict.
CHAPTEE VII
THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOMS
659-690 The church WITH the failure of Northumbria the union of the
and the ,.-,-,... .
Natiou. conquerors of Britain in a single nation for the time became impossible. Far as the northern kingdom surpassed the rest in political and military development, half a century of bitter struggle had failed to reveal in it such a pre- ponderance of power as would force the states south of the Humber to bow to its permanent supremacy. That Mercia or Wessex should succeed where Northumbria had failed was as yet out of the question, and when Oswiu's realm withdrew into practical isolation, all hope of national union seemed to vanish away. But at this moment a new element began to play its part in English life. The battle of the Winwsed had proved a delusive triumph for Northumbria. But it was a decisive victory for the Cross. With it all active resistance on the part of the older
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 71
heathendom came to an end. Christianity, which CHAP. vn.
had gradually Avon recognition as a state religion The Church
and the in northern, eastern, and southern Britain, became Kingdoms.
with the submission of Mercia the faith of the 659-690. New England at large ; and the worship of Woden only lingered for a few years to come in the petty and isolated kingdom of the South Saxons, which lay severed from the rest of the island by the Andredsweald. The religious hopes of Gregory were realized in the subjection of Britain to the new faith, and the time had come for the carrying out of those plans which he had devised for its ecclesiastical administration. Nothing was more characteristic of Roman Christianity than its ad- ministrative organization. Its ordered hierarchy of bishops, priests, and lower clergy, its judicial and deliberative machinery, its courts and its councils, had become a part of its very existence, and settled with it on every land that it won. Gregory, as we have seen, had plotted out the yet heathen Britain into an ordered Church with two archbishoprics, each surrounded by twelve suffragan sees ; and though the carrying out of this scheme in its actual form had proved impossible, yet it was certain that the first effort of the Roman see, now that the ground was clear, would be to replace it by some analogous arrangement. But no such religious organization could stamp itself on English soil without telling on the civil organization about it. The regular subordination of priest to bishop,
72 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. of bishop to primate, in the administration of the
The Church Church, would supply a mould on which the civil
and the ^ J
Kingdoms, organization of the state would unconsciously but
659-690. irresistibly shape itself. The gatherings of the clergy in national synods would inevitably lead the way to national gatherings for civil legislation. Above all, if the nation in its spiritual capacity came to recognize the authority of a single primate, it would insensibly be led in its temporal capacity to recognize a single sovereiga The church But the hopes of such an organization rested in
in the
North, the submission of the English states to the Church of Rome, and it was not the Church of Rome which had won the victory of the Winwsed, or which seemed likely to reap its fruits. After its efforts at extension under ^Ethelberht and Eadwine, the Roman mission had for a while sunk into a mere church of Kent ; and though the Burgundian Felix, who had taken the lead in a mission to East-Anglia,1 and Birinus, with his successor, the Frankish Bishop Agilberct, who were preaching in Wessex,2 were both attached to the Roman communion, the recent and imperfect conversion of these countries gave them as yet little weight in the religious balance of the country. The real life and energy of the new Christianity were concentrated in the north, and the north looked for its religious centre, not to Rome, but to
1 Bseda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 15.
2 Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 7.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 73
Ireland. Never was the connexion of Britain CHAP. vn. with Ireland closer than in the years that followed The Church
and the
Penda's fall. The spell which it cast over Kingdoms. Northnmbria was irresistible.1 To cross the Irish 659-690. Channel, whether for piety or for learning, became a fashion in the north,2 while fresh missionaries streamed over in turn to wander into the wildest spots where English heathendom found a hold. One solitary made his way as far as the South Saxons.3 Another settled among the East Englishmen, and left his memory to a monastery in Suffolk.4 Nor was the Northumbrian Church itself wanting in missionaries as ardent as these. The brothers Cedd and Ceadda, one the apostle of Essex,5 the other of the Mercians, the St. Chad to whom the Mercian see of Lichfield still looks as its founder, were only instances of the zeal of their day. So simple and lowly in temper was Ceadda that he travelled on foot in his mission journeys till Archbishop Theodore in later days lifted him with his own hands on horseback. The poetry of their early Christian enthusiasm breaks out in the death- legend that tells how voices of singers singing sweetly descended from
1 We see an amusing proof of this in Btcda's statement that he had seen persons bitten by serpents cured by drinking water into which scrapings of the leaves of books that had been brought out of Ireland had been put. (B;eda, H. E. lib. i. c. 1.)
2 Bseda, II. E. lib. iii. 7. ; iv. 3, 4 ; v. 9, 10.
3 Dicul. Ba;da, II. E. lib. iv. c. 13.
4 Fursey. Bseda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 19. 8 Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 22, 23.
74 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. heaven to a little cell beside St. Mary's church The church where the Mercian bishop lay dying. Then the
and the J J
Kingdoms, "same song ascended from the roof again, and 650-690. returned heavenward by the same way that it came." l
Cuthbert. But the work of these missionaries has been almost lost in the glory of Cuthbert.2 No story better lights up for us the religious life of the time than the story of this apostle of the Lowlands, a story that carries us into the northernmost part of Northumbria, into the country of the Teviot and the Tweed. Born on the southern edge of the Lammermoor, a line of dark uplands which runs eastward to the sea at Dunbar, Cuthbert found shelter at eight years old in the house of a widow who dwelt in the village of Wrangholm. In after years he loved to tell stories of his boyhood, of the strength and agility which made him the best runner and wrestler among the village children, of his quickness of wit, his love of laughter and fun.3 But already his robust frame hid a poetic sensibility which caught even in the chance word of a game a call to higher things. An attack of lameness deepened the
1 Bseda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 3
2 For Cuthbert we have (a) an anonymous life by a contem- porary (in Breda, Opera Minora, ed. Stevenson, p. 259) ; (b) a life by Bteda, in some measure drawn from this, but with fresh information from contemporaries (in the same volume, p. 49) ; and Bffida's abstract of the latter in liis Ecclesiastical History, lib. iv. c. 27.
3 Anon. Vit. p. 261.
yningham
BRITAIN NORTH OF THE WASH.
Scale of Miles ? , ';' 2" 3p 4,° 5P
Br/f/s/i /Vames Bri^antcs, Bryneich
ngham Roman Names ..EBORACUM
English Names Eoforwick
Modern Names York
^rvLindisfarne
V ^Holy I.
Sebbanburh Bainborough
"' \^&fterJw?w«*»*(SI^A \ <
ftw^iS^i^iX /
S^ V&^/te'/ P/e^,A /
-yXN" VKillK^ >if ^0^i\\|^R^7^^^RVEVT.O^^
^«^:«»fe^?^
.^c-^-^rAov;^ wXX^Cx.\ 73JJ-.ei/i r!a- n sl0N
A^^ JUR/CONIUM Vc^HS**^?^* r f * - ll
PenVwyra %W^;oreter ^"A;. i/J***.- \' -.- Y/ ' ff '^?/
^ / f s 'V i/ nT7^''"<c!.','.rs>;','^ 7 j^tt.'/f/c-.sfc/'y A
H'aUxr&JSvutalltc,
76 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vir. religious impression. It was for his sins, the
The Church boy thought, that God had chained and bound
and the . Kingdoms, him ; and a rider who came one day over the hill,
669-690. mounted on a fine horse, and clad in the graceful white riding cloak which was common among the nobles of the time, seemed as he pitied and tended the injured limb an angel sent to bring forgiveness and health.1 From that time Cuthbert's bent was to a religious life. It was of this he dreamed as he kept his master's sheep on the bleak uplands whence the Leader flows into the Tweed, uplands still famous as a sheep-walk, though a scant herbage scarce veils the whinstone rock.2 We see him for a while keeping watches of prayer in the night while his comrades sleep around, or in lonelier hours breaking the stillness of the heights with hymns, or seeing in splendour of falling stars and northern lights angel- troops ascending and descending between earth and heaven. The news which was "noised far and wide" of Bishop Aidan's death woke him from this dream -life, and in 651 he made his way to a group of straw- thatched log -huts in the midst of an untilled solitude where a few Irish monks from Lindis- farne had settled in the mission-station of Melrose.3
1 Anon. Vit. p. 262. 2 Anon. Vit. p. 263.
3 Anon. p. 264, 267, BsBda's Life, c. vi. This was not on the site of the present abbey, but at the spot known as " Old Melrose." " On a green sheltered slope, a little below the point where the Tweed receives the scanty waters of the Leader, and
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 77
To-day the land is a land of poetry and romance. CHAP. vn. CheViot and Lammermoor, Ettrick and Teviotdale, The church
and the
Yarrow and Annan-water, are musical with old Kingdoms, ballads and border minstrelsy. Agriculture has 659-690. chosen its valleys for her favourite seat, and His mission
work.
drainage and steam-power have turned sedgy marshes into farm and meadow. But to see the Lowlands as they were in Cuthbert's day we must sweep meadow and farm away again, and replace them by vast solitudes, dotted here and there with clusters of wooden hovels, and crossed by boggy tracks along which travellers rode spear in hand, and eye kept cautiously about them.1 Though the new religion had already its ad- herents even in remote villages, the Northumbrian peasantry were for the most part Christians only in name. With the general religious indifference of their race they had yielded to their thegns in nominally accepting the new belief, as these had yielded to the king. But they retained their old superstitions side by side with the new worship ; plague or mishap drove them back to a reliance on
then takes a bold semicircular sweep under the wood and rocks of Bemerside " (Raine, "Dictionary of Christian Biography," i. 725). Thence after a few years lie went to Ripon with his abbot Eata, to whom King Alchfrid had given ground there for a monastery, but was expelled in 661 by Wilfrid, and returned to Melrose to face the pestilence. In 664, after the Synod of Whitby, he was sent as Prior to Lindisfarne, and after staying there twelve years (664 -676) withdrew to the Isle of Fame. It was these later years at Melrose and Lindisfarne that formed the time of his main mission work. 1 Bicda, " Life of Cuthbert," c. vL
78 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. their heathen charms and amulets ; and if trouble The church befell the Christian preachers who came settling
and the
Kingdoms, among them they took it as proof of the wrath 669-690. of the older gods. When some log-rafts which were floating down the Tyne for the construction of an abbey at its mouth drifted with the monks who were at work on them out to sea, the rustic bystanders shouted " Let nobody pray for them ; let nobody pity these men, who have taken away from us our old worship ; and how their new- fangled customs are to be kept nobody knows." * While Oswiu was nerving himself for the struggle with Penda, Cuthbert wandered among listeners such as these, choosing above all the remoter mountain villages from whose roughness and poverty other teachers turned aside. Unlike his Irish comrades, the missionaries who had followed Aidan, he needed no interpreter as he passed from village to village ; the frugal, long-headed Northum- brians listened willingly to one who was himself a peasant of the Lowlands and who had caught the rough Northumbrian burr along the banks of the Tweed. His patience, his humorous good sense, the sweetness of his look, told for him, and not less the vigorous frame which fitted the peasant-preacher for the hard life he had chosen. " Never did man die of hunger who served God faithfully," he would say when nightfall found them supperless in the waste. " Look at the eagle overhead ! God
1 Bseda, " Life of Cuthbert," c. iii.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 79
can feed us through him if He will " — and once at CHAP. vn. least he owed his meal to a fish that the scared bird The church
i . and. the
let fall. At another time a snowstorm drove his Kingdoms, boat on the coast of Fife. " The snow closes the 659-690. road along the shore," mourned his comrades ; " the storm bars our way over sea." " There is still the way of heaven that lies open," said Cuthbert.
But poetic as was its temper, and unwearied as Severance
i • of the
was the energy which it showed in the work Churches of conversion, the success of the Irish Church threatened Britain with both political and religious ills. The Celtic Church, as we have seen in its own Irish home, was utterly devoid of that power of organization which was the strength of the Church of Rome. Hundreds of wandering bishops, a vast religious authority wielded by hereditary chieftains, an inextricable confusion of tribal quarrels and ecclesiastical controversies in which the clergy, robbed of all really spiritual influence, contributed no element save that of disorder to the state, a wild jungle-growth of asceticism which dissociated piety from morality, and the absence of those larger and more humanizing influences which a wider world alone can give, this is the picture which the Irish Church of later times presents to us. Nor would the Irish Church in Northern Britain have found very different fortunes. It had brought with it the purely monastic system of its home ; and great as
1 Baeda, " Life of Cuthbert." <•.. 12.
80 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vn. were its missionary labours, it showed no trace of The church any power of moulding the new Christianity into
and the J *
Kingdoms, an ordered form. But even had it shown such a 659-690. power, its permanent establishment would have been none the less disastrous. The religious unity of the English race would in fact have been broken even more fatally than its political unity was broken. To the Church of the Roman obedience — to the church, that is, of Kent, East Anglia, and Wessex — the Irish Church seemed as schismatic as the Church of Wales. Both alike held aloof from any definite submission to the Church of Rome ; both clung to a tonsure of their own ; both kept Easter at a season different from that of the rest of the Christian world. The difference sprang simply from the long severance of the Celtic churches from the general body of Christendom ; but when the conversion of Britain removed the barrier which isolated them, and again brought them face to face with the West, its real origin was lost in the fanatical hatred with which the Roman ecclesiastics denounced these usages, and the no less fanatical obstinacy with which the Irish ecclesiastics clung to them. To the one side the Irish tonsure was the tonsure of Simon Magus, the Irish Easter a Jewish Passover. To the other the tonsure was the tonsure of Columba, their Easter a tradition of St. John. So long as both rivals were threatened with the triumph of heathendom under Penda, any strife between
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 81
them seems to have been carefully avoided. But CHAP. vn.
with the disappearance of this common danger a col- Tlie church,
lision became inevitable ; and the continuance of Kingdoms,
both as equal powers on English soil must have torn 659-690. Englishmen asunder more fatally than political parting.
Even in the years that preceded his final Approach
J of the strife.
struggle with Penda, Oswiu had been forced to watch anxiously the first signs of a gathering storm which was to end in open conflict between the churches. The storm was roused by the very step which he took to secure his rule in Deira, for if his marriage furthered the political iinion of the two northern realms, religiously it added a new element of discord to them. Eanfled brought with her the Roman traditions and the Roman allegiance of the Church of Kent.1 An exile in the south from her childhood, she had known nothing of Aidan or his fellow-workers in the north ; while to the men among whom she lived the Church from which Aidan came seemed simply schismatic. Through the heathen reaction after Eadwine's fall, and through the reign of Oswald, a deacon named James,2 the sole relic of the church of Paulinus, had preserved the Roman usage in Deira : and he had instructed many in it "as the days brightened around him." James however might have lived on unheeded had not the coming of Eanfled given a neAV and powerful
1 Bneda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 2 Baeda, II. K. lib. ii. c. 20.
VOL. II G
82
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
Benedict Biscop.
CHAP. vii. impulse to the movement. A Roman party at
The Church once formed about her. She brought with her a
and the Kingdoms, priest of the Roman Church in Kent, and observed
659-690. the Roman Easter. While Oswiu with his people kept the Easter feast at the date fixed by his Irish missionaries, Eanfled — it was whispered — was still fasting for Lent.1
So long however- as Aidan lived the reverence in which he was held hushed the faint whisper of coming strife. But with his death began the stirrings of two men who were destined to bring it quickly to a head. Born in the very year of Oswald's victory at the Hevenfeld, Wilfrid 2 had been sent in boyhood to study at Lindisfarne.3 But in the very centre of Irish influence he felt the spell of Rome ; and young as he was, he re- solved to visit the Imperial City.4 The thought sprang doubtless from the suggestion of Eanfled, to whom he was known, and who sent him in 652, the year after Oswiu's conquest of Deira, with letters of protection to her cousin King Earcon- berht of Kent.5 The same craving was stirring in the heart of Benedict Biscop, a thegn of Oswiu's
1 Baeda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 25.
2 For Wilfrid we have a biography by Eddi, in " Historians of the Church of York," ed. Raine, vol. i., and a more temper- ate statement in Banla, H. E. lib. v. c. 19. Benedict Biscop's life is the first in Breda's " Lives of the Abbots of Wenrmouth and Jarrow" (printed at end of Hussey's edition of Eccl. Hist.).
3 Eddi, c. 2. 4 Eddi, c. 3. 6 BiEda, H. E. lib. v. c. 19.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 83
court ; and the two young men, for Benedict was CHAP. vn. but five and twenty and Wilfrid seventeen, met The church
and the
in Kent, and crossed the sea together on their Kingdoms. Koman pilgrimage. Wilfrid however remained at 659-690. Lyons on his way, and Benedict alone reached Rome ; but the sight of the city kindled in him a fervoxir which showed itself on his return a year later in ceaseless preaching against the Irish usages. Oswiu's son, Alchfrid, who had been raised to a share in his father's royalty, was stirred at last to vow the same pilgrimage,1 and though he was un- able to carry out his vow, his accession to the Roman party at once raised the quarrel of the churches into a grave political question. But harassing as was this growing strife, the attention of Oswiu was absorbed in a struggle for life till the fall of Penda ; and after the victory of the Winwsed all thought of the little group of ecclesi- astical rebels who clustered round Eanfled and Alchfrid was lost in the spiritual triumph of the church of Lindisfarne. Finan had followed Aidan as bishop at Holy Island : 2 and the years of his bishopric were years of a wonderful activity. If Wessex was won by a Roman missionary, the winning of Central Britain, the reconquest of Essex, the first evangelization even of the wild South - Saxons, were the work of missionaries from the Celtic church of the north.
1 Krc.la, Vit. Abbatnm, p. 317.
2 iteda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 17.
84 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. But Alchfrid and Eanfled remained steadily at The Church the head of their Roman party ; and the efforts of Kingdoms. Benedict Biscop were soon reinforced by the arrival 669-690. of a worker yet more dogged and energetic. This Wilfrid, was Wilfrid, whom he had left behind in Gaul, and who now returned after two visits to Rome to combat what he denounced as the schism of Northumbria.1 Young as he was, and he was still only a few years over twenty, Wilfrid's energy proved him a valuable ally, and Alchfrid set him as abbot in 661 over a house which he had founded some years before at Ripon. The house had been an offshoot from Melrose, and Cuthbert was among the brethren who had come from Tweed-side to dwell there ; but to the young abbot these brethren were schismatics, and he drove them out.2 Their expulsion brought the quarrel to a head ; for the strife was hotly taken up by Finan's successor, Bishop Colman of Lindis- farne ; while Alchfrid summoned to Wilfrid's aid Bishop Agilberct, a Frank missionary who had been called after the death of Birinus to the see of the West-Saxons. There is no ground, how- ever, for believing that the efforts of the Roman party would have been more successful than of old had Oswiu continued to support the church of Lindisfarne. Hitherto his support had been vigorous and unwavering. Whatever might be the hostility of his wife and son, the king re- 1 Eddi, c. 7. 2 Baeda, H. E. lib. v. c. 19.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
85
Synod at Whitby.
maincd true to the church which had given shelter CHAP. vir. to the sons of ^Ethelfrith in the days of their The Church
J . and the
exile. He had learned to speak Irish during his Kingdoms, stay at Hii,1 and his sympathy went with the 659-690. Irish clergy around him ; he loved Bishop Colman as his brother Oswald had loved Bishop Aidan.2 The house indeed which he had just founded at Streoneshealh as a thankoffering for his victory at the Winwsed was framed on the model of the house at Holy Island.
But a marked change of temper was seen when he summoned a synod at Whitby in 664 for the settlement of the disputed questions.3 The forces as they faced one another still seemed strangely unequal. The Koman party consisted, as of old, of none but Alchfrid, Bishop Agilberct with his chaplain Agatho, the deacon James, and Abbot Wilfrid, for Benedict was on his way to Rome. On the other side were the representatives of almost the whole church of Northumbria, Bishop Colman, the East-Saxon Bishop Cedd who acted as interpreter, the brethren of Lindisfarne, Abbess Hild and the brethren and sisters of the very house in which the synod was gathered. Above all, the Irish party looked for aid to Oswiu him- self, who presided over the mixed assembly of clergy and thegns. His first words however
1 "Oswiu . . . illorum etiam lingua optiine imbutus."- Bai'la, H. E. lib. iii. c. 25. 2 Bajda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 26.
3 Basda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 25.
86 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. showed the drift of the king's policy. The dis- The Church puted questions he submitted to the judgment of Kingdoms, the council. But he pressed earnestly for uni- 659-690. f ormity ; and his resolve to obtain it was seen in his significant interference at the close of the debate. Colman pleaded hotly for the Irish fashion of the tonsure and for the Irish time of keeping Easter. Wilfrid's plea for the Roman, learned and eloborate as was its form, condensed itself in the single argument which he saw had weight with the king. " You fight," he said, "against the whole world."1 Still the debate went on. The one disputant appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St. Peter. "You own," cried the king at last to Colman, "that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of Heaven — has he given such power to Columba?" The bishop could but answer "No." "Then will I rather obey the porter of Heaven," said Oswiu, " lest when I reach its gates he who has the keys in his keeping turn his back on me, and there be none to open." The humor- ous form of Oswiu's decision could not hide its importance ; and the synod had no sooner broken up than Colman, followed by the whole of the Irish-born brethren and thirty of their English fellows, forsook the see of Aidan and sailed away to Hii.
1 "Contra totum orbem .... pugnant. " — Breda, II. E. lib. ill. c. 25.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 87
It is possible that lesser political motives may CHAP. vn. have partly swayed Oswiu in his decision ; for the The church
• . . and the
revival of Mercia had left him but the alliance of Kingdoms. Kent in the south, and this victory of the Kentish 659-690. Church would draw tighter the bonds which linked its issues, together the two powers. But AVC may fairly credit him with a larger statesmanship. Trivial in fact as were the actual points of difference which parted the Roman Church from the Irish, the question to which communion Northumbria should belong was, as we have seen, of immense moment to the after fortunes of England. It was not merely that, as Wilfrid said, to fight against Rome was to fight against the world. Had England indeed clung to the Irish Church, it must have remained spiritually isolated from the bulk of Western Christendom. Fallen as Rome might be from its older greatness, it preserved the traditions of civilization, of letters and art and law. Its faith still served as a bond which held together the nations that sprang from the wreck of the Empire. To repulse Rome was to condemn England to isolation. But grave as such considerations were, they were of little weight beside the influence which Oswiu's decision had on the very unity of the English race. The issue of the synod not only gave England a share in the religious unity of Western Christendom, it gave her a religious unity at home. However dimly such thoughts may have presented them- selves to Oswiu's mind, it was the instinct of a
88 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. statesman that led him to set aside the love and
The church gratitude of his youth, and to secure the religious
Kingdoms, oneness of England in the Synod of Whitby.
eeTigo. From the Channel to the Firth of Forth the
The English Church was now a single religious body
Primacy.
within the obedience of Rome, and the time had come for carrying out those plans of organization which Rome had conceived from the first moment of Augustine's landing. The actual scheme of ecclesiastical government indeed which Gregory had then devised had broken down before the stress of facts. Of his two contemplated arch- bishoprics, York made as yet no claim to a primacy, while London gave way to the claims of Canterbury as the see of Augustine, as the mother-church of Britain, above all as the bishopric of the one realm which had from the first remained Christian, the kingdom of Kent. Canterbury had become the natural centre of ecclesiastical life, now that the life called for such a centre for its development. The choice of its Primate thus became all important, and when the death of Archbishop Deusdedit in the plague of 664 left the see of Canterbury vacant, Oswiu as still exercising some nominal supremacy over Britain, and Ecgberht of Kent, as king of the actual diocese, joined in selecting a priest named Wighard for the post and in sending him for consecration to Rome. The selection of Wighard, following on that of Deusdedit, was in itself a notable step
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 89
towards the nationalization of the church, for CHAP. vn. Wighard, like his predecessor in the primacy, was The Church an Englishman. Though seventy years had passed Kingdoms, since Augustine's arrival, neither he nor the 659-690. Eoman missionaries who followed him, Laurentius, Mellitus, Justus, or Honorius, had acquired the English tongue ; and throughout their primacy the Kentish kings had heen forced, like ^Ethelberht, to gather what they could of their teaching through the means of interpreters. It marked the rise of a keener sense of nationality when Ecgberht, with Oswiu's assent, resolved to have "a bishop of his own race and his own tongue."1
Wighard however died of plague on his arrival Theodore. at Rome, and Pope Vitalian, interpreting the request of the kings for the consecration of the primate they had selected as a request to find them a primate 2 in any case, selected in Wighard's place a Neapolitan abbot of African race named Hadrian. Hadrian, however, refused the offer of so distant a see,3 and it was with some difficulty that the Pope at last found an archbishop in
1 " Cupiens cum sibi Romoe ordinari episcopum, qiiatenus suae gentis et linguae habens antistiteni, tanto perfectius, cum subjeetis sibi populis, vel verbis imbueretur fidci vel mysteriis, quanto hsec non per intcrpretein, sed per cogimti et contribulis virilinguam simul mamnnquesuseiperet." — Bajda, Vit. Abbatum. Hussey's Breda, p. 317. The "contribulis" is emphatic too, for Deusdedit had been a West-Saxon.
2 See Vitalian 's letter. Stubbs and Haddan, "Councils," iii. Ill, 112, with the editor's note.
3 "Antistiteni," says Vitalian to Oswiu, " mininie valuimus uuuc reperire pro lougiuquitate itiueris."
90 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. Theodore, an eastern monk born at Tarsus in The Church Cilicia, a man famous for his learning and piety, Kingdoms, but who had already reached the age of sixty-six. 659-690. Aged however as he was, Theodore was kept four months in Rome till his eastern tonsure could be superseded by a tonsure in the correct Roman fashion, and the characteristic caution of the Roman court was seen in its despatch of Hadrian as his companion lest any shade of Greek hetero- doxy should be introduced by the new primate into Britain.1 The result of these delays, and of a long detention in Gaul during his journey, was that Theodore did not land in Kent till the May of 669.
Mercia The Britain which he found on his arrival had wuithere. become in the interval a very different country from the Britain which we last surveyed after the battle of the Winwa3d. Northumbria, which then seemed supreme over the whole English race, had now retired within her own bounds across the Humber, and retained none of her conquests to the south of that river save the territory of the Lindiswaras. Mercia on the other hand, which then seemed utterly destroyed, had risen into a greatness it had never known before. If it left for a time Lindsey to Northumbria, it reft from that kingdom the district south of the Mersey,
1 " Ut ei doctrinse cooperator existens, diligenter adtenderet ne quid ille contrarium veritati fidei, Grrecorum more, in ecclesiani cui prutesset, introduceret. " — Bseda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 1.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 91
and with it at least the site and port of Chester.1 CHAP. vn. In Mid-Britain East-Ariglia may still have held The church
and the
aloof from Wulfhere, but in all other quarters Kingdoms. the realm of Penda seems to have been quickly 659-690. restored. Even the territory of the Hwiccas, which had been the spoil of the victory at Ciren- cester, again found itself in the Mercian grasp; for Wulfhere's rule was not only owned in the Severn valley, but embraced the lower valley of the Wye. In this region, our Herefordshire, Wulfhere set his brother Merewald as an under- king.2 But he did more than restore his father's realm. The renewed activity of the West-Saxons, which had shown itself in their recent victories over the Britons on their south-western frontier, may have led to some fresh attempts to recover the lost territory of the Hwiccas, but whatever was the cause of the conflict between Cenwealh's host and that of AVulfhere in 661, it ended in so decisive a victory for the Mercians that their ravages extended into the heart of Wessex as far as Ashdown.3 It was probably this triumph which enabled Wulfhere to carry his arms into the valley of the Thames. To the eastward the
1 Wo have no record of this conquest or of its date ; but from this time we find Cheshire and the country as far as the Mersey in Mercian hands.
'2 " Germanus vero ipsins, Westan-Hecanomm rex, sanctus Merewaldus." — Flor. \Vorc. Geneal. i. 265. The Hwiccas were in the same way ruled by Subreguli ; in the next Mercian reijin Oshere is " Ilwicciorum subregulus." — Flor. Wore. Geneal. i. 239. * Eiigl. Chroii. a. C61.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 93
East -Saxons and London came to own his CHAP. vn. supremacy;1 while southwards he pushed across Tho church
and the
the river and over Surrey, which we find governed Kingdoms, by an under-king of his appointment,2 into Sussex. 659-690. The wild Saxon tribe which was sheltered by the Weald may have sought his overlordship as a protection from the more pressing attacks of the West-Saxons; in G61, at any rate, their king ^Ethelwalch was baptized in Wulfhere's presence and by his persuasion ; 3 and his submission was rewarded by a gift of two oxitlying settlements of the Jutes, the Isle of Wight and the lands of the Mcon-wara along the Southampton Water, which we must suppose had been previously torn from Wessex by the arms of the Mercian king.
The Mercian supremacy, which thus reached Theodore in
Britain.
from the Humber to the Channel, and stretched as far westward as the Wye, while on the eastern coast East-Anglia and Kent, though still indepen- dent, lay helpless and isolated in its grasp, was thus the main political fact in Britain when Theodore landed on its shores. He came with a clear and distinct aim — the organization of the English dioceses, the grouping of these subordinate centres round the see of Canterbury, and the
1 Win! bought the Bishopric of London from Wnlfhere. (Btrda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 7.) For Essex, Bseda, II. E. HI), iii. c. 30.
a Malmesbnry, Gest. Pi^ntif. lib. ii. sec. 00. For the Chertsey charters, see article on Erkemvald, by Stubbs, in " Dictionary of Christian Biography," vol. ii
3 Bncda, H. K. lib. iv. c. 13.
94 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vn. bringing the church which was thus organized into The Church a fixed relation to Western Christendom through
and the
Kingdoms, its obedience to the see of Eome. With this 659-690. purpose he spent the three years which followed his arrival, from 669 to 672, in journeying through the whole island.1 Wherever he went he secured obedience to Rome by enforcing the Roman observance of Easter and the other Roman rites, while his very presence brought about for himself a recognition of his primacy over the nation at large. As yet no archbishop had crossed the bounds of Kent, and to the rest of Britain the primate at Canterbury must have seemed a mere provincial prelate like the rest. But the presence of Theodore in Northumbria, in Mercia, in Wessex alike, the welcome he everywhere received, the reverence with which he was everywhere listened to, at once raised his position into a national one.2 " He," says Breda, " was the first of the archbishops whom the whole English Church consented to obey ; " 3 and everywhere he went he asserted this new position of the primacy by an ordering, though, as we shall see, only a preliminary ordering, of the English dioceses.
Some ordering was absolutely needful. So
1 Baeda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 2 : " Feragrata insula tota, quaqua- versum Anglorum gentes morabantur."
2 " Nam et libentissime ab omnibus suscipiebatur atque audiebatur." — Bseda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 2.
3 " Is ue primus erat in Archiepiscopis, cui onmis Anglorum Ecclesia manus dare consentiret." — Baeda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 2,
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 95
great a confusion had been produced by the contest CHAP. vn. between the churches, that to hot partisans on The church
and the
either side some of the English bishops seemed no Kingdoms, bishops at all ; and Wilfrid, when named to the 656-690. see of York, had cast an open slur on the validity Ordering of
f i • r it i » i i • i dioceses.
of his fellow-prelates orders by crossing over the Channel to seek consecration from the bishops of Gaul.1 Nor was this the worst. Two of the English dioceses, those of Wessex and Northumbria, had not for some years seen the presence of any bishop. In Wessex king Cenwealh had quarrelled with bishop Agilberct, driven him as a foreigner from the realm, and set Wini as bishop in his stead. Then in 666 he had in turn driven Wini from his see and left Wessex without any bishop at all.2 On the other hand, Wilfrid, who had gone to Gaul for his consecration, had delayed his return so long, that Oswiu set Ceadda as bishop in his place ; and after three years' retirement at Ripon he had withdrawn to the south, and was actually administering the vacant diocese of Kent when Theodore arrived there.3 Wilfrid, however, was now placed in his northern diocese, and Lcutherius, a nephew of Agilberct, was drawn from Gaul to fill the bishopric of the West-Saxons,4 while Theodore solved the vexed question of their disputed orders by reconsecrating Bisi as
1 Biwl.i, II. E. lib. iii. c. 28.
2 U.r-da, II. E. lib. iii. c. 7.
3 Eddi, " Life of Wilfrid," c. 1 1 ; Bwda, IT. E. iv. 2. 4 I!;cda, II. E. lib. iii. c. 7.
96 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vir. bishop over East-Anglia, and Ccadda as bishop of The Church Mercia.1 Wini remained at London in his diocese
niul ths
Kingdoms, of the East-Saxons, which he had bought from
659-690. Wulfhere in G66,2 and the placing of his own
under -bishop, Putta, at Eochester completed
Theodore's first ordering of the English episcopate.
Council of In the autumn of 673 this earlier work was
Hertford.
completed by the calling together of these bishops with their leading clergy in a council at Hertford.3 The decrees of this council formed a further step in Theodore's work of settlement, for by them each bishop with his clergy was restricted within the limits of his own diocese, and the free wander- ing of the earlier English mission-bishops over the face of the country was brought to an end.4 A yet more important canon enacted that this synod at Hertford should be but the first of a series of such synods, and that the bishops should meet each year at the close of July in a spot which bore the name of Cloveshoc.5 It is as the first of these assemblies that the council of Hertford is so important in our history. The synods to which its canons gave birth not only exerted an ira-
1 Bjcda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 2, 3. "Denuo catholica ratione consummavit." — Flor. Wore. a. 673.
2 Bieda, H. E. lib. iii. c. 7.
3 Wini, however, was not present at this council.
4 For council of Hertford, see Haddan and Stubbs, "Councils," vol. iii. pp. 118-122.
5 For the various localities to which this name has been assigned, see Haddan and Stubbs, " Councils," vol. iii. p. 122, note.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 97
portant influence on the church itself, but they CHAP. vn. exerted a yet more pOAverf ul influence upon the The church
and the
nation at large. At every important juncture the Kingdoms, new bishops gathered round their primate from 659-690. every quarter in England, to take counsel and frame canons for the rule of the church at large. They met, not as Northumbrian or Mercian or Saxon bishops, but as bishops of a national church. These meetings were in fact the first of our national gatherings for general legislation ; for it was at a much later time that the Wise Men of Wessex, or Northumbria, or Mercia, learned to come together in the Witenagemot of all England. The synods which Theodore convened as religiously representa- tive of the whole English nation led the way by their example to our national parliament, while the canons which these councils enacted, though carefully avoiding all direct intermeddling with secular matters, pointed the way to a national system of law. How strong an influence this work would exert on English feeling, the next hundred years were to show. It was in vain that during that period state after state strove to build up the fabric of a national unity by the power of the sword. But in spite of their failure the drift towards unity grew more and more irresistible. If England could not find its national life in the supremacy of Northumbria or Mercia, it found it in the church ; and amidst the wreck of kingdoms the power of the church grew steadily greater, VOL. II H
98 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. because the church alone expressed the national The church consciousness of the English people.1
and the
Kingdoms. In the journeys of these three years throughout
659-690. Britain Theodore had found a companion and
The school f elloAv-worker in his friend Hadrian. But he
at Canter- . « . , . . ,.
bury. found in him a fellow-worker in more than this task of organization. Both of the friends were famous for their knowledge as well as their piety,2 and one of their earliest efforts seems to have been to gather a school at Canterbury. As yet the knowledge which came in the train of the new faith had filtered into Britain through the wandering Irishmen, half - scholars, half - missionaries, who settled in lonely spots, and then eked out their living by the learners they drew about them.3 Such teaching, however, was necessarily wanting in permanence ; and a new and settled form was given to English education by the establishment of such a school as that of Canterbury. Though its main teaching was in subjects that related to the knowledge either of the Bible or of the services of the church, yet this scheme of education proved broad enough to embrace the astronomy,
1 For the work of Theodore, and the character of the new English Church, see Stubbs, Const. Hist. vol. i. chap. viii.
2 The Pope in a synodical letter calls Theodore " archiepis- copum et philosophum." — Stubbs and Haddan, "Councils," iii. p. 140. " Literis sacris simul et ssecularibus abundauter ambo erant instructi. "- — Bseda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 2.
3 Thus Maidulf, " deficientibus necessariis scholares in discipulatum accepit, ut eorum liberalitate tenuitatem victus corrigeret." — Malm. Vit. Aldhelmi, "Anglia Sacra," vol. ii. p. 3 ; "Gesta Pontificum," Rolls ed. p. 334.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 99
the arithmetic, and the poetic art of the time, as CHAP. vn. well as a knowledge of the Greek and Latin The Church
v • ft -i i • -ill 11 an(i the
tongues. In its Greek teaching, indeed, the school Kingdoms, was fortunate, for the knowledge of Greek was 659-690. fast fading away from the western world, and where it still lingered, instruction in it had died down into the mastering of a list of words without knowledge of its grammar or its literature. But Greek was the native tongue of Theodore, and though Hadrian was by birth an African, he had lived long enough in Southern Italy, where Greek was still a living tongue, to be as skilled a master of it as of Latin.1 How thorough their teaching in both languages was, is shown by the fact that sixty years afterwards Baeda found men who had been trained in the school of Canterbury, who knew Latin and Greek as perfectly as their own English tongue.2
But the influence of this school on the develop- Eaidheim. ment of English intellect is shown more vividly by the fact that from it our written literature, the literature that is of the English in Britain, took its birth. With one scholar, ^Eddi, who followed Wilfrid to York, began the prose literature of Northern Britain ; with another, Eaidheim, began at an even earlier date the whole literature of the
1 "Gnccse pariter et Latinse linguae peritissimus." — Boeda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 1.
2 " Indicio tst quod usque hodie supersunt de eorum dis- cipulis, qui Latinain Groecamque linpuani a>que ut propriam in qua nati sunt norunt." — Banla, II. E. lib. iv. c. 2.
100 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. South. Ealdhelm l was a kinsman of the royal The church house of Wessex, and probably a son of one of
and the *
Kingdoms, the West-Saxon kings. If, as seems likely, he 669-690. was born in the middle of the seventh century, he must have already reached manhood when the school was set up at Canterbury ; and his earlier training was due to Maidulf, an Irish wanderer who had sought a spot for his hermitage in the woodlands of Northern Wessex, and who was gathering scholars there from among its thegns. But it was from Hadrian and Theodore that Ealdhelm drew the intellectual impulse which he communicated to the scholars who gathered round him when he returned to his home at Malmesbury. He had become a master of all the knowledge of his day, and the rising scholar-world of Kent and Northumbria welcomed his Latin poems and prose, where a real quickness of wit and perception of natural beauty struggled with a fatal luxuriance of metaphor and rhetoric.2 But to Wessex itself Ealdhelm was more than a mere scholar. He was the first singer of his race. Alfred loved to tell how Ealdhelm won men to
. l Ealdhelm's Life by Faricius is printed by Giles, " Opera Aldhelmi," p. 354 ; that by W. of Malmesbury forms the fifth book of his "Gesta Poiitificum," in Rolls ed. ; also Wharton, " Anglia Sacra," vol. ii.
2 Malmesbury, "Life of Aldhelm" (Angl. Sacr., vol. ii. p. 7), says : — " Graeci involute, Romani spleudide, Angli pompatice dictare solent," and credits Ealdhelm with combining the merits of the three (Rolls ed. p. 344). "Involute" and " pompatice " fairly describe a writer who is utterly carried away by the new charms of style.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 101
heed sacred things by taking stand as a gleeman CHAP. vn. and singing English songs on a bridge.1 The The church
and the
songs of Ealdhelm led the way in that upgrowth Kingdoms, of popular poetry which was soon to fill the land 659-690. with English verse. Creed, prayer, riddle, allegory, acrostic, bible-story and saint-story, hero-tale and battle-tale, proverb and moral saw, the longing of the exile, the toil of the seaman, the warning of the grave, passed alike into rime. It was with an ever-growing stock of ballads that the gleeman trolled his way from fair to fair. A book of English songs was the prize of Alfred's childhood ; English songs were the first study of his children ; "vain songs and legends of heathendom" were played by Dunstan in youth upon his harp. A mass of poetic romance grew up round the later English kings ; and the story of ^Ethelstan and Eadgar has been all but lost in the ballad-growth which the chroniclers of the twelfth century melted down into prose.
The district in which Ealdhelm taught and sang Conquest
of the
was one which had but lately passed into the Avon basin, hands of the West-Saxons. We have seen that in their early conquests of the Marlborough Downs they had been barred from further progress by a
1 Malmeslmry, "Life of Aldhelm," Rolls ed. p. 336 (Angl. Sacr., vol. ii. p. 4), " Nativae quoque linguae 11011 negligebat carmina." He quotes the gleeman story from yElfred's Hand- book, "manualem librum regis ^Elfredi." "Commemorat yElfredus carmen triviale, quod adlmc vulgo cantitatur, Ald- helnium fecisse ; " so that Aldhelm's songs were still popular in the twelfth century.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 103
forest that then filled the upper basin of the Avon. CHAP. vn.
This woodland was in itself a northern continuation The Church
i IT -i and tlie
of the great belwood ; it extended even m the Kingdoms.
time of Charles I. as far as Cricklade ; at the time 659-690. of our story it still covered the site of Malmes- bury ; * and the town of Devizes, on the brow of the hill looking down over the Avon basin, pro- bably preserves in Latin form the rendering of some English name like " Mere " or the " Border- spot," from which this forest ran unbroken west- ward as far as the outskirts of Bath.2 Though the victory of Deorham at last carried West-Saxon territory round the northern and western borders of this British tract, and left it running up like a wedge into English soil, it was still saved for a while from annexation by the fall of Ceawlin, the outbreak of anarchy among his people, and the fatal blows which fell upon the West-Saxons at the hands of Eadwine and Penda. But the loss of the territory of the Hwiccas, the loss of the Severn valley and the Cotswolds, forced them to fresh action in this quarter. Barred from any further advance to the north, they saw even their progress westward threatened by the presence of Mercia on the lower Avon ; and it was as much to preserve their one remaining field of conquest as to compen-
1 " Nemoris araoenitate quod tune temporis in immensum eo loco succreverat captus, eremetieam exercuit" (Maidulfus). Malmesbury, "Life of Aldhelin" (Angl. Sacr. vol. ii. p. 3; Rolls ed., p. 334).
2 Guest, " Welsh and English Boundaries," Origines Celtics, vol. ii. p. 255.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 105
sate for the retreat of their frontier in other CHAP. vn. quarters that Cenwealh marched on this northern- The church
. and the
most fastness of Dyvnamt. Kingdoms.
In 652 a battle at Bradford on the Avon made 659-690. the forest tract his own ; l while a fresh fight with Eaidheim's the Welsh, six years later, in 658, at a place called the Pens, cleared them from the ground along the upper Parrett.2 It must have been soon after this conquest that Maidulf, an Irish scholar monk,3 set up his hermitage in the forest-tract which had been torn from the Britons, and drew around him the first scholars of Wessex. Ealdhelm, as we have seen, was the most famous outcome of this school, but he no sooner succeeded Maidulf as abbot of the little township which was growing up round that teacher's school and church, and Avhich still preserves his memory in its name of " Maidulf's burh " or Malmesbury, than he became a centre, not only of intellectual, but of religious and in- dustrial activity in his neighbourhood. In the heart of the great woodland which stretched from Malmesbury to the Channel, he planted four new germs of social life in the monasteries which he established at Bradford on the Avon ; at Frome on the little river which bears that name ; at Sher- borne on the borders of the forest country through which the Dorsretas must have been still at this
1 Engl. Chron. a. 652. 2 Engl. Chron. a 658.
3 " Eruditione pliilosophus, professione monachus." — Malm. " Life of Aldhelm " (Angl. Sacr. vol. ii. p. 3 ; Rolls ed., p. 334).
106 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. time pushing their way ; and at Wareham on the
The church coast beside Poole — a point which shows that these
and the .•,,•,,,, Kingdoms, invaders had already advanced at least thus far
659-690. towards the west. The churches he raised at these spots are noteworthy as the first instances of building which we meet with in Wessex, but they had nothing of the rudeness of early work ; architecturally, indeed, they were superior to the famous churches which Benedict Biscop was raising at this time by the banks of the Wear.1 So masterly was their construction that Ealdhelm's churches at Malmesbury and Sherborne were the only churches of this early time that were spared by the Norman architects after the conquest ; while the church which he erected on the scene of Cenwealh's victory at Bradford on Avon, stands in almost perfect preservation to-day. The English While Ealdhelm was thus riming and building
dioceses.
in Wessex, Theodore himself was steadily carrying out the second part of his plans for the organiza- tion of the Church. In the council of Hertford the question of the increase of the episcopate had been debated, but left without formal decision.2 From what we find afterwards it is probable that this absence of any resolve on the part of the
1 Freeman, " King Ine," Somersetshire Archaeological Pro- ceedings, 1874, vol. xx. p. 31.
2 The ninth canon runs — "In commune tractatum est, ut plures Episcopi crescente nuniero n'delium augerentur, sed de hac re ad praesens siluimus." — Stubbs and Haddan, " Councils," voL i. p. 120.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 107
council was owing to the reluctance of most of the CHAP. vn.
bishops concerned to consent to the division of Tto church
1 and the
their dioceses. But Theodore's purpose remained Kingdoms.
unshaken, and the council had no sooner closed 669-690. than he began to carry out his plans. The shape which his present work took, like the shape of his earlier work, was determined by the previous history of the English people. The conquest of the Continent has been wrought either by races such as the Goths, who were already Christian, or by heathens such as the Franks, who bowed to the Christian faith of the nations they conquered. To this oneness of religion between the German in- vaders of the Empire and their Roman subjects was owing the preservation of all that survived of the Roman world. The Church everywhere remained untouched. The Christian bishop became the defender of the conquered Italian or Gaul against the Gothic and Lombard conqueror, the mediator between the German and his subjects, the one bulwark against barbaric violence and oppression. To the barbarian on the other hand he was the representative of all that was venerable in the past, the living record of law, of letters, and of art. But in Britain priesthood and people were exterminated together. When Theodore came to organize the Church of England, the very memory of the older Christian Church which existed in Roman Britain had passed away. The first missionaries to the Englishmen, strangers in
108
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. a heathen land, attached themselves necessarily to
The church the courts of the kings, who were their earliest con-
and the Kingdoms, verts, and whose conversion was generally followed
659-690. by that of their people. The English bishops were thus at first royal chaplains, and their diocese was naturally nothing but the kingdom. The kingdom of Kent became the diocese of Canter- bury, and the kingdom of Northumbria became the diocese of York. So absolutely was this the case that the diocese grew or shrank with the growth or shrinking of the realm which it spiritu- ally represented, and a bishop of Wessex or of Mercia found the limits of his see widened or cut short by the triumphs of Wulfhere or of Ine. In this way too realms \vhich are all but forgotten are commemorated in the limits of existing sees. That of Eochester represented till of late an ob- scure kingdom of West Kent, and the frontier of the original kingdom of Mercia might be recovered by following the map of the ancient bishopric of Lichfield.
To make episcopal rule and supervision a real and living thing over such wide spaces, it was needful that these realm-dioceses should be broken up into smaller sees ; but it was characteristic of the care with which Theodore sought an historical foundation for his work that even in their division he only fell back on the tribal demarcations which lay within the limits of each kingdom. Thus when in 673 he broke up the see of East-Anglia it was
Division of the Mercian diocese.
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110 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vn. by dividing it into dioceses of the North-folk and me Church the South-folk, whose prelates were established at Kingdoms. Dunwich and Elmham.1 He dealt in the same 669-690. way with the huger Mercian diocese by setting a bishop over the Middle English with a see at Leicester ; by establishing at Worcester a bishopric for the Hwiccas of the lower Severn valley ; and another for the far-off Hecanas at Hereford ; while the peoples whom Wulfhere's sword had torn from the kingdom of the West -Saxons, and part of whom at least seem to have been known as the South -Engle, may have been committed to the charge of a bishop at Dorchester on the Thames.2 The see of Lichfield thus returned to its original form of a see of the Mercians proper, though its bounds on the westward now embraced much of the upper Severn valley with Cheshire and the lands northward to the Mersey.
Monastic The division of Mercia seems to have been
' begun in the face of an opposition from Bishop
Winfrid, who held this vast diocese, which was
1 Baeda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 5 ; Flor. Wore. a. 673.
2 The details of this division are obscure (see Haddan and Stubbs, " Councils," iii. 127-130). For Worcester we have Bseda's authority (H. E. iv. 23), as well as for Dorchester (ibid.), though this is disputed by Professor Stubbs (" Councils," iii. 130, note e). The sees of Mercia and the Middle Angles were still both in Sexulf's hands as late as 678, so that the separation of the latter must be later than that year (Baeda, H. E. iv. 12). On Putta's flight from Rochester, in 676, Sexulf gave him possession of a church at Hereford, and there he died (Baeda, H. E. iv. 12) ; but at what exact year the actual bishopric was established we are not told.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 111
only put an end to by Theodore's removal of him CHAP. vn. from his see in 675 : l and years more had to be The church
and the
spent in completing the whole arrangement ; but Kingdoms, throughout Theodore could count on the strenuous 659-690. support of the king. It was possibly indeed the accession of ^Ethelred, who succeeded his brother Wulfhere in 675, that enabled Theodore to begin his work in Mercia in that year.2 ^Ethelred was a king of a temper far other than that of his pre- decessor. Though the first days of his reign were disturbed by a strife with Kent, which was sink- ing more and more into dependence on the Mercian kings, and which seems to have endeavoured to resume its independence on Wulfhere's death, an effort that ended in fresh submission after the destruction of Eochester,3 his temper was peaceful and religious ; and his activity mainly showed itself in a planting and endowment of monastic colonies which gradually transformed the face of the realm. In the monastic movement of this time two strangely contrasted impulses worked together to change the very aspect of the new England and the new English society. The one was the passion for solitude, the first outcome of the religious impulse given by the conversion ; a passion for communing apart with themselves and with God which drove men into waste and wood- land and desolate fen. The other was the equally
1 Baeda, H. E. lib. iv. o. 6. 2 Eng. Chron. a. 675.
3 Bseda, II. E. lib. iv. c. 12.
112 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. new passion for social life on the part of the nation The church at large, the outcome of its settlement and well- Kingdoms, doing on the conquered soil, and yet more of the 659-690. influence of the new religion, coming as it did from the social civilization of the older world, and in- sensibly drawing men together by the very form of its worship and its belief. The first impulse showed itself most vividly in the Irish missionaries, in Aidan's choice of a lonely island for his settle- ment at Lindisfarne ; in Cuthbert's choice of a yet lonelier sandbank for his later hermitage ; in Ceadda's retirement in the quiet solitude of Lich- field ; or in Maidulf's withdrawal to the woods of Malmesbury. But the close of the seventh century had no sooner brought with it its period of peace than the social impulse was quick to undo the work which these solitaries had done. Reverence for their holiness, with a desire to profit by their teaching, drew devotee and scholar alike around them, and the little community had no sooner vindicated the new dignity which Christianity had given to labour by winning field from the forest or meadow from the marsh than it became the centre of a yet wider attraction. The sanctity of such settlements served in these early days of the new religion to ensure for them peace and safety in the midst of whatever war or social trouble might be disturbing the country about them ; and the longing for a life of quiet industry which we see telling from this moment upon the older English
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 113
longing for war l drew men in crowds to these so- CHAP. vn. called monasteries.2 The church
and the
No settlements indeed could be more unlike the Kingdoms, monasteries of later days. A vow of obedience 659-690. and a vow of celibacy sufficed to hold the monks its results. themselves, who formed the nucleus of each, together; and the necessity of labour for their maintenance left their intercourse with the settlers and dependents about them as free as that of other men. So far indeed were these homes from being bound by the strict ties of the Benedictine rule that they were often gathered on the loose Irish model of the family or the clan round some noble and wealthy person who sought devotional retire- ment. The looseness of their discipline, combined with a peculiar usage which in some cases brought monks and nuns together under the rule of the same abbess, exposed these communities at a later time to grave scandals ; and in many cases the establishment of such a monastery was only a pretext under which a lord and his dependents exempted themselves from their national obliga- tions of military service.3 But even in such a case, the new aversion from warfare, the new long- ing for peaceful industry, was shown in the so-
1 Breda, H. E. iv. 3. Vit. Abbat. (Hussey's "Baeda," p. 322).
2 Thus there were six hundred at Wearmoutli soon after its establishment. Bseda, Vit. Abbaturn (Hussey's " Bseda," p. 328).
3 Biiida, Letter to Ecgberht (Hussey's "Bseda," p. ,']38), and II. E. lib. v. c. 23.
VOL. II I
114 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vn. called monastery. Whatever were the causes, The Church however, of this movement, it brought with it a
and the . . . . ,
Kingdoms, transfer and readjustment of population which 659-690. changed the whole face of the country. Here and there it revived the civilization of the past by bringing fresh life to the ruins of a Eoman town. The solitude of its ruins drew to them a hermit, and the sanctity of the hermit drew after him a crowd of disciples and settlers that again brought busy life to its desolation. But it made a more startling revolution by reclaiming the wilder districts which civilization and social life had as yet never visited at all. It broke the dreary line of the northern coast with settlements which proved forerunners of some of our busiest ports. It broke the silence of waste and moor by houses like those of Ripon and Lastingham. It set agri- cultural colonies in the depths of vast woodlands, as at Evesham or Malmesbury, while by a chain of religious houses it made its way step by step into the heart of the fens.
Forest of We can best realize the change which this movement made in Mercia by following it here and there across the face of the country. In the angle between the Cotswolds and the hills which form the eastern boundary of the Severn valley lay the largest of all the forests of Britain. The barren tract of low clays indeed which lay along the base of the Cotswolds was for the most part free from wood, but across the Avon, from the
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 115
site of our Rugby to that of our Evesham, ran a CHAP. vn. line of dense woodland which stretched away The Church northward without a break to the bounds of Kingdoms. Cannock Chase,1 and extended eastward and west- 659-690. ward from the valley of the Severn to the limits of our Leicestershire.2 This was Arden, the forest into whose depths Shakspere could stray centuries later from his childhood's home at Stratford, and in whose glades his fancy placed the scene of one of his loveliest dramas.2 But in Shakspere's day
1 A line of hamlets which bear the name of " Woodend," stretching across Staffordshire, just south of Walsall and Wolverhampton, marks roughly the northern border of Arden. Camden marks one by Shenstone, just south of Lichfield, another close to Walsall, and a third at Sedgely, south of Wolverhampton. But beyond these the ground was still richly studded in Camden's day with outliers of the "Wooland," Walsall Wood, Essington Wood, Kingswood, and the like, which show its extension at an earlier time. See map of Staffordshire in Camden's "Britannia" (ed. 1753), vol. i. p. 633.
2 As late as Elizabeth's time (and Shakspere's time) our Warwickshire was parted into the " Feldon " and the " Woo- land " or Wood-land ; the first a tract of open pastures between the Avon and the Cotswolds ; the second, to the north of the Avon, though not without " pastures and cornfields," yet in the main " clothed with woods " (Camden, "Britannia," ed. 1753, vol. i. 598, 606). The clearing of the " wooland " was in fact only due to the subsequent growth of its iron- works, which " destroyed such prodigious quantities of wood that they laid the country more open, and by degrees made room for the plough," so that " whereas within the memory of man they were supplied witli corn from the Feldon," writes Gibson in 1753, they now grew more corn than they needed. By a curious correlative change, as the soil thus cleared proved far more fertile than the clay lands of the Feldon, the latter, whose " fertile fields of corn and verdant pastures " had delighted ftamden's eye in 1G06, had by Gibson's day become almost wholly pasture land.
3 " As You Like It," act i. sc. i. " (Oliver). Where will the
WEST BRITAIN.
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THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 117
its mass was broken everywhere by the clearings CHAP. vn. of the Warwickshire men : towns were planted in The church
and the
the very heart of its woodlands, and the miner had Kingdoms, thinned its clumps with his forges. No such settle- 659-690. ment or traces of man broke its solitude when the West-Saxons gazed on the skirts of this huge forest after their victory at Deorham. Even the great roads of the island refrained from piercing it, though three of the main lines of communica- tion through Britain ran along its edges. The Fosse Road traversed the open clays between the Avon and the Cotswolds. The Watling Street struck along its north-eastern border from our Rugby to Tamworth. Even the Ryknield Way, which was probably a mere trackway of the earliest times, crept along the western border of the forest beneath the slopes of the Lickey Hills, and only struck across it in its northern and narrower portion past the site of the later Birmingham to the plain of the Tame.
In the broken and volcanic country along the Evesham. northern border of Arden, there was nothing as yet to show the existence of those mineral treasures which nowadays make this district lurid night and day with the glare of iron-foundries, and hideous with their cinder-heaps. All was still wild forest- old duke live ? (Charles). They say he is already in the forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him ; and there they live like the old Koliin Hood of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him every day and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world."
118 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. land where the little settlement of Wolverhampton The Church told of the wolves who carried off the farmers' Kingdoms, sheep and kine into the thickets, while further in 659-690. its depths, unconscious of its after greatness, lay the little ' ham ' of the Beormingas, our Birming- ham. It was only on its south-eastern border, in fact, that life and industry as yet touched this woodland. Here, between the forest edge and the slopes of the Cotswolds, the Avon made its way to the Severn valley, and along the vale of the Avon were scattered a few early settlements. Coventry indeed was not to rise for centuries on its waters ; but Kenilworth and Leamington were, no doubt, even now quiet townships in this dis- trict ; the tribe of the Wearingas must have already set up that ' wick ' of their own which was to give its name of Wearingawick or Warwick to the whole tract when it became shire-land ; Stratford marked the place where the Roman road passed the river by its paved ford on its way to the west ; and a little onward a ' vill ' of the Hwiccan or Mercian kings was rising beside the ruined walls and towers which were all that remained of the Roman Alcester. Heathendom must still have lingered in the mighty woodland when Bishop Ecgwine of Worcester carried the Gospel into its depths ; and we may perhaps see Woden- worshipping miners at Alcester in the daemons of his legend, who drowned the preacher's voice with the din of their hammers. But in spite of their hammers Ecgwine's preaching
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
119
left a lasting trace behind it. The Bishop heard CHAP. vii. how a swineherd, coming out of the dark forest The church
and the
into a sunny glade, saw forms which were possibly Kingdoms, those of the Three Fair Women of the old German 659-690. mythology, seated round a mystic bush, and singing their unearthly song. In Ecgwine's fancy these women transformed themselves into a vision of the Mother of Christ ; and the silent glade soon became the site of an abbey dedicated to her, and of a town which sprang up under its shelter — the Evesham which was to be hallowed in after time by the fall of Earl Simon of Leicester.1
Wilder even than the western woodland was the The Fen. desolate fen-country on the eastern border of the kingdom which stretched from the ' Holland,' the sunk, hollow land of Lincolnshire, to the channel of the Ouse, a wilderness of shallow waters and reedy islets, wrapt in its own dark mist- veil and tenanted only by flocks of screaming wild-fowl. Hero through the liberality of King Wulfhere rose on the western border of the great morass the abbey of Medeshamstead, a community which grew in after time into our Peterborough. On its northern edge an obscure hermit, Botulf, founded a little house which as ages went by became our
1 The abbey was founded in 709 (Haddan and Stubbs, "Councils," iii. 278 ct seq.). A life of Ecgwine may be found in Macray's " Chronicle of Evesham ; " but the rendering of the figures in his vision as the ' Three Women ' is a doubtful suggestion of Mr. Wright. For the chronological difficulties of the story, see Stubbs, Diet. Christ. Biog., art. " Ecgwiue," \'ol. ii. p. 62.
EAST BRITAIN.
Scale of Miles 5 ip 20 30 40 50
British Names Iceni
Roman Names LINDUM
English Names Bedicanford
Modern Names Lincoln
Walker GrBotitaUsc.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 121
Botulf 's town or Boston.1 Further in the fen itself CHAP. vn. the queen of Ecgfrith, .^Ethelthryth or ^Etheldreda, The Church found a refuge from her husband in the low rise Kingdoms, amidst its waters which is crowned nowadays with 659-690. the noble minster of Ely.2 It was in the very heart of the fen that Guthlac, a youth of the royal race of Mercia, sought a refuge from the world in the solitude of Crowland.3 The early life of Guthlac 4 marks the wild barbarism of the times. He spent it after the fashion of young warriors, in private feuds, in sacking and burning town and homestead, and carrying off booty from his foes. Suddenly, as he lay sleepless in the forest among his sleeping war-band, there rose before him the thought of his crimes and of the doom that waited on him. Such thoughts were stirred in many hearts no doubt by the new Christian faith ; but in none did they find a quicker answer. The birds waking with the dawn only roused his comrades to hear Guthlac's farewell. At the abbey of Repton, the burying- place as yet of the royal line of Mercia, he shore off the long hair which marked the noble ; and then, moved by the life of hermit saints which he read there, betook himself to the heart of the fen.
1 Botulf was visited about 670 by Ceolfrid, afterwards Abbot of Wearmouth. Anon. Hist. Abbatuni, Baeda, " Opera Minora" (ed. Stevenson), p. 319.
2 For Ely and its name, see B;cda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 19, where he gives the story of ^Etheldreda.
3 For Crowland, even in the sixteenth century, see Camden's "Britannia" (ed. 1753), vol. i. p. 551.
4 The name of Guthlac was that of his house, the Guth- lac ings.
122. THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. Its birds became his friends ; they perched un- Tho church hindered on shoulder and knee, and rested in the Kingdoms, thatch that covered the little cell he had hollowed 659-690: out in what seems to have been a plundered burial- ground. " He Avho in cleanness of heart is one with God, all things are one with him," commented the recluse ; " he who denies himself the converse of men wins the converse of birds and beasts and the company of angels." But it was harder than Guthlac fancied to escape the converse of men. His solitude was broken by crowds of devotees, by abbot and monk, by thegn and ceorl, as they flocked over the fen to the solitary's cell ; and so great was the reverence which he won that two years after his death the stately abbey of Crow- land was raised over his tomb. Earth was brought in boats to form a site ; the buildings rested on oaken piles driven into the marsh, a stone church replaced the hermit's cell, and the toil of the new brotherhood changed the pools around them into fertile meadow land.1 The Thames If we turn from the Fens to the Thames valley
Valley. J
we see the new religion gathering new centres of social life along the line of the great river. A wild legend, the legend of S. Frideswide, first gives us a glimpse in the midst of the eighth century of the future Oxford, as yet no doubt but a few fisher- men's huts creeping up along the line of the later "Fish Street " from the ford across the Thames to 1 Guthlac's life is printed in Acta Sanct. Boll, at April xi.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 123
the little monastery that had risen over the saint's CHAP. vn. remains ; l and a little further along the river, in The church some meadows beside its southern bank, there had Kingdoms, already risen in the later days of Ealdhelm a re- 669-690. ligious house which was to acquire a far different celebrity from that of Frideswide, the abbey under whose walls grew up the town of Abingdon.2 As Abingdon rose into light, the brief greatness of a spot lower down the river was passing away. The present village of Dorchester probably occupies the site of a Roman borough ; and the dyke that guarded the town, as well as a huge hill-fort of the Britons in its neighbourhood, shows that the spot had been of importance in very early times. Here Birinus fixed the bishop's stool of the West Saxons, and here in the presence of Oswald the West- Saxon king submitted to baptism. But the re- moval of the West-Saxon bishopric to Winchester gave a fatal blow to the place ; and even a later
1 Frideswide is not mentioned by Bseda, but an Anglo-Saxon catalogue of saints states her to have been buried at Oxford, and Domesday shows her canons to have been long established there. Her story first appears in Malmesbury, and is probably a genuine tradition. The expanded lii'e of IMor Philip may be found in the Bollandist " Acta Sanctorum," Oct. viii. p. 560 ; and see article in " Dictionary of Christian Biography," vol. ii. p. 563.
2 The early history of Abingdon is obscure. Hean, a nephew of Cissa, an under-king of our Berkshire in the days of Centwine, seems to have founded the original monastery on folk-land at Abba's dun, "where Chilswell farm now stands," says Professor Bright, " Early English Church History " p. 262. Ine, however, took back the land, and when the house was re- founded twenty years later it was set up on its present site, then called Bheovesham.
124 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vn. transfer to it of the Mercian bishopric failed to The church raise it into importance. Yet further along the
and the .
Kingdoms. Thames valley the great foundation of Henry I. 669-690. had not begun the transformation of the settle- ment of the Eeadings into our thriving Eeading ; nor was Windsor to be crowned for centuries yet by the group of royal and ecclesiastical buildings which preserve the glories of the Plantagenets. But the bishops of the East Saxons were already establishing their home at Fulham ; in the little house amid the marshes of the Tyburn which claimed King Sa?berht as its founder lay a germ of the coming Westminster ; and if no great abbey within its walls, besides its own church of St. Paul, marked the devotion of London, that of its bishop Erconwald was shown by his two foundations ; one for himself at Chertsey, the first trace of life we have as yet encountered in the new Surrey ; the other for his sister ^Ethelburh at Barking. The legends of Barking, as Ba?da has preserved them, are full of the poetry of monastic life, of those visions of angelic glory, those sounds of angelic music, that gave beauty to its very trivialities. Light above all was the plaything of this religious fancy. It was the resting of an unearthly bright- ness on the spot that guided the nuns of Barking in the choice of their burial-ground ; the light, they said, that was to receive the. souls of its handmaidens had shown the place where their bodies should rest till the rising again. " Let
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 125
your candle burn as it may," murmured a sister of CHAP. vii.
the same house to those who watched her dying The church
J and the
through the night, " it is no light of mine ; my Kingdoms.
light will come to me at the dawn of day ! " The 659-690. body of their dead abbess as the nuns in vision saw it floating heavenward glowed with a celestial splendour beyond the sun.1
In a survey of the rest of the Mercian kingdom Mid-Britain. we meet with little more than names, but even names have a living interest when they reveal to us for the first time the existence of communities which have lived on for a thousand years since, and form actual elements in the England of to- day. As we pass from the valley of the Thames to the valley of the Severn we find that a new English borough, the borough of Cirencester, has already sprung to life on the wreck of the Eoman Corinium.2 The foundation of a monastery by an under-king of the Hwiccas within its walls reveals to us the springing up of a like new life in another of the cities which had been wrecked by Ceawlin's inroad, the city of Bath.3 Gloucester, though we do not hear of it as yet, may have been growing into being on the site of the third city which defied the West-Saxon king, that of Glevum ; but the new masters of the lower Severn valley seem to have found their centre higher up the river, on
1 Breda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 7, 8.
2 Eng. Cliron. a. (!28.
3 A monastery at Hath was founded by this under-king Osric in 676.
126 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. the very border of the forest of Wyre, in a town The Church whose existence the establishment of one of Theo-
and the
Kingdoms, dore's bishoprics discloses to us, the town of 659-690. Wyre-ceaster or Worcester.1 If we pass from the Severn to Mid-Britain itself, we find as yet no mention of Northampton on the upland that now bears its name, nor any trace of the return of life to the ruins of Towcester; but Medeshamstede, as we have seen, was already rising where the up- land sloped to the fen, and the little monastery of Oundle shows that life was pushing still higher up the valley of the Nen. Along the Trent itself we find few traces of the new social impulse, though Eepton had been called to life on its upper waters by the withdrawal of Abbess ^Ifrida to a religious life ; arid further along the river a like house had gathered at Burton. But the Mercian kings were already established at Tarn worth ; the Pecseetan had no doubt found a centre in the North-weor- thig which has become our Derby, and the Middle-Engle in our Leicester ; while on the great rise to the south of the Humber we see not only communities established at Sidnacester and Bard- ney, but a new borough of the Lindiswaras, with a stone church founded by Paulinus as its spiritual centre, growing up amongst the ruins of the Roman Lindum.2
1 Worcester was from the first the seat of the Hwiccian bishopric.
2 Ikeda, H. E. lib. ii. c. 16. " Lindocolinse civitatis. "
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 127
Such was the Mercia whose ecclesiastical organ- CHAP. vn. ization Theodore was still engaged in completing, The church when in 678 he was invited by King Ecgfrith to Kingdoms, undertake a like organization of Northumbria.1 659-690.
Isolated as it had now become from the rest of Ecgfrith of
North- Britain, Northumbria was far from having sunk umbna.
from its old renown either in government or war. It still remained, indeed, first among the English states. Ecgfrith had succeeded his father Oswiu in 670,2 and though he made no effort to reverse his father's policy as regards Southern Britain, or to attempt to build up again a supremacy over its states, he showed himself resolute to enlarge the bounds of his kingdom by conquests over the Welsh. The Welsh states across the western moors had owned, at least from Oswald's time, the Northumbrian siipremacy, but little actual advance had been made by the English in this quarter since the victory of Chester, and north- ward of the Kibble the land between the moors and the sea still formed a part of the British kingdom of Cumbria. It was from this tract, from what we now know as northern Lancashire and the Lake district, that Ecgfrith's armies chased the Britons in the early years of his reign.3 The
1 Eddi, "Life of Wilfrid," c. xxiv. " Theodorum cum muneribus . . . invitaveruiit."
2 Breda, II. E. iv. f>.
3 This conquest, like the after conquest of the Ficts, lies between his accession in 070 and his strife with Wulfliere of Mercia in G75. Kee Kddi, " Life of Wilfrid," c. x.\.
128 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. British clergy still fled before the conqueror's
The church sword, and from the sacred spots which they de-
and the J
Kingdoms, serted large grants were made by Ecgfrith to the
669-690. see of York in the country between the Ribble and the Mersey, in Amounderness, and in Cart- mell, or the vale of the Duddon,1 the three districts which together make up our present Lancashire;2 but there was no break in the general policy of the later English conquests, and the rest of the British population remained as tributaries on the soil.3
1 Wilfrid claimed for his see, " ea loca sancta in diversis regionibus, quae clerus Brytannus, aciem gladii hostilis manu gentis nostrse fugiens, deseruit. Erat quippe Deo placabile donum, quod religiosi reges tarn multas terras Deo ad servien- dum pontifici nostro coiiscripserimt ; et haec sunt nomina regionum juxta Rippel, et in Gaedyne, et in regione Dunutinga, et in Caetlaevum, in cseterisque locis." — Eddi, " Life of Wil- frid," c. xvii. Mr. Raine in a note on this passage of Eddi says : " Peter of Blois in his missing life of Wilfrid describes these districts tlms : ' Scilicet Rible et Hasmundesham et Marchesise ' (Leland, Coll. ed. 1774, iii. p. 110). By these he seems to mean Amounderness in north Lancashire, and the ' terra inter Rip- ham et Mersham ' (Domes. Book), the country between the Ribble and the Mersey." He points out too that if Gaedyne be identified with Gilling near Richmond, and Dunutinga, or as Peter of Blois calls it, Duninga, with the country watered by the river Duddon, as well as Caetlaevum with Cartmell, we should have in these districts the whole of the western part of the archdeaconry of Richmond, and thus account for their ecclesiastical connection through it with the see of York.
2 Cartmell is that district of Lancashire which, isolated from the rest of the county, lies north of Ulverston Bay ; while Amounderuess may at this time have included the whole tract between the Lune and the Ribble. See Camden's " Britannia " (1753), vol. ii. p. 975, where Amounderness is made to include the Fylde.
3 Sim. Durh., Historia de S. Cuthberto ; Twysden, Dec. Script, p. 69. King Ecgfrith gave " Cartmell et omnes Britan- nos cum eo " to St. Cuthbert.
BRITAIN NORTH OF THE WASH
s?
British Names Drigantes, Bryneich
am Roman Names EBORACUM
English Names Eoforwick
Modern Names York
f>Lindisfarne ' Holy I.
ebbanburh Baniborough
SHGEDUNUM, Wallsend rrow
rv> */>> RATAE. Leg Leicester
VOL. II
130 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. By the conquest of this western district North-
The Church umbria now stretched uninterruptedly from sea to
and the Kingdoms, sea, from the southern border of Elmet as far north
659-690. as the city of Carlisle. Carlisle is of interest as Triumphs the first instance which we have met with of a
overPicts . .
and city in which there seems to have been no break
Mercians.
of municipal life as it passed into English hands. Only a few years after its conquest by Ecgfrith we find a monastery founded there ; l while the city itself and its district became part of the possessions of the see of Lindisfarne,2 and it is as he stands by its Roman fountain that Cuthbert hears the news of Nectansmere. But the conquest of this district was quickly followed by fresh gains in the north, where Ecgfrith attacked with the same success both the Scots beyond Clydes- dale and the Picts over the Firth of Forth.3 The war indeed in this quarter was forced on him by the Picts, who rose against the yoke of tribute to which they had submitted under Oswiu, and marched with an army which seems to have been gathered from their whole territory in the High- lands on the English border. Ecgfrith met the attack with a comparatively small force, but his
1 Boeda, "Life of Cuthbert," c. xxvii. It seems probable that after Ecgfrith's death his queen entered this monastery. Ibid. c. xxviii.
2 Sim. Durh. Hist. Dun. Ecc. i. c. 9. "Lugubaliam quoe Luel vocatur in circuitu quiudecim milliaria habentem in augmentum suscepit " (Cuthbertus).
3 Eddi, c. xxi. " Triumphos ad Aquilonem super Brittones et Scottos."
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 131
victory was so complete that as the Northumbrian CHAP. vn. Chronicler tells us, two rivers were filled with The Church the corpses of the slain, and the Picts were reduced Kingdoms, to so complete a subjection that their territory on 659-690. the northern bank of the Forth was reckoned from this time as Northumbrian ground.1 How far Ecgfrith would have pushed his conquests in this quarter had his hands been left free we cannot tell, but the war with the Picts was hardly over when he was forced to meet a more formid- able attack on his southern frontier. Wulfhere, as we have seen, had carried the supremacy of Mercia not only over the whole of Mid-Britain, but even as far as the British Channel ; and it was as the practical master of all Britain south of the Humber, and with a force drawn from every one of its peoples, that he marched on Northumbria with a demand of subjection and tribute.2 Ecgfrith however was as successful against the Mercians as against the Picts, and though as before his army was inferior in number to that of his opponents, after a bloody encounter he drove Wulfhere from the field, and forced the Mercian king in turn not only to surrender the land of the Lindiswaras, which he had taken from Oswiu in
1 Eilcli. c. xix.
2 Eddi, c. xx. " Ulfharius rex Merciorum . . omnes australes populos adversum regmini nostrum concitans, non tarn ad b<;llandiim quam ad redigendum sub tribute, servili ammo, non regento Deo, proponebat."
132 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vn. that king's later days,1 but to pay tribute to
The Church Northumbria.2
Kingdoms. The death of Wulfhere, which immediately 659-690. followed this triumph, in 675, and the accession
its monastic of the more peaceful ^Ethelred, removed for the time all pressure from the south, and left North- umbria free to carry on a work of industrial development, which was producing results even more striking than those which we have already watched in Mid-Britain. Here as there the move- ment was in name a monastic one, but the establishment of the monastic colonies which carried life and culture over the land was furthered in the north more than elsewhere by the enormous sweeps of waste which still made up the bulk of Northumbria. Nowhere was this waste so con- tinuous as along the eastern coast. Save at the passage of the Tyne, where the ./^Elian bridge must now have been dropping into decay, hardly a single settlement had been made along this coast under the Roman rule ; and though the Engle conquerors had planted their hams and tuns along its river-valleys, such as those of the Tweed or the Tyne, and had set a few fishing-villages along the shore, the bulk of the country was still untilled and unclaimed of man, and thus passed into the folk-land which lay at the disposal of the
1 Bzecla, H. E. lib. iv. c. 3.
2 " Occisis iumimeris regem fugavit, regnumque ejus sub tribute distribnit." — Eddi, c. xx. Bseda, H. E. iv. 12.
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 133
Northumbrian kings. Though Edinburgh had CHAP. vn. been an English fortress since the days of Eadwine. The church
and the
and we already catch sight of Dunbar looking out Kingdoms, over its stormy seas,1 the whole space between 659-690. them, north of the Lammermoor, was still folk- land in Oswald's day, when it was granted to the monastery at Lindisfarne.2 It was from the waste country south of the Lammermoor that lands almost as wide were bestowed by Oswiu on a monastery which Ebba was establishing on the coast at Coldingham, as well as on the house of Melrose. The whole of the pastoral country on the banks of the Bowmont between the forest of Jedburgh and the Cheviots seems to have been first reclaimed when it was granted by Oswiu to Cuthbert during his abode at Melrose.3 South of the Tweed as far as Bamborough, and reaching inland as far as the valley of the Till, lay as desolate a region, which formed part of the domain that Oswald carved out of his folk-land for the neighbouring holy island of Lindisfarne.4 Lesser tracts were carved out of the district which Ave now call Durham, and which remained for centuries a wild and almost uninhabited moorland, for the little houses along its shore at
1 Eddi, c. xxxviii., where King Ecgfritli sends Wilfrid a prisoner in "urbem suam I>ynlucr."
2 Hist, de 8. Cuthberto ; Twys.len, Dec. Script., col. 68.
3 Hodgson Hindu on " Lotbiau." Archauul. Journ. vol. xiv. p. 311.
* Hist, de S. Cuthb. ; Twysdeu, Dec. Script., col. 69.
134 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND
CHAP. vii. Ebb-chester and Hartlepool ; while the grants of
The Church Ecgfrith and Oswiu to Wearmouth and to Whitby
and the , c Kingdoms, show that the coast district preserved the same
669-690. character away to the south ; in fact, when de- scribing the. site which King Oidilwald gave for the monastery of Lastingham in the moorlands which are now known as the forest of Pickering, Baeda calls it a place "which looked more like a lurking-place for robbers and a retreat for wild beasts than a habitation for man." l
Their Of these colonies the northernmost, save a
character, little house at Tyningham beside Dunbar, was the monastery which Ebba founded at Coldingham, to the south of the great promontory which still preserves her memory in its name of St. Abb's Head. Ebba was of the royal line, a daughter of ^Ethelfrith and a sister of Oswald and Oswiu;2 and the character which her double house of monks and nuns took even during her life-time shows how much stronger a part was played in these settlements by the social than by the religious impulse. " I have looked into every one's chamber and beds," a heavenly