Chapter II.

The Rule Of The Saxons To The Invasion Of The Danes (449--832).

Discord prevailed in Britain. The petty rival chiefs, sometimes triumphant, sometimes defeated, united in vain against the Picts and Scots, whom the Roman walls no longer impeded now that the Roman power had disappeared. {25} In this disorder, the Britons were dwindling in numbers day by day, when Vortigern, chief of Kent, conceived the project of calling to his assistance the Saxons, a famous people who inhabited the northern coasts of Germany and Denmark and extended their power even to a portion of the territory now known as Holland. Several tribes were descended from a common origin. The Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons (properly so called) all led the life of pirates, and many a time had they suddenly appeared upon the coasts of Britain or of Gaul, scattering terror among the inhabitants, whose houses they pillaged and burnt, killing all who resisted them. For a long time they risked their lives and sported with the dangers of the sea in mere skiffs; but in 449, when Vortigern called to his aid two celebrated pirates among the Jutes, named Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon vessels were long, strongly built, and capable of carrying a considerable number of men and of wrestling with the fury of the waves. The pirates responded promptly to the appeal, and for some time they faithfully observed their engagements, driving the Picts and Scots back into their territory and fighting for Vortigern against his British enemies. It is related that the Saxon Hengist, having fortified himself at Thong-Caster, situated in the county of Lincoln, gave there a feast to King Vortigern. Hengist had sent for his daughter, the beautiful Rowena, who, bending the knee before the British sovereign, offered him the cup of welcome. Her beauty enchanted Vortigern, and he could not rest until he had obtained her hand.

Whether from a weakness for the father of his wife, or from gratitude for services, or from the impossibility of ridding himself of the allies whom he had sent for, Vortigern permitted Hengist to establish himself in the isle of Thanet; and gradually fresh vessels arrived bringing reinforcements for the foreign colony. {26} Angles followed Jutes; and the Britons began to be anxious about these powerful neighbors. At the first quarrel swords were drawn from their scabbards. Their blades were equally good and keen; for the Britons had derived their military equipments from the Romans, and the Saxons, passionately fond of iron, attached more importance to their arms than to any other possession. But the Britons had been weakened by their old dissensions; the Saxons allied themselves with the Picts and Scots, against whom they had been originally called to fight, and several indecisive battles ended in a truce. It is even related that the two parties being assembled at a banquet at Stonehenge, on the 1st of May, Hengist cried out to the Saxons, in their language, "Draw your swords!" and, at the same moment, the long knives concealed under the garments of the Saxons were plunged into the hearts of their entertainers. Vortigern alone was spared, no doubt at the intercession of Rowena. The war began; the Britons were defeated, and Eric, son of Hengist, became in 457 the first Saxon king of the county of Kent, the Isle of Wight, and that part of the coast of Hampshire which faces that island.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Britons were not heretics, but with the independence which always characterized their race they differed from Rome and from the Eastern Church upon various points of little importance in themselves, though they had often created divisions in Christendom. {30} For no reason that has come down to us the Britons celebrated Easter in accordance with the customs of the Eastern Church--that is to say, at the fourteenth day of the moon, whatever might be the day on which that event fell, in imitation of the Jews who on that day offered up the Paschal lamb. The Western Church, on the contrary, postponed the celebration of Easter till the Sunday following. Nothing more was needed to breed dissensions between the British bishops and the missionaries despatched from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great. For some years previously, Gregory, not yet become a bishop, and being in fact only a simple priest, passing through the slave-market in Rome, had been struck by the handsome appearance of some young persons offered there for sale. Learning that they belonged to the race of Angles, or Saxons, "They would not be Angles but angels," he exclaimed, "if they were Christians;" and he conceived the project of going himself to preach the faith of Jesus Christ to a people so well endowed by nature. His friends were only able to prevail on him to renounce his intention by inducing the Pope to forbid his departure from Rome. When in his turn he was elevated to the episcopal dignity in the most important see of the Western Church, he did not forget the Saxons whose conversion had previously occupied his thoughts. He endeavored first to inflame with his zeal the young slaves whom he had caused to be placed in convents; but the Saxons were apparently not disposed to become Missionaries, for in the year 595 the Pope despatched to Britain a young monk named Augustine, prior of the Convent of St. Andrew at Rome, accompanied by forty friars. They took the road towards Gaul; but they had scarcely arrived at Aix, when they heard such terrible accounts of the ferocity of the Anglo-Saxons that they were alarmed and wrote to the Pope to ask his leave to retrace their footsteps. Gregory, on the contrary, encouraged them to persevere in their enterprise, and furnished with interpreters by the good offices of Brunehaut, who was reigning over Austrasia in the name of her grandsons, they arrived in 597 in the Isle of Thanet. Augustine sent immediately one of his monks to Ethelbert, king of Kent, announcing his intention of coming to preach Christianity to his court.

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The place could not have been better chosen. A powerful prince in his domains, Ethelbert was their Bretwalda, or general chief of all the Heptarchy. This title, which was in no way well defined, but which conferred a certain influence in the counsels of the seven Saxon states, seems to have been accorded to a kind of merit understood by all. Two chiefs had already borne it before Ethelbert-- Ella, first king of Sussex, and Ceawlin, king of Wessex. The new Bretwalda was a pagan, but he had married a Christian wife, Bertha, daughter of Charibert, king of Paris: she had reserved to herself the free exercise of her religion; a French bishop had even accompanied her. Ethelbert had no repugnance towards Christianity and he consented to receive the Roman missionaries. "Be careful to grant them an audience in the open air," said the pagan priests, however; "their maledictions will be less powerful there than under a roof." It was therefore in the open field that the Saxon Bretwalda awaited the approach of the Christian priests. They advanced bearing a crucifix and a banner on which was painted the image of the Saviour. They made the air resound with their grave canticles. The imagination of the barbarians was no doubt struck by these ceremonies, and when Augustine by the aid of an interpreter, had explained to the king the leading doctrines of the Christian faith and asked permission to preach to his subjects the religion which they had come to proclaim to him, Ethelbert mildly replied, "I am not disposed to abandon the gods of my fathers for an unknown and uncertain faith; but since your intentions are good and your words full of gentleness, you can speak freely to my people. {32} I will prevent any one interfering with you, and will furnish food to you and your monks." Augustine overjoyed, directed his steps towards the neighboring city of Canterbury, which he entered chanting, "O Eternal Father, we supplicate Thee according to Thy mercy turn Thy anger from this city and from Thy sacred place, for we have sinned. Alleluia!"

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

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

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

[Image] Augustine preaching to Ethelbert.

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

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

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

One day when he was alone, the door of his apartment opened, and Paulinus entering softly placed his hand upon his head. "Dost thou remember?" he asked, and the Saxon, falling on his knees, promised to do whatever he should desire. Still thoughtful and prudent, however, while accepting baptism for himself, he reserved the right of his subjects to act as might seem well to them. The Council of Wise Men or Aldermen was called together, and the king having informed them of his change of faith, as the basis of a new doctrine, asked them what they thought of it. The chief of the priests was there, and spoke first. {35} "Our gods are powerless," he said; "I have served them with more zeal and fidelity than all the people, yet I am neither richer nor more honored. I am weary of the gods."

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

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

During the struggles which recommenced after the death of Edwin, three kingdoms fortified themselves, and took the lead over the others. These were Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. {36} These three divisions of the Heptarchy were predominant in the year 800, when Egbert, prince of Wessex, returned to his country after a long exile. He had passed a considerable portion of the time at the court of Charlemagne, and had thus acquired a development of intellect and of knowledge rare at that time among the Saxon princes. The first part of his reign was peaceful; but from the year 809 forward, the sword of Egbert was drawn from the scabbard, and for many years he pursued his conquests from kingdom to kingdom. He had already extended his dominion over the British people of Cornwall, who had consented to pay him tribute, when he subjugated Mercia and the kingdom of Kent, Essex, and East Anglia. He had carried his victorious arms up to the frontiers of Northumbria. The chiefs, anxious and already beaten in anticipation, came to meet him, recognizing him for their sovereign, and promising him obedience. Egbert accepted their homage, and retired without fighting a battle. Nearly the whole Heptarchy had accepted his laws, and the title of Bretwalda had conferred upon him an authority more considerable than in the case of any of his predecessors. He continued, however, to assume the simple title of king of Wessex. He reigned until the year 836, happy and powerful; but the last years of his reign were troubled by the first invasions of the Danes. Egbert repulsed them with glory; but if he had possessed a spark of the almost prophetic foresight of Charlemagne, he would have wept, like the Frankish hero, over the infinite woes with which these men from the North menaced his country.

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