Part 3

With the accession of AEthelred, the "Redeless," as he was afterwards called from his inability to discern good counsel from evil, and the consistent incapacity of his policy, an evil time began. The retirement from public life of Edgar's old minister Dunstan was the first event of the new reign, and no man of capacity came forward to take his place. The factions which had prevailed during the reign of Edward "the Martyr" seem to have continued to rage during his brother's minority, yet AEthelred's earliest years were his least disastrous. It was hoped that when he came to man's estate things would improve, but the reverse was the case. The first personal action recorded of him is an unjust harrying of the goods of his own subjects, when he besieged Rochester because he had quarrelled with its bishop over certain lands, and was bribed to depart with 100 pounds of silver. Yet from 978 to 991 no irreparable harm came to England; the machinery for government and defence which his ancestors had established seemed fairly competent to defend the realm even under a wayward and incapable king. Two or three small descents of vikings are recorded, but the ravaging was purely local, and the invader soon departed. No trouble occurred in the Danelagh, where the old tendency of the inhabitants to take sides with their pagan kinsmen from over the sea appears to have completely vanished. But the vikings had apparently learnt by small experiments that England was no longer guarded as she had been in the days of Alfred or AEthelstan, and in 991 the first serious invasion of AEthelred's reign took place. A large fleet came ashore in Essex, and, after a hard fight with the ealdorman Brihtnoth at Maldon, slew him and began to ravage the district north of the Thames. Instead of making a desperate attempt to drive them off, the king bribed them to depart with 10,000 pounds of silver, accepting it is said this cowardly advice from archbishop Sigeric. The fatal precedent soon bore fruit: the invaders came back in larger numbers, headed by Olaf Tryggveson, the celebrated adventurer who afterwards made himself king of Norway, and who was already a pretender to its throne. He was helped by Sweyn, king of Denmark, and the two together laid siege to London in 994, but were beaten off by the citizens. Nevertheless AEthelred for a second time stooped to pay tribute, and bought the departure of Dane and Norwegian with 16,000 pounds of silver. There was a precarious interval of peace for three years after, but in 997 began a series of invasions led by Sweyn which lasted for seventeen years, and at last ended in the complete subjection of England and the flight of AEthelred to Normandy. It should be noted that the invader during this period was no mere adventurer, but king of all Denmark, and, after Olaf Tryggveson's death in 1000, king of Norway also. His power was something far greater than that of the Guthrums and Anlafs of an earlier generation, and--in the end of his life at least--he was aiming at political conquest, and not either at mere plunder or at finding new settlements for his followers. But if the strength of the invader was greater than that of his predecessors, AEthelred also was far better equipped for war than his ancestors of the 9th century. He owned, and he sometimes used--but always to little profit--a large fleet, while all England instead of the mere realm of Wessex was at his back. Any one of the great princes of the house of Egbert who had reigned from 871 to 975, would have fought a winning fight with such resources, and it took nearly twenty years of AEthelred's tried incapacity to lose the game. He did, however, succeed in undoing all the work of his ancestors, partly by his own slackness and sloth, partly by his choice of corrupt and treacherous ministers. For the two ealdormen whom he delighted to honour and placed at the head of his armies, AElfric and Eadric Streona, are accused, the one of persistent cowardice, the other of underhand intrigue with the Danes. Some of the local magnates made a desperate defence of their own regions, especially Ulfkytel of East Anglia, a Dane by descent; but the central government was at fault. AEthelred's army was always at the wrong place--"if the enemy were east then was the _fyrd_ held west, and if they were north then was our force held south." When AEthelred did appear it was more often to pay a bribe to the invaders than to fight. Indeed the _Danegeld_, the tax which he raised to furnish tribute to the invaders, became a regular institution: on six occasions at least AEthelred bought a few months of peace by sums ranging from 10,000 to 48,000 pounds of silver.

Canute.

At last in the winter of 1013-1014, more as it would seem from sheer disgust at their king's cowardice and incompetence than because further resistance was impossible, the English gave up the struggle and acknowledged Sweyn as king. First Northumbria, then Wessex, then London yielded, and AEthelred was forced to fly over seas to Richard, duke of Normandy, whose sister he had married as his second wife. But Sweyn survived his triumph little over a month; he died suddenly at Gainsborough on the 3rd of February 1014. The Danes hailed his son Canute, a lad of eighteen, as king, but many of the English, though they had submitted to a hard-handed conqueror like Sweyn, were not prepared to be handed over like slaves to his untried successor. There was a general rising, the old king was brought over from Normandy, and Canute was driven out for a moment by force of arms. He returned next year with a greater army to hear soon after of AEthelred's death (1016). The witan chose Edmund "Ironside," the late king's eldest son, to succeed him, and as he was a hard-fighting prince of that normal type of his house to which his father had been such a disgraceful exception, it seemed probable that the Danes might be beaten off. But AEthelred's favourite Eadric Streona adhered to Canute, fearing to lose the office and power that he had enjoyed for so long under AEthelred, and prevailed on the magnates of part of Wessex and Mercia to follow his example. For a moment the curious phenomenon was seen of Canute reigning in Wessex, while Edmund was making head against him with the aid of the Anglo-Danes of the "Five Boroughs" and Northumbria. There followed a year of desperate struggle: the two young kings fought five pitched battles, fortune seemed to favour Edmund, and the traitor Eadric submitted to him with all Wessex. But the last engagement, at Assandun (Ashingdon) in Essex went against the English, mainly because Eadric again betrayed the national cause and deserted to the enemy.

Edmund was so hard hit by this last disaster that he offered to divide the realm with Canute; they met on the isle of Alney near Gloucester, and agreed that the son of AEthelred should keep Wessex and all the South, London and East Anglia, while the Dane should have Northumbria, the "five boroughs" and Eadric's Mercian earldom. But ere the year was out Edmund died: secretly murdered, according to some authorities, by the infamous Eadric. The witan of Wessex made no attempt to set on the throne either one of the younger sons of AEthelred by his Norman wife, or the infant heir of Edmund, but chose Canute as king, preferring to reunite England by submission to the stranger rather than to continue the disastrous war.

They were wise in so doing, though their motive may have been despair rather than long-sighted policy. Canute became more of an Englishman than a Dane: he spent more of his time in his island realm than in his native Denmark. He paid off and sent home the great army with whose aid he had won the English crown, retaining only a small bodyguard of "house-carls" and trusting to the loyalty of his new subjects. There was no confiscation of lands for the benefit of intrusive Danish settlers. On the contrary Canute had more English than Danish courtiers and ministers about his person, and sent many Englishmen as bishops and some even as royal officers to Denmark. It is strange to find that--whether from policy or from affection--he married King AEthelred's young widow Emma of Normandy, though she was somewhat older than himself--so that his son King Harthacnut and that son's successor Edward the Confessor, the heir of the line of Wessex, were half-brothers. It might have been thought likely that the son of the pagan Sweyn would have turned out a mere hard-fighting viking. But Canute developed into a great administrator and a friend of learning and culture. Occasionally he committed a harsh and tyrannical act. Though he need not be blamed for making a prompt end of the traitor Eadric Streona and of Uhtred, the turbulent earl of Northumbria, at the commencement of his reign, there are other and less justifiable deeds of blood to be laid to his account. But they were but few; for the most part his administration was just and wise as well as strong and intelligent.

As long as he lived England was the centre of a great Northern empire, for Canute reconquered Norway, which had lapsed into independence after his father's death, and extended his power into the Baltic. Moreover, all the so-called Scandinavian colonists in the Northern Isles and Ireland owned him as overlord. So did the Scottish king Malcolm, and the princes of Wales and Strathclyde. The one weak point in his policy that can be detected is that he left in the hands of Malcolm the Bernician district of Lothian, which the Scot had conquered during the anarchy that followed the death of AEthelred. The battle of Carham (1018) had given this land to the Scots, and Canute consented to draw the border line of England at the Tweed instead of at the Firth of Forth, when Malcolm did him homage. Strangely enough it was this cession of a Northumbrian earldom to the Northern king that ultimately made Scotland an English-speaking country. For the Scottish kings, deserting their native Highlands, took to dwelling at Edinburgh among their new subjects, and first the court and afterwards the whole of their Lowland subjects were gradually assimilated to the Northumbrian nucleus which formed both the most fertile and the most civilized portion of their enlarged realm.

The fact, that England recovered with marvellous rapidity from the evil effects of AEthelred's disastrous reign, and achieved great wealth and prosperity under Canute, would seem to show that the ravages of Sweyn, widespread and ruthless though they had been, had yet fallen short of the devastating completeness of those of the earlier vikings. He had been more set on exacting tribute than on perpetrating wanton massacres. A few years of peace and wise administration seem to have restored the realm to a satisfactory condition. A considerable mass of his legislation has survived to show Canute's care for law and order.

Canute died in 1035, aged not more than forty or forty-one. The crown was disputed between his two sons, the half-brothers Harold and Harthacnut; it was doubtful whether the birth of the elder prince was legitimate, and Queen Emma strove to get her own son Harthacnut preferred to him. In Denmark the younger claimant was acknowledged by the whole people, but in England the Mercian and Northumbrian earls chose Harold as king, and Wessex only fell to Harthacnut. Both the young kings were cruel, dissolute and wayward, most unworthy sons of a wise father. It was to the great profit of England that they died within two years of each other, the elder in 1040, the younger in 1042.

Edward the Confessor.

Harold.

On Harthacnut's death he was succeeded not by any Danish prince but by his half-brother Edward, the elder son of AEthelred and Emma, whom he had entertained at his court, and had apparently designated as his heir, for he had no offspring. There was an end of the empire of Canute, for Denmark fell to the great king's nephew, Sweyn Estrithson, and Norway had thrown off the Danish yoke. Engaged in wars with each other, Dane and Norseman had no leisure to think of reconquering England. Hence Edward's accession took place without any friction. He reigned, but did not rule, for twenty-four years, though he was well on in middle age before he was crowned. Of all the descendants of Alfred he was the only one who lived to see his sixtieth birthday--the house of Wessex were a short-lived race. In character he differed from all his ancestors--he had Alfred's piety without his capacity, and AEthelred's weakness without his vices. The mildest of men, a crowned monk, who let slip the reins of government from his hands while he busied himself in prayer and church building, he lowered the kingly power to a depth to which it had never sunk before in England. His sole positive quality, over and above his piety, was a love for his mother's kin, the Normans. He had spent his whole life from 1013 to 1040 as an exile at the court of Rouen, and was far more of a Norman than an Englishman. It was but natural, therefore, that he should invite his continental relatives and the friends of his youth to share in his late-coming prosperity. But when he filled his court with them, made them earls and bishops, and appointed one of them, Robert of Jumieges, to the archbishopric of Canterbury, his undisguised preference for strangers gave no small offence to his English subjects. In the main, however, the king's personal likes and dislikes mattered little to the realm, since he had a comparatively small share in its governance. He was habitually overruled and dominated by his earls, of whom three, Leofric, Godwine and Siward--all old servants of Canute--had far more power than their master. Holding respectively the great earldoms of West Mercia, Wessex and Northumbria, they reigned almost like petty sovereigns in their domains, and there seemed some chance that England might fall apart into semi-independent feudal states, just as France had done in the preceding century. The rivalries and intrigues of these three magnates constitute the main part of the domestic politics of Edward's reign. Godwine, whose daughter had wedded the king, was the most forcible and ambitious of the three, but his pre-eminence provoked a general league against him and in 1051 he was cast out of the kingdom with his sons. In the next year he returned in arms, raised Wessex in revolt, and compelled the king to in-law him again, to restore his earldom, and to dismiss with ignominy the Norman favourites who were hunted over seas. The old earl died in 1053, but was succeeded in power by his son Harold, who for thirteen years maintained an unbroken mastery over the king, and ruled England almost with the power of a regent. There seems little doubt that he aspired to be Edward's successor: there was no direct heir to the crown, and the nearest of kin was ah infant, Edgar, the great-nephew of the reigning sovereign and grandson of Edmund Ironside. England's experience of minors on the throne had been unhappy--Edwy and AEthelred the Redeless were warnings rather than examples. Moreover, Harold had before his eye as a precedent the displacement of the effete Carolingian line in France, by the new house of Robert the Strong and Hugh Capet, seventy years before. He prepared for the crisis that must come at the death of Edward the Confessor by bestowing the governance of several earldoms upon his brothers. Unfortunately for him, however, the eldest of them, Tostig, proved the greatest hindrance to his plans, provoking wrath and opposition wherever he went by his high-handedness and cruelty.

Harold's governance of the realm seems to have been on the whole successful. He put down the Scottish usurper Macbeth with the swords of a Northumbrian army, and restored Malcolm III. to the throne of that kingdom (1055-1058). He led an army into the heart of Wales to punish the raids of King Griffith ap Llewelyn, and harried the Welsh so bitterly that they put their leader to death, and renewed their homage to the English crown (1063). He won enthusiastic devotion from the men of Wessex and the South, but in Northumbria and Mercia he was less liked. His experiment in taking the rule of these earldoms out of the hands of the descendants of Siward and Leofric proved so unsuccessful that he had to resign himself to undoing it. Ultimately one of Leofric's grandsons, Edwin, was left as earl of Mercia, and the other, Morcar, became earl of Northumbria instead of Harold's unpopular brother Tostig. It was on this fact that the fortune of England was to turn, for in the hour of crisis Harold was to be betrayed by the lords of the Midlands and the North.

Origin of the Norman Conquest.

Somewhere about the end of his period of ascendancy, perhaps in 1064, Harold was sailing in the Channel when his ship was driven ashore by a tempest near the mouth of the Somme. He fell into the hands of William the Bastard, duke of Normandy, King Edward's cousin and best-loved relative. The duke brought him to Rouen, and kept him in a kind of honourable captivity till he had extorted a strange pledge from him. William alleged that his cousin had promised to make him his heir, and to recommend him to the witan as king of England. He demanded that Harold should swear to aid him in the project. Fearing for his personal safety, the earl gave the required oath, and sailed home a perjured man, for he had assuredly no intention of keeping the promise that had been extorted from him. Within two years King Edward expired (Jan. 5, 1066) after having recommended Harold as his successor to the thegns and bishops who stood about his death-bed. The witan chose the earl as king without any show of doubt, though the assent of the Mercian and Northumbrian earls must have been half-hearted. Not a word was said in favour of the claim of the child Edgar, the heir of the house of Alfred, nothing (of course) for the preposterous claim of William of Normandy. Harold accepted the crown without a moment's hesitation, and at once prepared to defend it, for he was aware that the Norman would fight to gain his purpose. He endeavoured to conciliate Edwin and Morcar by marrying their sister Ealdgyth, and trusted that he had bought their loyal support. When the spring came round it was known that William had begun to collect a great fleet and army. Aware that the resources of his own duchy were inadequate to the conquest of England, he sent all over Europe to hire mercenaries, promising every knight who would join him broad lands beyond the Channel in the event of victory. He gathered beneath his banner thousands of adventurers not only from France, Brittany and Flanders, but even from distant regions such as Aragon, Apulia and Germany. The native Normans were but a third part of his host, and he himself commanded rather as director of a great joint-stock venture than as the feudal chief of his own duchy. He also obtained the blessing of Pope Alexander II. for his enterprise, partly on the plea that Harold was a perjurer, partly because Stigand, the archbishop of Canterbury, had acknowledged the late anti-pope Benedict.

All through the summer Harold held a fleet concentrated under the lee of the Isle of Wight, waiting to intercept William's armament, while the fyrd of Wessex was ready to support him if the enemy should succeed in making a landing. By September the provisions were spent, and the ships were growing unseaworthy. Very reluctantly the king bade them go round to London to refit and revictual themselves. William meanwhile had been unable to sail, because for many weeks the wind had been unfavourable. If it had set from the south the fortune of England would have been settled by a sea-fight. At this moment came a sudden and incalculable diversion; Harold's turbulent brother Tostig, banished for his crimes in 1065, was seeking revenge. He had persuaded Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, almost the last of the great viking adventurers, to take him as guide for a raid on England. They ran into the Humber with a great fleet, beat the earls Edwin and Morcar in battle, and captured York. Abandoning his watch on the south coast Harold of England flew northward to meet the invaders; he surprised them at Stamford Bridge, slew both the Norse king and the rebel earl, and almost exterminated their army (Sept. 25? 1066). But while he was absent from the Channel the wind turned, and William of Normandy put to sea. The English fleet and the English army were both absent, and the Normans came safely to shore on the 28th of September. Harold had to turn hastily southward to meet them. On the 13th of October his host was arrayed on the hill of Senlac, 7 miles from the duke's camp at Hastings. The ranks of his thegnhood and house-carles had been thinned by the slaughter of Stamford Bridge, and their place was but indifferently supplied by the hasty levies of London, Wessex and the Home Counties. Edwin and Morcar, who should have been at his side with their Mercians and Northumbrians, were still far away--probably from treachery, slackness and jealousy.

Next morning (October 14) William marched out from Hastings and attacked the English host, which stood at bay in a solid mass of spear and axemen behind a slight breastwork on the hillside. After six hours of desperate fighting the victory fell to the duke, who skilfully alternated the use of archers and cavalry against the unwieldy English phalanx. (See HASTINGS: _Battle of_.) The disaster was complete, Harold himself was slain, his two brothers had fallen with him, not even the wreck of an army escaped. There was no one to rally the English in the name of the house of Godwine. The witan met and hastily saluted the child Edgar AEtheling as king. But the earls Edwin and Morcar refused to fight for him, and when William appeared in front of the gates of London they were opened almost without resistance. He was elected king in the old English fashion by the surviving magnates, and crowned on Christmas Day 1066.

II. THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN MONARCHY (1066-1199)

William the Conqueror.