Part 4

But an exception was made by the invaders in the case of the greatest of the Roman cities. Eboracum, Londinium and Lindum Colonia became the chief centres of life for the tribes that captured them; and thus the EBORACUM of the Romans became the EOFERWIC[6] of the Angles—a dwelling-place in the haunts of the wild boar. Smaller towns were blotted out; and their sites are known to us only by the finding of the family store of coins, or the personal treasures once placed for safety in a little recess in the wall or buried in a vase under the floor—to be overwhelmed with debris, and to remain undiscovered for many centuries.

Footnote 6:

Pronounced almost as _Yóv-er-wik_.

* * * * *

The hostile tribes who invaded Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries in such numbers as to conquer the whole country from the Isle of Wight to the Firth of Forth, except the mountainous districts of the west, were known as the _Engle_, the _Seaxe_ and the _Iute_.[7] Angles, Saxons and Jutes these are to us. The IUTE landed on the shores of, and established colonies in, Kent and the Isle of Wight, the former of which developed into a kingdom; the SEAXE established three kingdoms distinguished from one another in name by the adjectives South, East, and West; and separate bands of ENGLE formed the kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria.

Footnote 7:

_Eń-gla_, _Sék-sa_, and _Yóo-ta_, in pronunciation.

It is with the last-named of these ‘Seven Kingdoms’ that we are most particularly concerned. The huge kingdom of Northumbria stretched northwards from the Humber to the Forth, and was at different times either ruled by one king or divided into two separate kingdoms—Deira, from the Humber to the Tees, and Bernicia, from the Tees to the Forth.

How complete was the conquest of Britain by these invading tribes is seen in the account written by Bede, the eighth century monk of Jarrow:—

They burned and harried and slew from the sea on the east to the sea on the west, and no one was able to withstand them.... Many of the miserable survivors were captured in waste places and stabbed in heaps. Some because of hunger gave themselves into the hands of their enemies, to be their slaves for ever in return for food and clothing; some departed sorrowfully over the sea; some remained fearfully in their native land, and with heavy hearts lived a life of want in the forests and waste places and on the high cliffs.

The completeness of the conquest may be seen also in the fact that the language of the Britons was replaced by that of the invaders. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes spoke a language entirely different from the Keltic language of the Britons; but except in the Highlands of Scotland, in Wales, and in the Isle of Man—the parts to which the invaders did not penetrate—the language spoken to-day is ENGLISH and the name of the country itself is ENGLA-LAND, the land of the _Engle_.

* * * * *

Very definite evidence of the places chosen by the Angles for settlement can be found on the map of the East Riding. Where the head of the household decided to ‘pitch his tent’ a piece of land was enclosed with a _tūn_,[8] or hedge, and the dwelling erected within it became his new _hām_,[8] or home. Such was the origin of our numerous towns and villages whose names now end in the syllables _ton_ and _ham_. In many cases the name of the family is enshrined in the name of the settlement. Thus the Locings—the sons of Loc—the Essings, the Brantings, the Eoferings, and the Hemings gave their names respectively to Lockington, Easington, Brantingham, Everingham, and Hemingbrough.

Footnote 8:

Pronounced, respectively, _toon_ and _hahm_.

Besides the endings _ton_ and _ham_, others which tell of Anglian settlements are _worth_ and _bald_ (a dwelling), _cote_ or _coate_ (a mud cottage), _stead_ (a place), _brough_ or _borough_ (a fortified place), _wick_ (a village), _wold_ (woodland), _field_ (a place where trees have been felled), _ley_ (an open place in a wood), _mere_ (a lake), _fleet_ (the mouth of a river) and _ford_. Examples of all these can be found on a map of the East Riding.

* * * * *

In their burial customs the Angles were little different from the peoples whom they dispossessed. Like them they often cremated the bodies of their dead, afterwards collecting the charred bones and burying them in earthen vessels, accompanied with the weapons or personal treasures which were to be used again in the life to come. A man was buried with his spear and shield, or with the long one-edged knife whose name—_seax_—gave rise to the tribal name of the Saxons; a woman with her knife, shears, bronze box containing thread and needles, and beads of glass and amber; a child with his toys, such as the tiny tweezers, knife and shears found with a child’s bones in a burial vase at Sancton.

Not always, however, did the Angles cremate the bodies of their dead. More often they buried them near the surface of a British burial mound. From one of the mounds at Driffield, known as ‘Cheesecake Hill,’ was taken a necklace consisting of 219 beads, of which 141 were of amber, two of glass, three of carefully cut crystal, and five of cowrie shells.

Not very far from Garton Gatehouse, and near the memorial to Sir Tatton Sykes some three miles farther north, were accidentally discovered two Anglian cemeteries, one of which contained more than sixty bodies of men, women and children. Here all but a few had been buried not with their limbs bent, as was the custom among the Britons, but with their limbs stretched out at full length; and all but one had been buried with their heads to the west. Probably these were Christian burials.

From this Anglian cemetery at Garton were obtained many implements and personal ornaments—iron knives and bronze spoons, bronze ankle-rings and buckles, necklaces of glass, amber and amethyst, silver ear-rings, a gold button set with a precious stone, and, luxury of luxuries, a bone comb. What a great advance is thus shown to have taken place in the centuries between the British burial at Garrowby and the Anglian burials at Garton! With the former were weapons of flint and bone; with the latter, implements of bronze and iron, and personal ornaments of silver, gold, and precious stones.

VII. HOW THE MEN OF THE NORTH BECAME CHRISTIANS.

During later Roman times the worship of God had been introduced into Britain, and the discovery of the Roman bronze brooch figured on page 38 shows that Christianity had reached the shores of the Humber.

But the invaders who were to give a new name to the country and to become our ancestors were heathens, and chief among their gods was Woden. We of the twentieth century still preserve, the names of Wōden, Tīw, the god of war, and Frīg, the wife of Wōden, in our ‘Wednesday,’ ‘Tuesday,’ and ‘Friday’—the _Wodenesdaeg_, _Tiwesdaeg_, and _Frigedaeg_[9] of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

Footnote 9:

Pronounced, respectively, _Wóh-den-ez-dag_, _Tée-wes-dag_, and _Frée-ga-dag_.

In the passage from Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History of the English People_ which was partly translated in the last chapter, we are given an insight into the way in which the heathen Angles and Saxons despoiled the worshipping-places of the Christian Britons:—

Everywhere priests were slain and murdered by the side of the altars. Bishops together with their people were slain without mercy by fire and sword, and there was none to give the rites of burial to those who were so cruelly murdered.

Thus Britain became again a country entirely pagan, and it was not until the closing years of the sixth century that Christian missionaries from Rome once more set foot in it.

* * * * *

To understand the events leading up to the arrival of these missionaries, we must bear in mind that among the Angles and the Saxons slavery was a common custom. Social ranks of life were very marked, and all men belonged to one of three distinct classes. He who could trace back his descent from the gods ranked as an _eorl_,[10] or man of noble birth, and all others were divided into two classes—the free and the unfree. A free man, who had the privilege of owning land by virtue of his freedom, was known as a _ceorl_[10]; but he who was, body and soul, the property of another was called a _theow_,[10] or slave.

Footnote 10:

_É-orl_, _ké-orl_, and _thái-ow_ in pronunciation.

Slaves must have been very numerous in our country during Saxon days; for wars were constantly being waged between the different tribes, and prisoners of war naturally became the slaves of their captors. So also, a man who had fallen into debt and who could not release himself became the theow of the man to whom he owed money; and when he became a slave, his wife and children became slaves likewise, and could be sold by his master. Worst of all, a free man had the right to sell his own children into slavery until they reached the age of seven.

Now it so happened that this horrible custom of selling children as slaves was the direct cause of Christianity’s being re-introduced into our country. A regular export trade in English children was carried on, and about the year 580 there were one day standing exposed for sale in the market of Rome some boys of fair complexion and beautiful hair. Along the market chanced to pass a monk, who was struck with their light-coloured hair and blue eyes, so different from the dark hair and brown eyes of the South European peoples. On his asking the slave-dealer from what country they had been brought, he was told that they came from Britain, and that the people of that island had fair complexions. Unsatisfied with this information, he asked of what race they were, and was told that they were Angli.

‘_Non Angli, sed Angeli_,’ replied the monk. ‘For their look is angelical, and it is meet that they should become joint heirs with the angels in heaven.’

Then he sought further information concerning them.

‘What do you call the province from which the boys were brought hither?’

‘Deira,’ was the reply given him.

‘Deira!’ said the monk; ‘that is well said. _De ira eruti_—they shall be snatched from the wrath of God!’

Again he asked: ‘What is the name of their king?’

‘Their king is named Aelle.’

‘_Alleluia!_’ replied the monk, playing on the name of the king. ‘It is most fit that the love of God our Creator be sung in those parts.’

Fifteen years after this conversation took place in the market of Rome, the monk had become famous as Pope Gregory the First. Then, in fulfilment of the plans he had formed for rescuing the Angli from the wrath of God, he chose a monk named Augustine to make a journey to Britain with some companions. Augustine, with his small band, set out, but on reaching Gaul was so dismayed by the reports of the savage character of the people to whom he was bidden to go, that he turned back, and sought release from the task which had been imposed upon him. This Gregory refused, reminding him that ‘the more difficult the task, the greater is the reward.’

Augustine once more set out, and landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, in the Spring of the year 597. The king of Kent was then Aethelberht, who had married a Christian princess, the daughter of the king of the Franks. Thus the way had been made clear for the mission of Augustine, and Kent soon became a Christian kingdom.

King Aelle of Northumbria died in 588, and thirteen years later his son Edwin became king. Edwin had married the daughter of Aethelberht of Kent, Aethelburga by name, and with her there came to Eoferwic Paulinus, a monk.

For long this monk was unable to persuade Edwin to become a Christian; but in 626 there was called a meeting of the king’s _Witan_, or ‘wise men,’ each of whom was asked what he thought of the new doctrines then being preached by Paulinus.[11] After Coifi,[12] the king’s high priest, had expressed his opinion that the gods they worshipped had no power, one of the king’s counsellors broke in with these words:—

‘Thus it seems to me, O my king, that the life of man on earth, in comparison with the life unknown to us, is just as if you were sitting at table with your ealdormen and thegns in wintertide—when the fire was kindled and your hall made warm, while it rained and snowed outside—and there came a sparrow and quickly flew through the hall, coming in by one door and passing out by the other. During the time that he is passing through the hall he is safe from the winter’s storm, but it is only for the twinkling of an eye, and in the shortest space of time he passes from winter into winter.

‘So seems the life of man—it is ours for a little while, but what goes before it and what follows after we know not. Therefore if this teaching makes anything clearer and more certain, it is meet that we follow it.’

Footnote 11:

The place of meeting was either York or Londesborough.

Footnote 12:

_Kóh-i-fi_ in pronunciation.

What an apt comparison—the life of a man is like the brief flight of a sparrow through a pleasant room! Many a time must those present when the words were spoken have seen a bewildered sparrow fly swiftly through the king’s hall, entering it to seek shelter from the storm without, and leaving it to seek safety from the smoke of the fire and the noise of men’s voices within. And what more suitable illustration of man’s ignorance of the hereafter could have been chosen? We can imagine its effect upon Coifi, who, on hearing the words of the king’s counsellor, exclaimed:—

‘I see clearly that what we have been worshipping is but naught. For the more earnestly I have sought the truth through our worship, the less I have found it. Therefore, O king, I now advise that we speedily destroy and burn with fire the altars which we hallowed without receiving any benefit.’

Thus were King Edwin of Deira and his _Witan_ converted to the true religion, and the temple which contained the heathen altars destroyed. Coifi himself sought permission to be the first to cast down the idols it contained, and the king granted him weapons and a horse for the purpose. Riding to the temple, he first cast his spear against the altar, and then called to his companions that they should pull down the idols and burn them. ‘The place is yet pointed out,’ wrote Bede one hundred years later, ‘not far east from Eoferwic beyond the river Derwent, and is to-day called Godmundingaham, where the high priest, through the inspiration of the true God, cast down and destroyed the altars which he himself had previously hallowed.’

‘Not far east from York, beyond the river Derwent’—such was Bede’s description of the place of this memorable deed. GODMUNDINGAHAM, he says, was its new name, and GOODMANHAM it is in our own day. Tradition says further that the present church, dedicated to All Saints, stands on the exact site of the heathen temple which Coifi, the heathen high priest, was the first to profane. But whether tradition speaks true we have no means of knowing.

* * * * *

The immediate results of the adoption of Christianity at Goodmanham were the building of a wooden church at York, and the baptism in it of King Edwin on Easter Day 627. This wooden church, dedicated to St. Peter, was shortly afterwards succeeded by a larger and loftier church of stone, which, in its turn, was destined to be succeeded by another yet larger and loftier—the Minster that we count to-day as one of the glories of Northern England.

Six years later King Edwin was slain in battle against Penda, the heathen king of Mercia, and Cadwallon, a British king, ‘more fierce and cruel than the heathen, for he was a barbarian.’ The head of Edwin was taken to York and buried in the stone church of St. Peter which he had begun to build; and Paulinus, the first Archbishop of York, fled by sea southwards to Kent with Edwin’s widowed queen and their two children. Then for the whole of an ‘unhappy and godless’ year Northumbria was wasted by Cadwallon.

At the end of the year Edwin’s nephew Oswald, with an army small but strengthened by belief in Christ, fought against Cadwallon. Now Oswald was ‘a man dear to God,’ and before the battle he caused to be made a hastily-constructed cross of wood, which was erected in a pit dug in front of his army. With his own hands he set up this cross and held it till his men had made it firm with heaped-up soil. Then did Oswald call to him all his men and gave them his command: ‘Let us all bend the knee and together ask the almighty, living, and true God to defend us with His mercy from this proud and cruel foe; for He knows that we are justly fighting for the safety of our people.’

This they all did; and in the fight which followed, Oswald gained a complete victory, and Cadwallon was slain. The place of Oswald’s victory was called ‘Heavenfield’; and, says Bede, ‘many people to-day take chips and shavings from the wood of that holy cross and put them in water, and sprinkle the water on sick men and beasts, or give them it to drink, and they are at once cured.’

* * * * *

With the accession of King Oswald Christianity returned to the people of the north. This time, however, it was brought not by the monks of Rome, but by British monks from a monastery which had been established by Columba, an Irish saint, on the tiny island of Iona, lying off the west coast of Scotland.

It was to this monastery that Oswald sent asking for teachers for his people. In reply there was sent him a monk of hard and stern nature, to whom the people would not gladly listen; so that he was able to effect little, but returned to Iona and reported that he could do nothing because the people of Northumbria were unteachable. ‘Was it not, brother,’ said one of his fellow monks, ‘you who were not sufficiently patient and gentle with those untaught men?’ The question made all present turn to the speaker, and they quickly decided that he was worthy to be sent as teacher to their friend, King Oswald.

So came to Northumbria the saintly Aidan, whose success in converting the heathen Angles was due chiefly to the fact that as he taught so he himself lived. For, says Bede,

he in no way desired or sought after the things that are of this world; but all the worldly goods that were given him by kings or by rich men he gladly gave to the poor and needy who came to him. Through all the land he travelled, visiting towns and wayside villages, and never on horseback, unless there were special need, but always on foot. And wheresoever he came and whomsoever he met, whether rich or poor, he turned to them. If they were unbelievers, then he invited them to believe in Christ; if they were believers he strengthened them in their belief, and with word and deed stirred them up to almsgiving and the performance of good deeds.

By the labours of Aidan and his fellow monks the men of the north again became Christians; and such earnest Christians were they that they hallowed with the ‘Sign of the Cross’ the places at which they held their meetings for the purposes of government.

A British burial mound was often found convenient for an Anglian _mōt_, or meeting,—whence the name ‘Moot Hill’—and its purpose was marked by a large trench in the form of a cross cut through the mound down into the chalk. The four arms of the trench were made roughly equal, and always pointed north, south, east, and west. Cowlam Cross, near which the village church was afterwards erected, is cut seven feet deep in the solid chalk, and another similar cross with arms twenty-one feet long has been discovered at Helperthorpe.

Where no convenient mound existed, the place of meeting was sometimes marked in the opposite way. Instead of cutting a deep trench they raised at right angles two ridges of earth and stones, entirely surrounded by a shallow ditch.

Such crosses have been named _Embankment Crosses_, and eleven have been discovered within a radius of fifteen miles from Driffield. A favourite name for them among the country folk is that of _bield_, or shelter, because they were supposed to have been built up to serve as shelters for the cattle. There is one near East Heslerton, known locally as the ‘Old Bield,’ the arms of which measure 45 yards each, north and south, and 50 yards east and west. Another formerly existed near the site of the ancient village of Haywold. Ploughing operations have caused this—and probably many others—to be destroyed; but its name, ‘Christ Cross,’ is still preserved.

With the introduction of Christianity there took place great development of the arts of peace in home and village life. ‘The English forged the ploughshare rather than the sword. They built weirs, and fished, and set up watermills by the rivers. Boat-building, brewing, leather-tanning, pottery, dyeing, weaving, the working of gold and silver, and embroidery, grew and soon began to flourish. The days of merchandise succeeded the days of plunder; life became gentler, nearer in spirit to the homes of England as we now conceive them.’

VIII. THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN.

Two hundred years pass onwards from the coming of Saint Aidan to Northumbria, and we are again among scenes of famine, sword, and fire. Let us see what the records of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles have to tell.

A.D. 787. In these days first came three ships of the Northmen, and when the bailiff rode down to them, and would take the men to the king’s town—for he knew not who they were—he was slain. Those were the first ships of the Danish men that came to the land of the Angles.

A.D. 833. In this year King Egbert fought against the crews of thirty-five ships at Charmouth, and there was great slaughter, and the Danish men possessed the battlefield.

A.D. 851. In this year the heathen men first remained over the winter, and in the same year came three hundred and fifty ships into the mouth of the Thames, and broke into Canterbury and London, and put to flight Beorhtwulf, King of Mercia.

A.D. 867. In this year the heathen army went from East Anglia over the mouth of the Humber to York ... and there was immense slaughter of the Northumbrians, some within York, and some without, and the survivors made peace with the heathen army.

These records show that the history of the fifth and sixth centuries was being repeated at the close of the eighth century, and during the ninth. They tell us of the inroads of a new race of free-booters, men of Northern Europe—coming from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—men among whom was a passionate love of the sea and an overwhelming desire for the plunder of other lands. Sea-pirates they are now often called, but we must remember that among them what we should call piracy was looked upon as the most honourable career in life.

Each year as Spring came round these Danish sea-rovers would gather together their men, take advantage of the north-east winds, and sail away to Britain, or the northern coast of France, or even to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and return laden with plunder on the coming of Autumn.