EGBERT. 827.

The kingdoms of the Heptarchy, though united by so recent a conquest, seemed to be firmly cemented into one state under Egbert; and the inhabitants at the several provinces had lost all desire of revolting from that monarch, or of restoring their former independent governments. Their language was everywhere nearly the same, their customs, laws, institutions, civil and religious; and as the race of the ancient kings was totally extinct in all the subjected states, the people readily transferred their allegiance to a prince who seemed to merit it by the splendour of his victories, the vigour of his administration, and the superior nobility of his birth. A union, also, in government, opened to them the agreeable prospect of future tranquillity; and it appeared more probable, that they would henceforth become formidable to their neighbours, than be exposed to their inroads and devastations. But these flattering views were soon overcast by the appearance of the Danes, who, during some centuries, kept the Anglo-Saxons in perpetual inquietude, committed the most barbarous ravages upon them, and at last reduced them to grievous servitude.

The emperor Charlemagne, though naturally generous and humane, had been induced by bigotry to exercise great severities upon the Pagan Saxons in Germany, whom he subdued; and, besides often ravaging their country with fire and sword, he had in cool blood decimated all the inhabitants for their revolts, and had obliged them, by the most rigorous edicts, to make a seeming compliance with the Christian doctrine. That religion which had easily made its way among the British Saxons by insinuation and address, appeared shocking to their German brethren when imposed on them by the violence of Charlemagne; and the more generous and warlike of these Pagans had fled northward into Jutland, in order to escape the fury of his persecutions. Meeting there with a people of similar manners, they were readily received among them; and they soon stimulated the natives to concur in enterprises which both promised revenge on the haughty conqueror, and afforded subsistence to those numerous inhabitants with which the northern countries were now overburthened. They invaded the provinces of France, which were exposed by the degeneracy and dissensions of Charlemagne's posterity; and being there known under the general name of Normans, which they received from their northern situation, they became the terror of all the maritime, and even of the inland countries. They were also tempted to visit England in their frequent excursions; and being able, by sudden inroads, to make great progress over a people who were not defended by any naval force, who had relaxed their military institutions, and who were sunk into a superstition which had become odious to the Danes and ancient Saxons, they made no distinction in their hostilities between the French and English kingdoms. Their first appearance in this island was in the year 787, when Brithric reigned in Wessex: a small body of them landed in that kingdom, with a view of learning the state of the country; and when the magistrate of the place questioned them concerning their enterprise, and summoned them to appear before the king, and account for their intentions, they killed him, and, flying to their ships, escaped into their own country. The next alarm was given to Northumberland, in the year 794, when a body of these pirates pillaged a monastery; but their ships being much damaged by a storm, and their leader slain in a skirmish, they were at last defeated by the inhabitants, and the remainder of them put to the sword. Five years after Egbert had established his monarchy over England, the Danes landed in the Isle of Shepey, and, having pillaged it, escaped with impunity. They were not so fortunate in their next year's enterprise, when they disembarked from thirty-five ships, and were encountered by Egbert, at Charmouth in Dorsetshire: the battle was bloody; but though the Danes lost great numbers, they maintained the post which they had taken, and thence made good their retreat to their ships. Having learned, by experience, that they must expect a vigorous resistance from this warlike prince, they entered into an alliance with the Britons of Cornwall; and, landing two years after in that country, made an inroad with their confederates into the county of Devon; but were met at Hengesdown by Egbert, and totally defeated. While England remained in this state of anxiety, and defended itself more by temporary expedients than by any regular plan of administration, Egbert, who alone was able to provide effectually against this new evil, unfortunately died, and left the government to his son Ethelwolf.

ETHELWOLF. 838.

This prince had neither the abilities nor the vigour of his father; and was better qualified for governing a convent than a kingdom. He began his reign with making a partition of his dominions, and delivering over to his eldest son, Athelstan, the newly conquered provinces of Essex, Kent, and Sussex: but no inconveniencies seem to have arisen from this partition, as the continual terror of the Danish invasions prevented all domestic dissension. A fleet of these ravagers, consisting of thirty-three sail, appeared at Southampton; but were repulsed with loss by Wolfhere, governor of the neighbouring country. The same year, Æthelhelm, governor of Dorsetshire, routed another band which had disembarked at Portsmouth; but he obtained the victory after a furious engagement, and he bought it with the loss of his life. Next year the Danes made several inroads into England; and fought battles, or rather skirmishes, in East-Anglia, and Lindesey, and Kent; where, though they were sometimes repulsed and defeated, they always obtained their end, of committing spoil upon the country, and carrying off their booty. They avoided coming to a general engagement, which was not suited to their plan of operations. Their vessels were small, and ran easily up the creeks and rivers, where they drew them ashore, and, having formed an intrenchment round them, which they guarded with part of their number, the remainder scattered themselves everywhere, and carrying off the inhabitants, and cattle, and goods, they hastened their ships, and quickly disappeared. If the military force of the county were assembled (for there vas no time for troops to march from a distance) the Danes either were able to repulse them, and to continue their ravages with impunity, or they betook themselves to their vessels, and, setting sail, suddenly invaded some distant quarter which was not prepared for their reception. Every part of England was held in continual alarm; and the inhabitants of one county durst not give assistance to those of another lest their awn families and property should in the mean time be exposed by their absence to the fury of these barbarous ravagers. All orders of men were involved in this calamity; and the priests and monks, who had been commonly spared in the domestic quarrels of the Heptarchy, were the chief objects on which the Danish idolaters exercised their rage and animosity. Every season of the year was dangerous; and the absence of the enemy was no reason why any man could esteem himself a moment in safety.

These incursions had now become almost annual; when the Danes, encouraged by their successes against France as well as England, (for both kingdoms were alike exposed to this dreadful calamity,) invaded the last [851] in so numerous a body as seemed to threaten it with universal subjection. But the English, more military than the Britons, whom, a few centuries before, they had treated with like violence, roused themselves with a vigour proportioned to the exigency. Ceorle, governor of Devonshire, fought a battle with one body of the Danes at Wiganburgh, and put them to rout with great slaughter. King Athelstan attacked another at sea near Sandwich, sunk nine of their ships, and put the rest to flight. A body of them, however, ventured, for the first time, to take up winter-quarters in England; and, receiving in the spring a strong reinforcement of their countrymen in three hundred and fifty vessels, they advanced from the Isle of Thanet, where they had stationed themselves; burnt the cities of London and Canterbury; and, having put to flight Brichtric, who now governed Mercia under the title of king, they marched into the heart of Surrey, and laid every place waste around them. Ethelwolf, impelled by the urgency of the danger, marched against them at the head of the West Saxons; and, carrying with him his second son, Ethelbald, gave them battle at Okely, and gained a bloody victory over them. This advantage procured but a short respite to the English.The Danes still maintained their settlement in the Isle of Thanet; and being attacked by Ealher and Huda, governors of Kent and Surrey, though defeated in the beginning of the action, they finally repulsed the assailants, and killed both the governors. They removed thence [853] to the Isle of Shepey, where they took up their winter-quarters, that they might further extend their devastation and ravages.

This unsettled state of England hindered not Ethelwolf from making a pilgrimage to Rome; whither he carried his fourth and favourite son, Alfred, then only six years of age. He passed there a twelve month in exercises of devotion; and failed not in that most essential part of devotion, liberality to the church of Rome. Besides giving presents to the more distinguished ecclesiastics, he made a perpetual grant of three hundred mancuses (A mancus was about the weight of an old half-crown) a year to that see; one-third to support the lamps of St. Peter's, another those of St. Paul's, a third to the pope himself. In his return home, he married Judith, daughter of the emperor Charles the Bald; but on his landing in England, he met with an opposition which he little looked for.

His eldest son, Athelstan, being dead, Ethelbald, his second, who had assumed the government, formed, in concert with many of the nobles, the project of excluding his father from a throne which his weakness and superstition seem to have rendered him so ill-qualified to fill. The people were divided between the two princes; and a bloody civil war, joined to all the other calamities under which the English laboured, appeared inevitable; 'when Ethelwolf had the facility to yield to the greater part of his son's pretensions. He made with him a partition of the kingdom; and, taking to himself the eastern part, which was always at that time esteemed the least considerable, as well as the most exposed, he delivered over to Ethelbald the sovereignty of the western. Immediately after, he summoned the states of the whole kingdom, and with the same facility conferred a perpetual and important donation on the church.

The ecclesiastics, in those days of ignorance, made rapid advances in the acquisition of power and grandeur; and, inculcating the most absurd and most interested doctrines, though they sometimes met, from the contrary interests of the laity, with an opposition which it required time and address to overcome, they found no obstacle in their reason or understanding. Not content with the donations of land made them by the Saxon princes and nobles, and with temporary oblations from the devotion of the people, they had cast a wishful eye on a vast revenue, which they claimed as belonging to them by a sacred and indefeasible title. However little versed in the scriptures, they had been able to discover that, under the Jewish law, a tenth of all the produce of land was conferred on the priesthood; and, forgetting what they themselves taught, that the moral part only of that law was obligatory on Christians, they insisted that this donation conveyed a perpetual property, inherent by divine right in those who officiated at the altar. During some centuries, the whole scope of sermons and homilies was directed to this purpose; and one would have imagined, from the general tenor of these discourses, that all the practical parts of Christianity were comprised in the exact and faithful payment of tithes to the clergy. Encouraged by their success in inculcating these doctrines, they ventured further than they were warranted even by the Levitical law, and pretended to draw the tenth of all industry, merchandise, wages of labourers, and pay of soldiers: nay, some canonists went so far as to affirm, that the clergy were entitled to the tithe of the profits made by courtesans in the exercise of their profession. Though parishes had been instituted in England by Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, near two centuries before, the ecclesiastics had never yet been able to get possession of the tithes: they therefore seized the present favourable opportunity of making that acquisition, when a weak, superstitious prince flied the throne, and when the people, discouraged by their losses from the Danes, and terrified with the fear of future invasions, were susceptible of any impression which bore the appearance of religion. So meritorious was this concession deemed by the English, that, trusting entirely to supernatural assistance, they neglected the ordinary means of safety; and agreed, even in the present desperate extremity, that the revenues of the church should be exempted from all burthens, though imposed for national defence and security.

ETHELBALD AND ETHELBERT. 857.

Ethelwolf lived only two years after making this grant; and, by his will, he shared England between his two eldest sons, Ethelbald and Ethelbert; the west being assigned to the former, the east to the latter. Ethelbald was a profligate prince; and marrying Judith, his mother-in-law, gave great offence to the people; but, moved by the remonstrances of Swithun, bishop of Winchester, he was at last prevailed on to divorce her. His reign was short; and Ethelbert, his brother, succeeding to the government, [608,] behaved himself, during a reign of five years, in a manner more worthy of his birth and station. The kingdom, however, was still infested by the Danes, who made an inroad, and sacked Winchester, but were there defeated. A body, also, of these pirates, who were quartered in the Isle of Thanet, having deceived the English by a treaty, unexpectedly broke into Kent and committed great outrages.

ETHERED. 866.

Ethelbert was succeeded by his brother Ethered, who, though he defended himself with bravery, enjoyed, during his whole reign, no tranquility from those Danish irruptions. His younger brother, Alfred seconded him in all his enterprises; and generously sacrificed to the public good all resentment which he might entertain on account of his being excluded by Ethered from a large patrimony which had been left him by his father.

The first landing of the Danes in the reign of Ethered was among the East-Angles, who, more anxious for their present safety than for the common interest, entered into a separate treaty with the enemy; and furnished them with horses, which enabled them to make an irruption by land into the kingdom of Northumberland. They there seized the city of York; and defended it against Osbricht and Ælla, two Northumbrian princes, who perished in the assault. Encouraged by these successes, and by the superiority which they had acquired in arms, they now ventured, under the command of Hinguar and Hubba, to leave the seacoast; and, penetrating into Mercia, they took up their winter-quarters at Nottingham, where they threatened the kingdom with a final subjection. The Mercians, in this extremity, applied to Ethered for succour; and that prince, with his brother Alfred, conducting a great army to Nottingham, obliged the enemy to dislodge, and to retreat into Northumberland. [870.] Their restless disposition, and their avidity for plunder, allowed them not to remain long in those quarters: they broke into East-Anglia ; defeated and took prisoner Edmund, the king of that country, whom they afterwards murdered in cool blood; and, committing the most barbarous ravages on the people, particularly on the monasteries, they gave the East-Angles cause to regret the temporary relief which they had obtained, by assisting the common enemy.

The next station of the Danes [871] was at Reading, whence they infested the neighbouring country by their incursions. The Mercians, desirous of shaking off their dependence on Ethered, refused to join him with their forces; and that prince, attended by Alfred, was obliged to march against the enemy with the West-Saxons alone, his hereditary subjects. The Danes, being defeated in an action, shut themselves up in their garrison; but, quickly making thence an irruption, they routed the West-Saxons, and obliged them to raise the siege. An action soon after ensued at Aston in Berkshire, where the English, in the beginning of the day, were in danger of a total defeat. Alfred, advancing with one division of the army, was surrounded by the enemy in disadvantageous ground; and Ethered, who was at that time hearing mass, refused to march to his assistance till prayers should be finished: but as he afterwards obtained the victory, this success, not the danger of Alfred, was ascribed by the monks to the piety of that monarch. This battle of Aston did not terminate the war: another battle was a little after fought at Basing, where the Danes were more successful; and being re-enforced by a new army from their own country, they became every day more terrible to the English. Amidst these confusions, Ethered died of a wound which he had received in an action with the Danes; and left the inheritance of his cares and misfortunes, rather than of his grandeur, to his brother Alfred, who was now twenty-two years of age.