and there was great slaughter on either hand; but the Danes had possession of the place of carnage and there Bishop Heathmund was slain, and many good men and after this battle there came a great army in the summer to Reading. And after this, over Easter, King Ethelred died; and he reigned five years, and his body lies at Winburn-minster." (Wimborne) His death is ascribed to wounds received in one of these battles. Thus troublous were the times in which King Alfred began his reign. Ethelred left two sons; but they were children, and the country wanted the hand of the strong man to rule over it at such a time. Moreover, as we have already seen, it was by no means thought needful in the Saxon dynasties that the eldest born, or even a son at all, should succeed to the throne. The brother, or the nephew, or the cousin, was at liberty to take possession of it, and keep it if he could. Every circumstance gave Alfred the preference over his little nephews. And there was no time for debating the question. The enemy was too near at hand. There was not much to tempt Alfred to seat himself in his brother's place. Alfred was a man who loved retirement and learning. The possession of the throne involved the breaking up of his old habits: the entering upon the kingly duties was the pledging himself to a life of toil, strife, and unrest. "In those days, royalty, never an easy or enviable station, was accompanied by great danger and toil. A king was compelled to sleep on the hard ground, to encounter every privation and difficulty, and to expose his life for the defence of his crown and people."* : Alfred became King of Wessex by the unanimous consent of bishops, nobles, and people, in 871. Hardly one month had passed before he was again called upon to encounter the Danes at Wilton, with doubtful success. One old writer speaks of nine, another of eight battles, having been fought this year with the Northmen. At length peace was made between the English and the invaders on condition that the Danes should take their departure. But the Vikings were famous, or rather, infamous, for not keeping their word and the next year had begun before they had quitted Wessex. They halted at London: doubtful, perhaps, whether their next step should not be an expedition against Mercia. This pause naturally aroused the anxiety of Burrhed, King of Mercia The Vikings were too formidable to be safe or pleasant neighbours. So he offered them gold to buy their forbearance; and they, with their leader, Halfdane, passed on into Lincolnshire. There the treaty was again renewed. Put in two years the Danes were at their old work of plunder and destruction. Burrhed, in despair of dealing successfully with an enemy that united such a fierce and cruel disposition with such an entire want of good faith, abdicated the throne of Wessex, and departed to Rome. He died almost immediately on his arrival there. *Sir Francis Palgrave. * The whole kingdom of Mercia fell into the hands of the Danes. They placed over it a governor, who, though himself a Saxon, proved to be still more tyrannical over the poor Mercians than the very heathen. He journeyed through the land, plundering in all directions, sparing neither Church treasures nor the boards of the nobles. He did not even take pity upon the peasant, whose hard-won earnings he did not disdain to appropriate. But the hour of retribution came at last he was deprived of his office by the very Danes who had put him into it, and he died in the most wretched poverty. The Danish army, by large reinforcements, had now become so mighty a host as to render its division desirable. So part of it was placed at Repton, in Derbyshire; and another portion, under the command of Guthrum, marched to Cambridge. There they stayed a year inactive; the other part of the heathen force, under Halfdane, went Northwards, to overrun and despoil Northumbria. Church and Monastery perished before them: and the ruins of the venerable Lindisfarne, echoing to no voices but those of the wind, the wave, and the sea-bird, bore sad witness to after generations of the pitiless and profane hands which had bereft it of its old pomp and beauty. Lindisfarne was the episcopal city of the See of Durham. Among its many treasures, its monks especially valued the relics of St. Cuthbert, one of its bishops. He is said to have left behind him strict orders t his successors in the monastery, that in case of need arising for the abandonment of their holy house, they should not fail to carry his bones away with them. When, therefore, they were driven away by the Danes, the monks bore the saint's coffin upon their shoulders over many a weary tract of country, seeking for themselves and it a resting-place. But this inconvenient saint was a good deal more particular after his death about his last earthly abode than his brethren in the calendar used to be about their living dwelling-places. Strange tales are told about miraculous demonstrations on his part, of his disapproval of several abodes fixed upon by his bearers, who would, no doubt, have rejoiced had he been less fastidious: at length, after some seven years' wanderings, he consented to be finally stationed on the beautiful banks of the Wear, in the stately cathedral of Durham; to which city the See of Lindisfarne was transferred, A.D. 990. The Danish inroads were pushed further west and north: Cambrian, Pict, and Scot, all were alike plundered by these ruthless marauders. They laid Carlisle in ruins; and in that state it remained till the time of William the Conqueror. The only kingdom of the Heptarchy now remaining unsubdued was Wessex; yet it was in a condition of such exhaustion as to compel a temporary yielding to circumstances which it could no longer withstand. Exeter was seized by the barbarians, their fleet sailed northward to join the land forces. King Alfred, the while, * Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland. was neither an idle nor a terrified witness of their incursions, he had already commanded long and large ships to be built, in order that he might attack the Vikings with the better prospect of success. But ere he could do so the wind and the sea had risen in his defence, a violent storm dispersed the galleys of the pirates, and many of their ships perished; this event probably induced them to listen to terms of peace. A truce was sworn; but as always, so now, the Danes gave proof how little dependence could be placed upon their honour. In the mid-winter, when the English were least ready for warfare, the perfidious Northmen poured down upon Wiltshire. Of this year, 878, which may be called the crisis of Alfred's fortunes, there are left to us such obscure notices in original records, that modern writers have been perplexed how to gather up from among them the real thread of his history, so as to weave it into anything like a continuous and reliable narrative. Asser, the personal friend of Alfred, tells us that in the year 878, the Danes effected a settlement at Chippenham, in Wiltshire, reducing the inhabitants to subjection. He speaks also of the "unquiet life" led by the King and his followers among the wild woods of Somersetshire; where, apparently, they had taken refuge from their Danish foes; "Though," says an old writer,*" nothing but the country on the south side of the Thames remained to King Alfred, the three king who were in Mercia begrudged him even that; they therefore came to Chippenham in Wessex with a great multitude just arrived from Denmark; and covering the land like locusts, because there was no one to resist them, they took possession of it for themselves. Part of the Saxon people fled beyond the sea, part followed Alfred, who concealed himself with a few followers in the woods, another part of them made submission to the enemy." It has been asserted, and generally believed, that Alfred after this scattering of his subjects, and his own consequent flight, took refuge, in the first instance, in the little Isle of Athelney, or Ethelingaey, formed by the confluence of the Thone and the Perrot, in Somersetshire but there seems good reason on the authority of the earliest writers, to suppose rather that Athelney was the spot, "not where he at first concealed himself, but where he afterwards constructed a fortress."+ How he passed the time of his retreat among the wild marshes and forests to which he had withdrawn from the ferocity of the Danes, there seems but little hope of knowing; but we do know that, in spite of the smallness of their numbers, and the fierceness of the foe, Alfred and his handful of brave followers frequently issued from their retreat to assail and harass the invaders in their neighbourhood. To procure necessaries for their subsistence they were obliged to forage on the country round, and the King was sometimes indebted to one of his own cowherds for bread to eat. It was during this wretched time of Alfred's life, that the well-known incident of the burnt cakes took place. In the Saxon life of St. * Henry of Huntingdon, quoted by Dr. Giles. + Dr. Giles. Neot, quoted by Dr. Giles, the story is thus told: "Alfred took shelter in a swain's house, and also him and his evil wife diligently served. It happened that on one day the swain's wife heated her oven, and the King sat by it, warming himself by the fire; she knew not then that it was the King. Then the evil woman was excited, and spoke to the King with an angry mind: Turn thou those loaves, that they burn not; for I see daily that thou art a great eater. He soon obeyed this evil woman, because she would scold." The name of the cowherd whose wife treated the King so roughly was Danulf. A curious relic of the King's abode at Athelney was found there in the 17th century. It was an ornament, supposed to havebeen appended to a neck collar; it is made of gold and enamel, with this inscription round it,-Alfred mec heit "Alfred caused me to gewyrcan; be made." This jewel* was probably given by the King or hissuccessors to the monastery which he built at Athelney. The castle of Kinwith in Devonshire was held by the Saxons; the Danes blockaded it, expecting to compel the King's men who were in it to surrender for want of supplies. But a vigorous sally on the part of the Englishdis appointed their hopes; the Danes were beaten, their leader slain, and their famous Raven Standard taken. This banner-considered a charmed device, the omen of victory-had been wrought by the three sisters of their chiefs, Hingwan, Halfdane, and Hubba; its loss was looked upon as boding dismal disaster. It appears to have been after the battle in which the standard was captured, that Alfred fortified Athelney by building for himself a stronghold in the shelter of its wild marshes: and it was from thence that his frequent sallies were made against his pagan foes. Notwithstanding his seclusion, Alfred had kept up intercourse with the English nobles and the people of Somerset: and when the favourable moment arrived, he appointed a certain spot on the borders of Selwood Forest as their trysting place, but he took measures first for procuring certain information about the real state of things in the enemy's camp. Disguise as a glee-man or minstrel, harp in hand, Alfred had the boldness to enter the Danish lines. There he dwelt for several days, charming the wild soldiery with his songs and legends, and making the best use, meanwhile, of his own eyes and ears. When he had gained all the knowledge he desired, he withdrew, and returned to the fastness of Athelney. He judged that the hour for more decisive operations was now come. He unfurled his banner to the wind at the outskirts of Selwood; and the people of Somerset, Dorset, and Hampshire, eagerly mustered beneath it. Great was their joy to see again their beloved King among them. The curious "Cronycle of the Londe of Englond" tells us how King Alfred and his barons gathered their forces together that they might go and seek the Danes, "with hem (them) * Now kept, the writer believes, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. all for to fyghten," how they encountered in a fierce battle at Abingdon, and how "Kyg Alured had the victore with mochel honour, for the Danoys weren so driven that they ne wist whyther for tocome and XV. dayes the King hem pursued at his wille, that glad ad fayne thei were for to speken of pees and of accord, and token good hostages." The exact locality of this battle is difficult to ascertain. Speed, in his History of England, agrees with the ancient Chronicle just quoted in fixing it at Abingdon: in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle it is stated to have been fought at Heddington; by other writers the place is variously written, Ethandune, Edderandun, Assandune, and Edendune. 6 It will be better to cite a passage from a writer of research and learning, than to hazard an ignorant guess. "We have no difficulty in identifying the place called Egbert's Stone, on the east of Selwood, where Alfred was met by the troops of his subjects, who flocked to him, with Brixton Deverill, a small village about halfway between Hindon and Warminster, and about thirty miles from Athelney. From thence the army marched the next day to Æglea, about the locality of which place writers are not agreed. Whilst some have referred it to Highley, near Whaddon; and others to Clay Hill, between Frome and Warminster, a third opinion has connected it with Leigh or Ley, near Westbury. A similar difference of opinion prevails as to the place of the battle in which the Danes were defeated. Dr. Whitaker thinks it is the present Gatton, about five miles from Chippenham; but,' says he, the battle itself was a little lower on the Avon, at Slaughterford,' where, according to Gibson, there still prevails a tradition that a great number of Danes were slain near that spot. But there is another village in the neighbourhood of Westbury which seems to have superior claims to be considered as the Ethundune of the ninth century. This is Eddington, or Edinton, about six miles from Leigh, and not more than ten from Clay Hill, where consequently the Danes might have been more easily surprised by the King than at Yatton, which is ten miles further towards the north. The whole country for many miles round abounds with ancient camps, arrows, and other relics of the wars, which a thousand years ago were waged with such persevering fury between the Saxons and the Danes." Of the fact of the battle, there is however no doubt. The English remained masters of the field. One of the conditions of peace was that Guthrum, the Danish king, should receive Christian Baptism on a certain day appointed. Alfred stood godfather to Guthrum, upon whom the name of Athelstan was bestowed at the font. But the Danes, though beaten, were not forcibly sent out of England on the contrary, Alfred was induced, in his treaty, to yield to them a very considerable portion of the northern and eastern parts of the country. Their share was called, as we have already said, the Danelagh, or Danes' Community. *Dr Giles. |