and kindred. The ideal with which Gregory the Great sent forth Augustine, of a united British Church, including the whole island, and subject, under the Pope, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, was, indeed, never fully carried out; but that of Pope Hadrian, two generations later, of a united Anglican Church, was not entrusted in vain to the genius of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury 668 to 690, the first Archbishop,' as Bede tells us, whom the whole English Church obeyed.' Thenceforward every Englishman was a member of the Church of England. Clergy from every kingdom of the Heptarchy met in synod for common counsel and common regulation of their ecclesiastical interests, thus paving the way for a like solidarity of the realm in political affairs also. & peace

§ 8. And with the spread of Christianity the bitterness of intertribal war was immensely softened. The shedding of Christian blood was looked upon as no light matter, and warfare more and more tended, not only to be less deadly, but to cease altogether. When, in 731, Bede concluded his 'Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation,' he thus depicts the striking progress of civilizing influences: 'The Picts have now made a treaty of peace with the English nation, and rejoice in being united in Catholic peace and truth with the Church Universal. The Scots that dwell in Britain,' content with their own bounds, neither plot nor conspire more against the English. The Britons, though they for the most part hate all English folk, and wrongfully, from wicked use, oppose the appointed Easter of the Catholic Church, yet can in no way prevail as they would, the power of God and of man alike letting them. For though in part they are their own masters, yet in part also are they under English sway. Such being the

2

1 The Scots migrated from Ireland in the sixth century A.D., and settled in Galloway. The Picts held all the land north of the Forth.

2 The Celtic Christians merely differed as to astronomical minutiæ from the Catholic reckoning; but these often involved considerable practical divergence in the date of any given Easter. The Picts and Scots renounced these errors in 701, at the instance of Adamnan; but the Britons (Welsh) long persisted in them.

peaceful and calm state of the times, many lay aside their weapons, and incline . . . to monastic vows rather than . soldiership. What will be the end hereof the next age will show.'

CHAPTER II.

Earliest Danish troubles-The Heptarchy-Egbert, first King of the English -Egbert and Charlemagne-Defiance of Roman claim to Britain.

§ I.

WHE

THEN Bede penned his forecast, he doubtless expected the next age' to perpetuate and develop the Christian civilization which gave so bright a promise. The event was different indeed; for it turned out to be the age of the last great inroad of Northern barbarians from which Christendom has suffered. Wildlyferocious swarms of heathen pirates, arriving in never-ending succession from the inlets of Norway and Denmark, brought back to Britain all the horrors of the Saxon invasion, and made such havoc that the outlook grew dark and darker. Their black barks were first seen in 787, when, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle narrates: This year first came three ships of the Northmen, out of Hæretha-land [Norway]. And then the Reve [Sheriff] rode to the place, and would have driven them to the King's town, because he knew not what men they were. And then and there did they slay him. These were the first ships of Danish men that sought the land of Angle-kin.' 1

1

§ 2. Again, in 794, after 'dire forewarnings over the land, mighty whirlwinds and thunderbolts and fiery dragons flying through the air,' we read that, 'on the 6th of the Ides of January [January 8] heathen raiders full piteously wasted God's Church at Lindisfarne, with rapine and slaughter.'

§ 3. This expedition was crushed the following year by aid of a tempest which cast away the pirates on the Northumbrian coast, and the daunted freebooters made no further attempt on our shores for a generation. And that generation witnessed, just in time, the long-delayed unification of England. Of the seven kingdoms which made up the so-called Heptarchy, three were Saxon. Two of these, Essex and Sussex, yet keep their

1 This was the earliest name for England.

old name and their old boundaries, as counties; the third, Wessex, took in all the rest of the island (save Kent and Cornwall) south of the Thames. Three more were Anglian : Northumberland, from the Forth to the Humber, and from the Pennine Hills to the North Sea; Mercia, from the Humber to the Thames, and to the Welsh border; and East Anglia, containing Norfolk and Suffolk. And one, Kent, belonged to the earliest of all the English settlers, the Jutes.1

§ 4. In the incessant strife always bickering amongst these kingdoms, Wessex early absorbed Sussex and Kent. Essex, in like manner, was annexed by East Anglia, and both East Anglia and Wessex became for awhile subject to Mercia. the wonderful year 800, which saw the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor at Rome, witnessed at Kingston-on-Thames a humbler ceremony, which was destined to bring about yet more momentous results. On the ancient coronation stone of the West Saxon monarchs, still to be seen in Kingston Marketplace, did Egbert, 'the uniter of the Heptarchy,' the grandfather of Alfred, take his seat (after three years' exile, at Mercian instance, in France) as King of the West Saxons.

§ 5. Little did those who took part in the acclamations which greeted him imagine that this tributary monarch of a few counties, occupying his position only by the sufferance of his Mercian overlord, was to be the founder of an empire destined to outlast that of the great Charles, and to extend its bounds incomparably further than his! Yet so it was. This petty under-King of the West Saxons worked his own way to be King of the English.' Three generations more, and his descendants were Emperors of Britain, nor have the imperial claims of the British Crown ever been wholly lost sight of since. The imperial style, constantly adopted by our monarchs, is not, as is often thought, a mere turgid form of self

1 See Appendix A.

2 This dignity was first attained by Edward, the heroic son of Alfred, in 924, and culminated in the coronation of Edward's great grandson, Edgar the Peaceful, as 'Basileus' of Britain, 973.

glorification, but expresses a historical and political claim of no small importance-the repudiation of the pretensions of Rome to political dominion in our island. Nor is it by any mere figure of speech that we now speak of the British Empire.' For a dominion uniting under its suzerainty regions in every part of the earth, connected with it by ties of every degree of closeness, from the Isle of Man to Cyprus and Egypt corresponds more nearly to the original idea connoted by the word 'empire' than anything the world has seen since classical days. § 6. Such are the mighty consequences springing from the coronation of Egbert. Their first manifestation was, however, long in showing itself. Egbert, a statesman of no mean order, gave at first that highest proof of statesmanship-he knew how to wait. For twenty-three years he bided his time, and then suddenly shook off the Mercian yoke. One great victory (at Ellandune) over the midland forces sufficed. Not only was Wessex freed, but the whole Saxon Name. 'The South Saxons, and the East Saxons, and the men of Kent and they of Surrey, came in unto him, for erst had they been wrongly forced from his kin. And the same year did the King of the East Angles and his folk seek wardship from King Egbert for dread of the Mercians.' 8

2

§ 7. An attempt by the Mercians to regain their conquests led to the defeat and death of their King, Beornwulf, leaving the kingdom so weakened that, in 827, Egbert was able to subdue it, thus uniting under his sceptre all England south of the Humber. He was now acclaimed Bretwalda, the first Bretwalda since Oswy of Northumberland in 642.

§ 8. This assumption of an almost obsolete title is a striking proof of Egbert's statecraft. The name had been unheard for nearly two centuries, and the last three monarchs who bore it had all been Kings of Northumbria. To the dominion of

1 So the statutes of 1534: This realm of England is an Empire governed by one Supreme Head . . . having the dignity and royal estate of the Imperial Crown.

2 Probably Ellingham, in South-west Hampshire.

3 A.S. Chronicle, 823.