The England of Ecg berht. essence of the old English "feast," as sins. It claimed CHAP. I. to control every circumstance of life. It interfered with labour-customs by prohibitions of toil Sundays and holy days. It forced on a rude community to which bodily joys were dear, long and painful fasts. Even profounder modifications were brought about by the changes it wrought in the personal history of every Englishman. Ceremonialism hung round every one in those old days from the cradle to the grave, and by the contact with Christendom the whole character of English ceremonialism was altered. The very babe felt the change. Baptism succeeded the "dragging through the earth" for Hertha. A new kin was created for child and parents in the "gossip" of the christening. The next great act of life, marriage, remained an act done before and with assent of the fellow-villagers; but new bonds of affinity limited a man's choice; and while the old hand-plighting and wed survived the priest's blessing was added. The burial-rite was as completely altered. The burial-fire was abolished; and instead of resting beneath his mound, like Beowulf, on some wind-swept headland or hill, the Christian warrior slept with his fellows in his lowly grave beneath the shade of the village church. Its strife with But if the old faith was beaten by the new it was long in being killed. A hundred years Heathenism. after the conversion of Kent, King Wihtræd had still to forbid Kentish-men " offering to devils." 1 At the very close of the eighth century synods in Mercia and Northumbria were struggling against the heathen 1 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 41. The England of CHAP. I. practice of eating horse-flesh1 at the feast to Woden. In spite of this resistance however, Wodenism was so Egberht. completely vanquished that even the coming of the Danes failed to revive it. The Christian priest had no longer to struggle against the worship of Thunder or of Frigga. But the far older nature-worship, the rude fetichism which dated back to ages long before history, had tougher and deeper roots. The new religion could turn the nature-deities of this primæval superstition into devils, its spells into magic, its spaewives into witches, but it could never banish them from the imagination of men; it had in the end even to capitulate to the nature-worship, to adopt its stones and its wells, to turn its spells into exorcisms and benedictions, its charms into prayers. How persistent was the strength of the older belief we see even at a later time than we have reached. "If witches or diviners," says Eadward, "perjurers or morth-workers, or foul, defiled, notorious adulteresses be found anywhere within the land, let them be driven from the country and the people cleansed, or let them wholly perish within the country." Æthelstan, Eadmund, and Ethelred, are as vigorous in their enactments; and the Church Councils were fierce in their denunciations of these lower superstitions. "We earnestly forbid all heathendom," says a canon of Cnut's day. "Heathendom is that men worship idols; that is that they worship heathen gods, " 2 1 Confess. Ecgberti, Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," ii. 163. Haddan and Stubbs, "Councils," iii. 459. 2 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 173. 3 Ibid. i. 203, 247, 317. The and the sun or the moon, fire or rivers, water-wells or CHAP. I. stones, or great trees of any kind; or that they love England of witchcraft or promote 'morth-work' in any wise, or by Ecgberht. 'blot' or by 'fyrht,' or do anything of like illusions." 1 "If witches or diviners, morth-workers or adulteresses, be anywhere found in the land, let them be diligently driven out of the country, or let them wholly perish in the country, save that they cease and amend." 2 The effort of the kings and the Church was far from limiting itself to words. In the tenth century we hear of the first instance of a death in England for heresy, in the actual drowning of a witch-wife at London Bridge.3 of heathen customs. But against many a heathen usage even Councils Survival did not struggle. Easter-fires, May-day-fires, Midsummer-fires, with their numerous ceremonies, the rubbing the sacred flame, the running through the glowing embers, the throwing flowers on the fire, the baking in it and distributing large loaves and cakes, with the round dance about it, remained villagecustoms. At Christmas the entry of the boar's head, decked with laurel and rosemary, recalled the sacrifice of the boar to Frigga at the Midwinter feast of the old heathendom. The Autumn-Feast lingered on unchallenged in the village harvest-home with the sheaf, in old times a symbol of the god, nodding gay with flowers and ribbons on the last wagon. As the ploughman took to his plough he still chanted the prayer that, though christened as it were by the new 1 Laws of Cnut. Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 379. 2 Ibid. 4 Kemble, "Sax. in England," i. 360. CHAP. I. faith, remained in substance a cry to the Earth- The and the broad crops of barley, and the white wheatcrop, and all crops of earth." So as he drove the first furrow he sang again," Hail, Mother Earth, thou feeder of folk, be thou growing by goodness of God, filled with fodder, the folk to feed."1 But if Christianity failed in winning a complete clergy. victory in this strife with the primeval religion which the tradition of ages had almost made a part of human thought and feeling, its outer victory over individual and social life was unquestioned. One of its momentous results was the intrusion into the social system of a new class, that of the clergy. The shorn head had its own social rights. Bishop, priest, lesser clerk, had each his legal "wer as well as king, thegn, ceorl. The churchmen formed a distinct element in the state, an element to which in numbers, wealth, influence, jurisdiction, character, nothing analogous existed in the older English society; a class with its own organization, rule, laws, discipline, carefully defined by written documents in face of a world where all was yet vague, fluctuating, traditional. But this class had hardly taken its place in English society when influences from without and from within began to modify its relation to the general body of the state; and yet more radical modifications were brought about by the Danish wars. The very character of the Church was changed. English 1 Cockayne, "Saxon Leechdoms, etc.," vol. i. pp. 402-405. The England of Ecgberht. Christianity had in its earlier days been specially CHAP. I. monastic. But the development of the country was fast changing the relation of monasticism to its religious needs. The earlier monasteries had been practically mission-stations-centres from which preachers went out to convert the country, and from which after its conversion priests were still sent about to conduct its worship. But as the country became Christian the place of these missionaries was taken by the parish priest. The influence of the unmonastic clergy, the seculars as they were termed, superseded that of the regulars. It was not by monasteries but by its parochial organization that the Church was henceforth to penetrate into the very heart of English society. The Growth of It was only by slow degrees that the parish, or kirkshire as it was then called, attained a settled form. the parish. The three classes of churches which we find noted in the laws mark so many stages in the religious annexation of the land. The minster, or mother church, which levied dues over wide tracts,1 recalled the earlier days when the Church still had an exclusively monastic form, and its preachers went forth from mountain centres to evangelize the country. The next stage was represented by the manorial church, the establishment within this wide area by lord after lord of churches on their own estates 2 for the service of their dependants, the extent of whose spiritual jurisdiction was at first coincident with that of the estate itself. A third class of small churches without 1 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 263, 265; Stubbs, "Const. Hist." 2 See Thorpe," Anc. Laws," i. 191, 263. i. 262. |