Page images
PDF
EPUB

It was the thinning of their own ranks in the hour of victory which forced Ethelred to conventions such as that of Nottingham, and Ælfred to conventions such as that of Exeter. The Dane in fact had changed the whole conditions of existing warfare. His forces were really standing armies, and a standing army of some sort was needed to meet them.

1

But

It was to provide such a force that the kings, from Ælfred to Æthelstan, gave a new extension to the class of thegns. The growth of this class had formed, as we have seen, a marked part of the social revolution which had preceded the Danish wars. a fresh importance had been given to the thegn by the shock which the structure of society had received from the long struggle. The free ceorl had above all felt the stress of war; in his need of a protector he was beginning to waive freedom for safety, and to "commend" himself to a thegn who would fight for him on condition that he followed his new "lord" as his "man" to the field. On the other hand, the lands wasted by the Danes were repeopled for the most part by the rural nobles, who provided the settlers with cattle and implements of culture, and in turn received service from them. So rapid was this process that the class of free ceorls seems to have become all but extinguished, while that of thegns in its various degrees-king's thegn, the "baron" of the later feudalism; middle thegn, a predecessor of the country knight; and lesser thegn,

1 Stubbs, "Const. Hist." i. 220 et seq.

2 Cod. Dip. 1089. See Robertson's remarks, "Hist. Essays," Intr. p. liv., note.

CHAP. IV.

Ælfred.

878901.

The

thegn-class..

CHAP. IV.

Elfred.

878

901.

The new army.

or all who possessed "soke," or private jurisdiction within their lands-came to include the bulk of the landowners. The warlike temper of the thegnhood, its military traditions, its dependence on the king at whose summons it was bound to appear in the host, above all, its wealth, enabled it to bring to the field a force well equipped and provided with resources for a campaign; and it was with a sound instinct that Elfred and his house seized on it as the nucleus of a new military system.

2

Its special recognition as a leading element in our social organization belongs most probably to his days or to those of his son; and a law which we may look upon as part at least of the king's reforms gave the class of thegns at once a wide military extension by subjecting all owners of five hides of land to thegn service. By a developement of the same principle, which we find established in later times, but whose origin we may fairly look for here, the whole country was divided into military districts, each five hides sending an armed man at the king's summons, and providing him with victuals and pay. Each borough, too, was rated as one or more such districts, and sent its due contingent, from one soldier to twelve. While this organization furnished the solid nucleus of a well-armed and permanent force, the duty of every freeman to join the host remained binding as before.

1 Cnut's Laws, sec. 72. Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 415.

2 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws and Inst.," i. 191. "If a ceorl thrived so that he had fully five hides of his own land, church and kitchen, bell-house and 'burh'-gate-seat, and special duty in the king's hall, then was he thenceforth of thane-right worthy." Compare the "North-peoples' Law," secs. 5 and 9, ibid. pp. 187, 189.

But a simple reform met some at least of the difficulties which had as yet neutralized its effectiveness. On the resumption of the war we find that Ælfred had reorganized this national force by dividing the fyrd into two halves, each of which took by turns its service in the field, while the other half was exempted from field-service on condition of defending its own burhs and manning the rough entrenchments round every township. A garrison and reserve force was thus added to the army on service; and the attendance of its warriors in the field could be more rigorously enforced.

CHAP. IV.

Elfred.

878

901.

navy.

Further than this it was impossible to go. But the Creation of a results of the new system were seen when the war broke out again in later years. The balance of warlike effectiveness passed from the invaders to the West Saxons. The fyrd became an army. In the skilful choice of positions, in the use of entrenchments, in rapidity of marching as well as in the shock of the battle-field, the Danes found themselves face to face with men who had patiently learned to be their match. The reorganization of the fyrd however was only a part of the task of military reform which Ælfred set himself. Alone among the rulers of his time he saw that the battle with the pirates must really be fought out upon the sea. Clear them from the land as he might, safety was impossible while every inch of blue water which washed the English coast was the northman's realm. But to win the sea was a harder task than to win back the land. Ælfred had only to organize the national army; he 1 Eng. Chron. a. 894.

CHAP. IV.

Ælfred. 878 901.

had to create a national fleet. It was not indeed that Englishmen had ever lost their love for the sea; fishers and coasters abounded from the first along the Northumbrian shore, and ports such as Yarmouth and London can hardly have depended for traffic on foreign shipping. That no mention is made in earlier times of a "ship-fyrd," or assessment for the equipment of a fleet, is due to the fact that the struggles of early England had as yet been land. struggles within the bounds of the country itself; but on the first outbreak of a foreign war, the war of Ecgfrith with Ireland, the Irish coast was ravaged by a fleet which must have been raised through a public contribution and manned by sailors accustomed to stormy seas.1 In the south indeed no English navy seems to have existed during the earlier period of the northern attacks. The seizure of Wareham, however, spurred Ælfred to create a fleet. He built larger ships than had as yet been used for warfare; and though forced by the greater skill of the northmen in sea matters to man his vessels with "pirates" from Friesland, their action did much to decide the fate of Exeter. This naval force was steadily developed. In Alfred's later years his fleet was strong enough to encounter the pirate-ships of the East Anglians; and in the reign of his son an English force of a hundred vessels asserted its mastery of the Channel.*

2

1 A.D. 684. Bæda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 26. (A.S.G.)

3

2 Asser, a. 877 (ed. Wise, p. 29):-"Jussit cymbas et galeas, id est, longas naves fabricari per regnum."

3 See Eng. Chron. a. 897.

4 We can hardly attribute to Alfred the law that we find in force in Eadgar's day, by which a ship was due from every three

1

CHAP. IV.

Ælfred.

878

901.

A work of even greater difficulty than the reorganization of fyrd or fleet was the reorganization of public justice. Here Ælfred's efforts again fell in with the silent revolution which was undoing the older institutions of the English race. character and conception of the being brought about by the consolidation of the peoples into a single monarchy, as well as by the new tie of personal allegiance which bound men to the "lord of the land," was bringing with it a . corresponding modification in the notions of justice and local government. The "peace of the folk" was becoming more and more, both in feeling and in fact, "the king's peace," while public justice was more and more conceived of as emanating from the power and action of the sovereign, rather than as a right inherent in the community itself. That this change of sentiment was of far older date than Elfred's time we see from the language of the king. The conception of justice as inherent in the local jurisdictions or as flowing from the will of the people has wholly vanished. In Alfred's mind justice flows to every court from the king himself, of whose judicial power each is representative, and who, as the fountain and source of justice, was bound on appeal to correct or confirm the judgement of all. "It is by gift from God and from me," he says to all who claim jurisdiction," that "that you occupy your office and rank." hundreds, probably of the coast-shires; but some such law there must have been to account for Eadward's fleet.

Elfred and The change in the public justice. kingship, which was

1 See Stubbs, "Const. Hist." i. 208-212.

2 "Dei dono et meo sapientium ministerium et gradus usurpastis," Asser (ed. Wise), p. 70.

« PreviousContinue »