Alfred. 878901. CHAP. IV. from our view. Its position, however, was such that traffic could not long fail to re-create the town, and the advantages which had drawn trade and population to the Roman Londinium must have already been at work in repeopling the English London. Its growth however was for a while to be arrested; for the conquest of the town by Ecgberht in his general reunion of the English states was quickly followed by the struggle with the Danes. To London the war brought all but ruin so violent in fact was the shock to its life that its very bishoprick seemed for a time to cease to exist.1 The Roman walls must have been broken and ruined, for we hear of no resistance such as that which in later days made the city England's main bulwark against northern attack ; and in 851 it was plundered by the marauders, who again wintered at Fulham in 880, when the city was probably subjected anew to their devastations. At the peace of Wedmore it must have been left like the rest of Essex in the hands of Guthrum. But with the war of 886 came its deliverance, for at the close of the strife with East Anglia we find London in Ælfred's hands. Whether he had won it by actual siege or no,' he "peopled " or " settled " it, and handed 1 Stubbs, "Const. Hist." i. 275. 2 "Obsidetur a rege Alfredo urbs Lundonii," says Ethelweard; but Earle ("Parallel Chron." p. 310) argues that this is a mere misconception of the Chron. a. 886, "gesette Alfred cyning Lundenburg," Ethelweard substituting "besette" for "gesette," "besieged for "colonized" or "peopled." All the later authorities follow the Chronicle, or Asser's "restauravit et habitabilem fecit." Asser (ed. Wise), p. 52. it over to the Mercian ealdorman Ethelred to hold against the Danes. CHAP. IV. Elfred. 878 901. of Essex. The cession of London, however, was only part of the sacrifice by which Guthrum won peace. The The division geographical boundaries which it names show that the "Frith between Elfred and Guthrum," which has commonly been identified with the Frith concluded at Wedmore, is really the peace of 886; and that its provisions represent a territorial readjustment by which East Anglia bought peace from the king. The older Essex was broken into two parts by an artificial line of demarcation between Guthrum's realm and the Mercian ealdormanry, a line which passed from the Thames up the Lea as far as its sources near Hertford, thence struck straight over the Chilterns, and down their slopes into the valley of the Ouse at Bedford, and thence followed the countless bends of Ouse to the point where its course was cut by the line of the Watling Street near Stony Stratford. In other words, the western half of the East-Saxon kingdom was torn away from the eastern half to form a district 1 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 153. At this point where the line hit the Watling Street the territories of Guthrum and Mercia ceased to march together, and it was therefore needless further to define the boundaries of either. But the border-line refers strictly to these two realms; and the common reading of it, as if from this point Watling Street formed the bound between the rest of the Danelaw, i.e. the territory of the Five Boroughs and Mercia, has no foundation in the actual text of the frith. There must have been a separate frith between the Five Boroughs and English Mercia, no doubt with a like definition of the boundary line, as there was certainly such a frith between Wessex and Northumbria (Eng. Chron. a. 911), but both are lost. CHAP. IV. Ælfred. 878901. Position of the Danes reversed. around London.1 The division may be but the return to an earlier arrangement; for some such parting must have taken place when Ecgberht joined Essex to his "eastern kingdom" of Kent, while London was still left in Mercian hands. This arrangement however was so soon put an end to by the reunion of London and Essex in the kingdom of Guthrum, that it would have left hardly a trace of its existence but for the permanent severance which was now made by the Frith of 886. It was this which gave both territories the shape which they still retain, which fixed the border of Essex at the Lea, and annexed to London that district, which from its position between West Saxon and East Saxon, either now or at some earlier time, was known as the land of the Middlesexe. In a military point of view the recovery of the Thames valley, with the winning and fortification of London, was of great moment, for it closed to the Danes that water-way by which in past times the pirates had advanced to the attack of Wessex. Its military results however proved to be the least results of the war. Till now Ælfred's victories had seemed 1 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 5, says of London, "Quæ est sita in aquilonari ripa Tamesis fluminis, in confinio East-Seaxum, et Middle-Seaxum, sed tamen ad East-Seaxum illa civitas cum veritate pertinet." It may be doubted whether " Middle-Sexe" were heard of before this assignment of the old East-Saxon borderland as a "Pagus" for London in 886, when the need arose for a distinguishing name for its inhabitants. I shall however deal afterwards with the bearing of this division on the general question of the "shires;" here we need only note that the question has hardly arisen, as the line of the Frith is far from representing the later lines of the shires along its course. a mere saving of Wessex, a temporary repulse of the Dane from a part of Britain. But the character of the war, as it reopened in 885, showed how much greater a work than this had been done at Athelney and Edington. With the Frith of Wedmore the whole military position of the Danes had in fact been reversed. From an attitude of attack they had been thrown back on an attitude of defence. The northmen had failed to crush the house of Cerdic, and already it seemed as if the house of Cerdic was turning to crush the northmen. The driving off of the pirates, the attack on East Anglia, the recovery of London and the lands about it, showed England that in Wessex and its king the country possessed a force not only strong enough to withstand the Danes, but strong enough to take in hand the undoing of what the Danes had done. The consciousness of such a change at once made itself felt. If any date can be given for the foundation of a national monarchy, as distinct from the earlier supremacy of king over king, it is the year 886. In that year, says the chronicle, "all the Angel-cyn turned to Ælfred, save those that were under bondage to Danish men." The old tribal jealousies were, if not destroyed, at least subordinated to the sense of a common patriotism, and a sense of national existence began from this moment to give life and vigour to the new conception of a national sovereignty. If the Dane had struck down the dominion of Ecgberht, it was the Dane who was to bring about even more than its restoration. 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 886. CHAP. IV. Elfred. -878 901. Rise of national sentiment. CHAP. IV. Alfred. 878 901. Set face to face with a foreign foe, the English people was waking to a consciousness of its own existence; the rule of the stranger was crushing provincial jealousies and deepening the sense of a common nationality; while the question of political and military supremacy was settled as it had never been settled before. Wessex alone had repulsed the Dane. The West-Saxons had not only kept their own freedom; they had become the only possible champions of the freedom of other Englishmen. The old jealousy of their greatness was lost in a craving for their aid, for it was plain that deliverance from the invader, if it came at all, must come through the sword of the West-Saxon king. It was no wonder then that the eyes of Northumbrian and Mercian turned more and more to Ælfred, or that his work gleamed over England like a light of hope. His slow patient undoing of the evil which the Danes had done in Wessex was a promise of its undoing throughout the nation at large. Intellectual But if the growth of this sentiment gave a moral ruin of England. strength to Elfred's position, the sentiment itself gained largeness and dignity from the conception of national rule which it found embodied in the king. Hardly had this second breathing-space been won in the long conflict with the enemy than Ælfred turned anew to his work of restoration. The ruin that the Danes had wrought had been no mere material ruin. When they first appeared off her shores, England stood in the forefront of European culture; her scholars, her libraries, her poetry, had no rivals in the western world. But all, or |