CHAP. V.

centre of the pirates' life. If the boast that English The House of and Irish obeyed the commands of William Longsword

Elfred.

901937.

English alliances.

or the dukes that followed him may be safely set aside, it points to a real influence which the dukes wielded over the body of the Danes in England as in Ireland. It was this unity of life and action among the northmen which made Normandy so formidable a foe. Every pirate settlement was in a state of constant ebb and flow. The northman who fought to-day on the Liffey might settle to-morrow on the Trent, while a year after he might be ravaging along the Seine or the Rhine. That Hrolf's men were tilling their lands in the Bessin or the Pays de Caux gave no surety that when harvest was gathered in, their boats might not be swarming in the Humber or the Colne. And with help such as this the work of the house of Alfred might be undone in an hour; for, conquered as it was, the Danelaw waited only for the call of Norman or Ostman to rise against its conquerors.

From the moment of their settlement, therefore, at the mouth of the Seine the eyes of the English kings had been fixed anxiously on the Normans; and the result of their anxiety had already been seen in the birth of a foreign policy. It was dread of the Normans which first drew England into connexion with lands beyond the sea. Northward, eastward, and southward, the Norman pressure was felt by the states which girt in the new duchy, by Flanders and Vermandois, as by the great French dukedom and the wilder Bretons. All had in turn felt the Norman sword; all dreaded, even more than England itself,

CHAP. V.

Elfred.

901937.

attack from Normandy; and all sought to strengthen themselves against it by bonds of kinship and diplo- The House of macy. While facing the Danes at home, the English kings had sought to guard themselves against attack from abroad by joining in this movement of union. The marriage of Ælfred's daughter, Ælfthryth, with Count Baldwin of Flanders was the first instance of a system of marriage alliances which the English kings directed from this moment against the common foe; and the same purpose may be seen in the marriage of Eadward's daughter Eadgifu with the Frankish king Charles the Simple.1

Æthelstan not only adopted his father's policy, Ethelstan's but carried it out on a far wider scale.

2

He had early policy. hardly mounted the throne when he wedded one of his sisters, Eadgyth, to Otto, the son of the German king Henry; and two years later a fresh political marriage linked him to a power nearer home. The second marriage followed on a change which passed at this moment over French politics. Whatever hopes of aid against the Normans Æthelstan may have drawn from his sister's marriage with Charles, were foiled by the claim to the Frankish crown which was now made by Rudolf of Burgundy, a brother-inlaw of Duke Hugh of Paris; for this fresh attack of the Parisian house necessarily threw Charles back on his old policy of seeking aid from the pirates at Rouen. The English king therefore turned at once to the house which this new phase of politics marked out as

1 Will. Malm. "Gest. Reg." (Hardy), i. 197.

2 Eng. Chron. (Worc.), a. 924. "Offæ Eald Seaxna cynges suna.' But see for date Lappenberg, "Hist. Ang. Sax." ii. 134.

CHAP. V.

Elfred.

901937.

1

the pirates' foe, and in 926 a marriage was arranged The House of through the intervention of the Count of Boulogne, the son of Baldwin of Flanders and the English Ælfthryth, between Æthelstan's sister Eadhild and Hugh the Great. The splendid embassy with which the Duke of Paris sought Eadhild's hand shows the political importance of the match; and its weight may have told on the renewal of the struggle between Rudolf and Charles which followed it. But it told more directly on the strength of England by absorbing the forces of William Longsword in the years during which Æthelstan was annexing the Danelaw over the Humber, and turning into a practical sovereignty his supremacy over the Welsh.

Ethelstan and William Longsword.

Abroad therefore Ethelstan's schemes seemed as successful as at home. His French confederates not only held their own against the Karolingian king, but gave full occupation to the Norman duke. In 929 indeed the death of Charles the Simple left William Longsword alone in the face of his foes. Rudolf was now the unquestioned master of France; and in the following year his victory over the northmen of the Loire was a signal for a

combined attack on the

While Hugh

Normans of the Seine. While Hugh the Great pressed them from the south, the Bretons, over whom Hrolf and his son had asserted vague claims of supremacy, and from whom they had wrested the Bessin, put the Norman colonies in the newly won land to the sword and attacked Bayeux. But the hopes of Ethelstan were foiled by the vigour of William Longsword. Not only were the

1 Will. Malm. "Gest. Reg." (Hardy), i. 216, 217.

Bretons swept back from the Bessin, but their land

1

CHAP. V.

Elfred.

901937.

of the Cotentin, the great peninsula that juts into the The House of British Channel, became Norman ground, while their leader, Alan, fled over sea to the English court. The choice of his refuge points to the quarter from whence this attack on Normandy had probably come. If direct attack however had broken down, Æthelstan was more fortunate in the skill with which he wove a web of alliances round the Norman land. Flanders was already knit to the new England through Count Arnulf, a grandson of Ælfred like Æthelstan himself. The Count of Vermandois was on close terms with the English king. The friendship of the Parisian duchy came with the marriage of Duke Hugh; while Brittany was still at the king's service, and Ethelstan could despatch Alan again to carry fresh forays over the Norman border. Already troubled with strife within his own country, William Longsword saw a ring of foes close round him and threaten a renewal of the struggle for life. But the quickness and versatility of the duke were seen in the change of front with which he met this danger. The claims of the Karolingian house on his fidelity had ceased with the death of Charles the Simple; no Karoling claimant for the throne appeared, and William was able without breach of faith to sell his adhesion to Rudolf of Burgundy. By doing homage to Rudolf in 933 he not only won peace with the Parisian dukes, but a formal cession of his new conquests in the Cotentin ;

1 Alan was Eadward's ward, and had come in 931 from the English court. See Lappenberg, ii. 138 with the note, and p. 107 with note.

CHAP. V.

and the dissolution of the league left him free to deal The House of with Ethelstan.

Ælfred.

901

937.

The

A descent of the Ostmen from Ireland on the shores of Northumbria warned the English king of revolt of William's power to vex the land, and while it woke Northumbria. fresh dreams of revolt in the Danelaw encouraged the Scot king, Constantine, to weave

4

.

anew the threads of the older confederacy against the English king. In 934,2 though the presence of the northern primate and some of the Danish Jarls at his court show that Northumbria still remained true to him,3 the growing disturbance forced Æthelstan to march with an army into the north, and to send a fleet to harry the Scottish coast. But its ravages, if they forced Constantine to a fresh submission, failed to check his intrigues, or to hinder him from leaguing with Eadred of Bernicia and the Irish Ostmen to stir up a fresh rising of the Danelaw. With the Ostmen Constantine was closely connected through their leader, Anlaf or Olaf, a son of the Northumbrian king, Sihtric, who had found refuge at the Scottish

1 Skene, "Celtic Scotland," i. 352.

2 Eng. Chron. (Worc.), a. 934; (Winch.), a. 933.

3 The grant to Worcester just before his march against "Anolafa rege Norrannorum qui me vitâ et regno privare disponit" (Cod. Dip. 349) is attested by "Rodewoldus archiepiscopus" (a blunder for Wulfstan), and "Healden dux." Wulfstan is again present in a witenagemot at Frome at the close of the year, on the king's return from the north, December 934, but no northern names appear among the duces. Cod. Dip. 1110.

4 Sim. Durh. "Hist. Dunelm. Ecc." lib. ii. c. 18 (Twysden, p. 25). “Fugato deinde Oswino rege Cumbrorum et Constantino rege Scottorum terrestri et navali exercitu Scotiam sibi subjugando perdomuit."