t CHAP. V. Alfred. 901 937. court on his father's death, and on Æthelstan's annexation of his realm. Constantine had first The House of shown the change which had taken place in his political sympathies by giving Olaf his daughter to wife;1 and after the earlier failure of their plans Olaf had sailed to Ireland, and, placing himself at the head of the Ostmen, again lent himself to the plots of the Scottish king. The influence of Olaf was seen in the withdrawal of the northern Jarls from the English court within a year or two after the campaign of 934, and when in 937 he appeared with a fleet off the Northumbrian coast the whole league at once rose in arms. The men of the northern Danelaw found themselves backed not only by their brethren from Ireland but by the mass of states around them, by the English of Bernicia, by the Scots under Constantine, by the Welshmen of Cumbria or Strath-Clyde. It is the steady recurrence of these confederacies which makes the struggle so significant. The old distinctions and antipathies of race must have already in great part passed away before peoples so diverse could have been gathered into one host by a common dread of subjection, and the motley character of the army pointed forward to that fusion of both northman and Briton in the general body of the English race which was to be the work of the coming years. At the news of this rising Æthelstan again marched Brunanburh. into the north. He met his enemies on the unknown 1 Skene, "Celtic Scotland," i. 352. 2 We find no Danish names among the attesting duces throughout the rest of Athelstan's reign. Ælfred. 901937. were CHAP. V. field of Brunanburh,' and one of the noblest of The House of English war-songs has preserved the memory of the fight that went on from sunrise to sunset. The stubbornness of the combat proves that brave men fought on either side. The shield-wall of the northmen stood long against the swords of Ethelstan and his brother Eadmund; the Scots fought on till they weary with war." But the West-Saxons "in bands of chosen ones" hewed their way steadily through the masses of their foe, their Mercian fellowwarriors "refused not the hard hand-play," and at sunset the motley host broke in wild flight. "The Danes," shouts the exulting singer, "had no ground. for laughter when they played on the field of slaughter with Eadward's children." Five of their kings and seven of their jarls lay amongst the countless dead. Olaf' only saved his life by hastily shoving out his boat to sea and steering for Dublin with the remnant of his men, while Constantine left 1 The Winchester and other Chronicles insert under 937 the first of the four poems which treat of the annals of this period, the Song of Brunanburh. The only other detailed account of the strife is in the Egils Saga (in Johnstone, "Antiq. Celto-Scandicæ," p. 42, &c.); but the Saga is of too late a date and too romantic a character to be used as an historical authority. The site of Brunanburh is still undetermined. Mr. Skene ("Celtic Scotland," i. 357) would fix it at Aldborough; but Mr. Freeman and Professor Stubbs abandon the effort to localize it in despair. The "Brunanburh" of the song becomes in the saga "Vinheidi," and in Simeon of Durham ("Gest. Reg." and "Hist. Dunelm.") "Wendune" and "Weondune." Flor. of Worcester places it by the mouth of the Humber. 2 Skene distinguishes this Olaf of Dublin from Olaf, Sihtric's son, who seems to have returned to Scotland with Constantine ("Celtic Scotland,” i. 357). CHAP. V. Elfred. 901937. his son covered with death-wounds in the midst of his slaughtered war-band. The old king's faithless- The House of ness had stirred a special hatred in the conquerors. "There fled he-wise as he was-to his northern land! No cause had he, the hoary fighting man, for gladness in that fellowship of swords! no cause had he, the grey-haired lord, the old deceiver, for boastfulness in the bill-crashing." 1 Eng. Chron. a. 937. CHAPTER VI. The WESSEX AND THE DANELAW. 937-955. FROM the battle field of Brunanburh, where "dun severance of kite and swart raven and greedy war-hawk" the north. 2 were sharing the corpses with the " grey wolf of the wood," Æthelstan turned with a glory such as no English king had won. The fight, sang his court-singer,' was a fight such as had never been seen by Englishmen, "since from the east Engle and Saxon sought Britain over the broad sea." A hundred years later indeed men still called it "the great fight." Nor was the victory a doubtful one. "The two brothers, king and ætheling, sought their own land, the land of the West-Saxons, exulting in the war." But victory as it was, Brunanburh marks the beginning of a great defeat. The national union which had been conceived by Ælfred and partially carried out by Eadward and Æthelstan, could only be embodied in the king himself; it was only by a common obedience to one who was at once King of the West-Saxons, King of the Mercians, King of the Northumbrians, and Lord of 1 Eng. Chron. a. 937. 2 Ethelweard, lib. iv. c. 5. CHAP. VI. the Danelaw.' 937 955. the Jarls of Mid-Britain, that West-Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian, and Dane, could forget their distinc- Wessex and tions of locality and race, and blend in a common England. Such a threefold kingship and lordship of the Dane Æthelstan had won in his earliest years of rule; and the years of peace which had passed since the submission of Northumbria seemed the beginning of a time of national union. But with the rising under Olaf the prospect of union vanished like a dream. Vanquished as it was, Northumbria was still strong enough to tear itself away from the king's personal grasp, and to force Æthelstan to restore its old under-kingship with the isolated life which that kingship embodied. The hard fighting of his successors, if it forced the north to own their supremacy, never succeeded in bringing it again within their personal sovereignty: the under-kingdom was indeed replaced later by an earldom, but the land remained almost as much apart from the kingdom at large under earl as under under-king; and on the very eve of the Norman conquest, no king's writ ran in the Northumbria of Siward. The severance of the north, in fact, was the first step in a process of reaction which was to undo much that the house of Ælfred had done. The growth of the monarchy, aided as it was by the strife against the Dane and by the personal energy of the kings themselves, had carried it beyond the actual bounds of English feeling. The national sentiment which the war had created, real as it was, was as yet too weak to set utterly aside the tradition of local independence, and to look solely to a national king. It had S The system of eal dorman ries. |