CHAP. VI. the Danelaw. 937955. carried the monarchy too beyond the actual possibilities Wessex and of government. Government, as we have seen in Æthelstan's efforts to restore order in Wessex, rested from the very necessities of the time on the presence and personal action of the king. The administrative machinery by which later rulers, Norman or Angevin, brought the land within the grasp of a central power was still but in its beginning. Their great creation of a judicial machinery for the same purpose had as yet hardly an existence. The disorder which taxed the king's energies south of the Thames must have been even greater in the tract over which the war had rolled to the north of it; and his occasional visits to Mercia or the Danelaw could give little of the succour which Wessex felt from his presence within it. It was the weight of these political and administrative needs that was felt in the second decisive step towards the disintegration of the realm, the creation of the great ealdormanries. Elfred indeed had led the way in this creation by his raising Æthelred into the ealdorman of English Mercia. But the danger of such a measure at once disclosed itself, for though Æthelred acted strictly as an officer of the king, summoning the witan by his licence, and seeking confirmation from him for judgement or grant, yet the tradition of local kingship and of individual life in the country itself raised him into a power which Eadward felt to be inconsistent with any union of the peoples round a common king. At Ethelred's death, therefore, he found no successor; and on the death of the Lady, his wife, Mercia was taken under the direct rule of the crown. The policy of Eadward was in his earlier There other CHAP. VI. the Danelaw. 937 955. years the policy of Æthelstan himself. was no restoration of the Mercian ealdorman, still less Wessex and any indication of the extension of the system over parts of the realm. With the shock of Brunanburh, however, and with the renewed isolation of northern Britain, such an extension seems to have become inevitable; and it was in the later years of Æthelstan, or in the short reign of Eadmund which followed, that we find the system of ealdormanries adopted as a necessary part of the organization of Britain. But though this revival of the old political divisions seemed the only form of organization open to the English kings, their subsequent measures show that they were not blind to its defects. If the earlier kingdoms were restored, the place of the king in each was taken by an ealdorman, who, however independent and powerful he might be, was still named by the West-Saxon sovereign and could be deposed by that ruler and the national witan, while his relation to the folk he governed was that of a stranger, and had none of the strength which the older kings had drawn from their position as representatives of the blood of their races. In the second place, these ealdormen were bound to the West-Saxon throne by their own royal West-Saxon blood.' As we have seen, the growth of Wessex had been simply an extension of the West-Saxon race, and as a result of this, its various divisions had been committed to the charge of ealdormen chosen from the one royal stock. Different as were the circumstances before Robertson, "Hist. Essays," "The King's Kin." Its limitations. CHAP. VI. the Danelaw. 937 955. them, Æthelstan or Eadmund followed the tradition Wessex and of their house in committing the states of Mid-Britain to ealdormen of their own blood. Such an arrangement seemed a security against their reviving the claims of the folks they ruled to their old national independence, and in this respect it was certainly successful, for from this time we hear of no attempt on the part of any of these states to break away from the common English realm. But on the other hand, as the history of Wessex itself in the past had shown, it brought with it another danger. These princes of the blood with the weight of their states behind them could bring heavy pressure to bear on the royal government. Their kinship drew them into close relations with the court, which soon became the scene of their struggle for supremacy and of their mutual rivalries, until the anarchy of early Wessex was reproduced in that of England under Æthelred the Second. Creation of the eastern The aim of the crown in creating the first of these caldorman- great ealdormanries, that of East-Anglia,' was prories. bably to weaken the Danelaw by detaching from it all that was least Danish, and that could be thoroughly re-Anglicized as a portion of the English realm. The ealdordom was intrusted to Æthelstan, a noble of the royal kin, and stretched far beyond East-Anglia 2 1 The date of its creation is really uncertain; but Lappenberg, from the Hist. of Ramsey, assigns it to Ethelstan's reign. 2 He "exchanged his patrimonial forty hides in his native province of Devon for the forty hides at Hatfield, which Eadgar gave to Ordmær and his wife."-Robertson, "Hist. Essays," p. 179. His father's name was Ethelred (Cod. Dip. 338), but this can hardly be the king of that name "who died eighty-five CHAP. VI. the Danelaw. 937 955. itself to include the old country of the Gyrwas about the fens,' with perhaps Northamptonshire, and the Wessex and district of Kesteven. Probably about the same time was created the ealdormanry of the East Saxons by the elevation of Elfgar, the father of Eadmund's queen Æthelflæd at Domerham, who was succeeded by Brihtnoth as husband of his daughter, Ælflæd. Essex seems to have included, besides the shire of that name, those of Oxford and Buckingham, and also possibly that of Middlesex with London. Taken together, the two ealdormanries formed in fact the kingdom of Guthrum in its largest extent, and as the East-Saxon ealdormen, whether from kinship or no, seem to have uniformly acted in union with those of 3 years before the name of Æthelstan is missed from the charters." He may have been his grandson. Æthelstan's name "is found in connexion with the charters of his great namesake." (Robertson, "Hist. Essays," 180, with note.) 1 "The diocese of Dorchester, as it existed in the tenth century, though once a portion of the Mercian kingdom, was not included under the jurisdiction of the Mercian ealdorman. The shires of Bedford, Hertford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Northampton, with the district of Kesteven, seem to have belonged to the ealdordom of Æthelwine of East-Anglia; and as in the reign of Æthelred the reeves of Oxford and Buckingham were brought to task by Leofsige, ealdorman of Essex, the remainder of the diocese would appear to have been placed under the ealdorman of the East-Saxons." Robertson, "Hist. Essays," 181. The boundaries of the eastern ealdormanries however must be regarded as very uncertain. 2 Elfgar died about 951-3. Robertson, "Hist. Essays," p. 189. Eng. Chron. a. 946. 3 See note, ante. 4 This however is only an inference from facts in themselves uncertain. CHAP. VI. Wessex and the Danelaw. 937955. Eric Bloody-Axe. East-Anglia, Æthelstan became practically lord of all eastern Britain, and his nickname of the "Half-King" shows that he was soon recognized as a force almost equal to that of the crown. In the years that followed Brunanburh, however, even if any ealdormanry were as yet created, the results of its creation were unseen; and the care of Æthelstan was centred mainly in the north. As we have said, his victory was far from restoring his original rule. Though eight years had passed since he "took to the kingdom of the Northumbrians," the rising under Olaf showed that the attempt at a real union was premature, that the Danelaw over Humber could only still be governed through a subject king, and he a king of northern blood. Such a king however Æthelstan had ready to hand. His diplomacy had long been as busy in the north as in the south; and he seems to have aimed at finding aid against the Danes by seeking the friendship of the new power which had risen up among the northmen of Norway. Harald Fair-hair had died in a hoar old age on the eve of Brunanburh; and though his kingdom was disputed among his sons, Eric Bloody-Axe got mastery of most of it. Eric is one of the few figures who stand out distinct for us from the historic darkness which covers the north. "Stout and comely, strong and very manly, a great and lucky man of war, but evil-minded, gruff, unfriendly, and silent," he and his witch-wife, Gunhild, whom he had found, said the legend, in the hut of two Lapp sorcerers, embodied all the violence 1 Harald Fair-hair's Saga; Laing, "Sea Kings," i. 313. |