CHAP. VI. the Danelaw. 937 955. union of the primate of the north and the primate Wessex and of the south in setting the crown on the head of one who was to rule from the Forth to the Channel.' In the phrase which describes the new king as "designated by the choice of the nobles, and by the authority of the bishops consecrated king,' we may catch a foreshadowing of the constitutional theory which Dunstan afterwards embodied in the crowning and coronation oath of Eadgar at Bath, as his attempt to find a general name for the royal dominions in the "Fourfold Realm" shows a fresh advance towards his final conception of a Kingdom of England. 1 At the death of Æthelstan, Northumbria stood apart with its own under-king, so that such a Witenagemot was impossible. 2 Eadred, like his brother, commonly signs himself "Rex Anglorum," and styles himself "Rex Anglorum cæterarumque gentium in circuitu persistentium," &c. (Cod. Dip. 413, 1156, 1157, 1159, 1161-1164), a phrase which the "fourfold realm" now enables us to define. The "peoples surrounding" the English are strictly the "Britons," "Pagans" or Danes of MidBritain, and "Northumbrians." Among the variations we find "rex et primicerius totius Albionis," Cod. Dip. 1168; and in a number of other charters "totius Albionis monarchus et primicerius," ib. 425, "rex Albionis," ib. 1167. In 949 Eadred is he "quem Northymbra paganorumque seu cæterarum sceptro provinciarum Rex Regum omnipotens sublimavit, quique præfatus Imperator semper Deo grates dignissimus largâ manu subministrat," Cod. Dip. 424. But another charter of the same year shows that this "Imperator" must be taken in a rhetorical rather than technical use; "Eadredus rex Anglorum, rectorque Nordhanymbra, et Paganorum imperator, Brittonumque propugnator," Cod. Dip. 426, where we have the fourfold realm recurring, and the "Empire" restricted to the Danes of MidBritain. In 955 however the style became really Imperial, 'Angul-Seaxna Eadred cyning et casere totius Britanniæ," Cod. Dip. 433. 66 2 CHAP. VI. Wessex and the Danelaw. 937 955. Eadred's first year was a time of quiet. After the peace with Eadmund, Olaf, Sihtric's son, so long the foe of the English kings but now apparently acting as their under-king, seems to have reigned beyond the Tees, while Ragnald, Gudferth's Eric Hiring. son, ruled in our Yorkshire. The north submitted quietly to Eadred's rule, while the Scots renewed the oath of "fellow-workmanship" which they had given to his predecessor in exchange for the cession of Cumbria.1 The country however soon became restless enough to call for the king's presence; and in the following year, 947, Eadred advanced to "Taddenescylf," and there received the oath of personal allegiance from the Northumbrian witan. Among them the chronicle makes no mention of any under-kings at all, and Wulfstan stands alone as the foremost man of the north. But formal as the recognition was, neither witan nor archbishop were long bound by it." "Within a little while" (apparently before the year was out) "they belied it all, both pledge and oath."4 They may have been tempted to a rising by the presence of the Danish king, Harald Blaatand, or Blue-Tooth, off their coast. The Danish kingdom which had been 1 Eng. Chron. a. 946. 2 Eng. Chron. (Worcester), a. 947. 3 Wulfstan however must have been at Eadred's court in 947, 948, and 949, as he signs charters in all these years (Cod. Dip. 1157, 1158, 1159, 1161, 1162, 1163, 424, 425, 426), so that he can hardly have taken any active part in this rising. 4 Eng. Chron. (Worc.). a. 947. This is the only chronicle that gives much information as to this reign: that of Winchester tells only Eadred's accession and death. U CHAP. VI. the Danelaw. 937955. built up by Gorm the Old was now beginning to Wessex and show under his son Harald the strength which was at last to bring about its conquest of England; and the fleets of Harald rode triumphant alike in the Baltic and the British Channel. Fortunately however for Eadred, Harald's efforts in the latter quarter were mainly directed to the support of the Norman Duchy, which was still hard pressed by its neighbours, and in which he hoped to find a base for a Danish conquest of Western Frankland. But though bent on this aim, he still found room for wider projects; he had already established one son as King of Semland in the Baltic, and if, after the completion of his work in Normandy in 945, he turned to re-establishing the power of the Skioldungs in Britain, it would account for the reception of his son Eric by the Northumbrians at this juncture as their king.1 Eric It is possible that the sight of their English ruler driven out. had roused fresh hopes of independence in the breasts of the Northumbrians. The house of Elfred was already showing signs of that physical exhaustion and degeneracy, which was to reveal itself in the premature manhood and equally premature deaths of Eadwig and Eadgar, in the weakness of Ethelred, and the feeble frame of the childless Confessor. Though Eadred was in the prime of life, he was suffering from 1 The later English chronicles confound this Eric Hiring with the Norwegian, Eric Bloody-Axe. See however Adam of Bremen, ii. 15: "Haraldus Hiring filium suum misit in Angliam, qui subactâ insulâ a Northumbris tandem proditus et occisus est." CBAP. VI. the Danelaw. 937 955. a disease which in a few years hurried him to the tomb; and the Danish warriors may well have looked Wessex and with scorn on a sick man's sword.' But no trace of weakness showed itself in the king's action. As soon as winter was over he marched in 948 on the north, and "ravaged all Northumberland, for that they had taken Eric for their king." The firing of the minster at Ripon, where Wilfrid had lavished the resources of his art, and which had escaped the ruin of the Danish storm, made this raid memorable in the annals of the north; the king's force was too overwhelming for resistance, and it was only as he withdrew to the south over the wrecked country that the Danes ventured to gather in pursuit. They fell on his rear at Chesterford, and so heavy were the West-Saxon losses that Eadred in a burst of wrath threatened to turn back "and wholly ruin the land." But his threat was enough. The Danes abandoned Eric, made compensation to Eadred for the men who had fallen, and again submitted to his rule. 8 Arrest of Wulfstan. In the rise and fall of Eric we may perhaps see a strife not only between the parties of resistance and Archbishop of submission, but also between the Danish and Norwegian settlers who shared the Danelaw, for hardly had he been forsaken, when in 949 Olaf, Sihtric's son, reappeared in Northumbria, where he ruled for the next three years. Olaf no doubt ruled as a 1 See Saxon Biography of Dunstan ; Stubbs, "Memorials of Dunstan," p. 31. 2 Eng. Chron. (Worc.), 948. 3 In 949 the Welsh, Danes, and Northumbrian jarls united for the last time in attesting a charter of Eadred. This is from a late Peterborough Chron. (E), a. 949, as our Wessex and the Danelaw. 937955. CHAP. VI. Sub-king under Eadred, for there is no record of further strife; and the king must throughout these years have been quietly getting getting a firmer grip on the Danelaw. In 952 indeed he ventured on an act which marked him as its master. The submission after Chesterford had no doubt won pardon for Wulfstan's share in the revolt that so soon followed his oath-taking at Taddenescylf, as for the share of his fellow-rebels; but to the English court, where the young king and his ministers were alike swayed by a religious revival, the forswearing of an archbishop took a different colour from that of a Dane, nor had the primate's course during the years that followed been free from charges of fresh disloyalty.' He "had been often accused to the king," but it was not till 952 that he was seized, and brought as a prisoner before Eadred in the fortress of Jedburgh.2 The Northumbrian earldom. The arrest of the archbishop was due no doubt to suspicions of his complicity in a fresh rising in Northumbria, where Olaf was in the same year driven out by his subjects and Eric Hiring again received as their king. Of the strife that followed through înformation even from the Worcester Chronicle ceases here, save that it tells of Wulfstan's arrest in 952. Skene, "Celt. Scot." i. 363, identifies this Olaf with Sihtric's son; Earle, "Paral. Chron." 118, note, makes him another Olaf. 1 As we have seen, Wulfstan's presence at Eadred's court in 947 and 948 is hardly compatible with any active sharing in the rising of the north during these years. He is there still in 949 (Cod. Dip. 424, 425, 426, 427); but I do not see his name afterwards. 2 Eng. Chron. (Worc.), a. 952. He was released two years after on the death of Eric, ib. 954. 3 This is again from the late Peterborough Chronicle, and may |