CHAP. VI.

the Danelaw.

937. 955.

the Rothewell cross, this mass of song in its NorthumWessex and brian dress has wholly vanished. What we learn of Cadmon or the lyrics, we have only in the West-Saxon garb which was given them at this period, and which witnesses to a new thirst for poetry in the south. But the bulk of the work done in this later time was a work of prose; and like that of Alfred from which it started, of popular prose. Disappointed as we may be in a literary sense when we front its mass of homilies and scriptural versions and saints' lives and grammar and lesson-books, they tell us of a clergy quickened to a new desire for knowledge, and of a like quickening of educational zeal among the people at large.

Eadred's death.

But whatever was the result of Dunstan's literary work, it was interrupted by Eadred's death. The young king was at the height of his renown. The real weakness of the royal power had yet to disclose itself, and the presence of great earls or ealdormen at Eadred's court only seemed to add to its lustre. The land had at last won peace. The jarls of the north, Urm and Grim, and Gunnar and Scule, sat quietly in the witenagemot as they had sat in the witenagemots of Æthelstan. There too sat as quietly the princes of Wales, Morecant and Owen.' Such a mastery of Britain raised yet higher the pretensions of the crown. The reorganization of the Roman

1 Cod. Dip. 426, 433. When Eadred visits Abingdon, "contingit adesse sibi non paucos venientes gentis Northanhymbrorum," who got drunk over the feast, "inebriatis Northumbris statim ac vesperi recedentibus." Vit. Ethelwoldi, Chron. Abingd. (ed Stevenson), ii. 258.

CHAP. VI.

the Danelaw.

937

955.

Empire at this juncture by Otto the Great, and the claim of supremacy which the emperor put forth Wessex and over the countries of the west, may have given a fresh impulse to the assumption of titles which not only expressed the new might of the royal power, but indicated that the English king held himself to be fellow and not subject to the German.' It is at any rate in Eadred's last year of rule that we find the first clear instance of the use of a strictly imperial style in the titles of our king, for Eadred not only styled himself King of the Anglo-Saxons but "Cæsar of the whole of Britain.' What exact force lay in these pompous titles the English Chancery, if we may use the term of a later time, would possibly have found it hard to explain; vague however as they were, they no doubt expressed in some sort a claim to political supremacy over the whole British island ast complete as that which Otto claimed over the western world. But while his clerks were framing these lofty phrases, the king's life was drawing to a close. Throughout his reign Eadred had fought against sickness and weakness of body as nobly as he had fought against the Dane, and now that his work was lone the over-wrought frame gave way. Dunstan vas at Glastonbury, where the royal hoard was then in keeping, when news came in November, 955, that the king lay death-smitten at Frome. The

1 In 949 there were envoys of Eadred at Otto's court at Aachen. Lappenberg, "Hist. Angl. Sax." ii. 156.

2 Cod. Dip. 433.

3 Sax. Biog." Mem. of Dunstan " (Stubbs), p. 31. Sax. Biog. "Mem. of Dunstan" (Stubbs), p. 31.

CHAP. VI.

Wessex and the Danelaw.

937.

955.

guardians of the hoard were bidden to bring their
treasures that Eadred might see them ere he died;
but while the heavy wains were still toiling along
the Somersetshire lanes,1 the death-howl of the
women about the court told the abbot as he hurried
onward that the friend he loved was dead. He
found the corpse already forsaken, for the thegns
of the court had hurried to the presence of the new
king; and Dunstan was left alone to carry Eadred to
his beside Eadmund at Glastonbury.
grave

1 Eadred's death is dated Nov. 23, 955, Eng. Chron. ad ann.
2 Vit. Adelardi, "Mem. of Dunst." (Stubbs), p. 58.

NOTE. The two following chapters cannot be considered as expressing Mr. Green's final view of the political state of England, and of the relations of the ealdormen to the Crown, in the tenth century. His work on this period was cut short in the autumn of 1882 by illness and the necessity for leaving England, and these two chapters were hurriedly sketched out, and then laid aside for future reconsideration. In now printing them I wish to state clearly that they are unfinished work which had yet to receive the final examination and judgment of the writer. The materials for Chapter VII. in particular had not been put into any order, and the present arrangement of the subjects is my own. (A. S. G.)

CHAPTER VII.

THE GREAT EALDORMEN.

955-988.

THE true significance of English history during the years that followed the triumph of the house of Elfred over the Danelaw lies in its internal political developement. Foreign affairs are for the time of little import, weighty as their influence had been before, and was again to be. With Eadred's victory the struggle with the Danes seemed to have reached its close. Stray pirate boats still hung off headland and coast; stray wikings still shoved out in spring tide to gather booty. But for nearly half a century to come no pirate fleet landed on the shores of Britain. The storm against which she had battled seemed to have drifted away; and the land passed from the long conflict into a season of external peace. It is in the social and political changes that were passing over the country during this period and the conflicting tendencies which were at work in producing these changes that we must seek for its real history. Here, as elsewhere, the upgrowth of a feudal aristocracy was going on side by side with a vast developement

Political condition of England.

CHAP. VII.

The Great Ealdormen.

955988.

The Monarchy.

What

in the
power, and still more in the pretensions of the
Crown. The same movement which in other lands
was breaking up every nation into a mass of loosely-
knit states, with nobles at their head who owned
little save a nominal allegiance to their king,
threatened to break up England itself.
hindered its triumph was the power of the Crown,
and it is the story of the struggle of the monarchy
with these tendencies to provincial isolation which
fills the period between the conquest of the Danelaw
and the conquest of England itself by the Norman.
It was a struggle which England shared with the
rest of the western world, but its issue here was
a peculiar one. In other countries feudalism won
an easy victory over the central government. `` In
England alone the monarchy was strong enough to
hold it at bay. But if feudalism proved too weak
to conquer the monarchy, it was strong enough to
paralyze its action. Neither of the two forces could
master, but each could weaken the other, and the
conflict of the two could disintegrate England as a
whole. From the moment when their rivalry broke
into actual strife the country lay a prey to disorder
within and to insult from without.

The upgrowth of the kingly power had been brought about, as we have seen, by a number of varied influences. It had drawn new strength from the dying out of the other royal stocks leaving the house of Cerdic alone, and from the high character of the kings of Ælfred's line. A long series of victories, the constant sight and recognition of the king as head of the national host, and the religious character with