CHAP. VII. Ealdormen. 955988. crown, still clad in the royal robes that bishops and The Great priests had put upon him, his hair still dripping with the holy oil, the new ruler passed from church to guest-hall, and sate for the first time amidst Witan and people gathered in solemn feast before him as their consecrated head. But the sense of his hallowing fell lightly on Eadwig. Withdrawing on slight pretext from the coronation feast, he delayed his return, till whispers ran through the hall that he had retired to his own chamber and the society of Æthelgifu.' The slight stung nobles and bishops to the quick; and though Archbishop. Odo stilled the uproar, the Witan bade Dunstan and Bishop Kynesige of Lichfield bring back the king, willing or unwilling.2 The envoys found Eadwig between Æthelgifu and her daughter, the crown flung heedlessly at his feet. Hot words passed; and as the boy refused to rise, Dunstan carried out the bidding of the Witan by dragging him with his own hand to the guest-hall, and setting him in his kingly seat. The deed was 3 1 Will. Malm. "Vit. Dunst." sec. 26, "Ille quasi ventris desiderio pulsatus, primo in secretum, mox in triclinium fœminarum concessit." 2 "Volentem vel nolentem," Sax. Biog. sec. 21. 3 Such seems the simple story of an event on which "much has been written, and an amount of criticism spent altogether out of proportion to the materials for its history." (Stubbs, "Memor. of Dunstan," Introd. lxxxix.) The account given by our earliest authority, the Saxon biographer, and of which all later stories are but exaggerations, attributes indeed the whole outbreak to a monstrous lust of Eadwig for both Æthelgifu and her daughter. We may dismiss this the more easily that its narrator clearly forgets that Eadwig was a mere boy, that the daughter became Eadwig's queen not a year later, and that what remains after dismissing The Great Ealdormen. 955 988. one not likely to be forgiven, either by Eadwig or by CHAP. VII. Æthelgifu, whom the abbot in his wrath at her resistance had threatened with death; and as the year went on he felt the weight of her hand. Dunstan was driven from the realm by a sentence of outlawry; and men charged to tear out his eyes reached the shore as he put out to sea and steered for the coast of Flanders,' where Arnulf gave him shelter in the great abbey, just restored by the count's munificence, beside which the town of Ghent was growing up. The triumph of the rival party was completed at The Mercian ealdormanry. the close of the year by the withdrawal to a monastery of the "half-king," Ethelstan, whose ealdormanry seems for a time to have been parted between his four sons. But the price of this triumph had to be paid in a new disintegration of the realm. Before the end of the same year, 956, the leader of the king's kin, Ælfhere, was made ealdorman of the Mercians. The revival of the Mercian ealdormanry was a far more significant step than the creation of the caldormanries that had preceded it; for while they had been but divisions of the Danelaw, this was a parting of that purely English kingdom of the "Angul-Saxons" which Eadward had formed by the union of Wessex and of Mercia, and which had this scandal is quite enough to account for the event. His story, it must be remembered, was written forty years after the occurrence, and here is clearly not derived from Dunstan himself. 1 Sax. Biog. sec. 23. The importance of his withdrawal to Ghent is well shown by Stubbs ("Memor. of Dunst." Intr. cxx.). The Saxon biographer calls it "ignotam jam regionem dictu Galliæ, cujus pone loquelam ritumque ignorabat." CHAP. VII. The Great Ealdormen. 955. 988. served ever since as the nucleus of the growing realm.1 And not only was this inner and purely English kingdom broken up, but it was broken into two nearly equal parts. In extent, in population, in wealth, the Mercian ealdormanry, stretching as it did from Bristol to Manchester and from the Watling Street to Offa's Dyke,' was little inferior to the region south of Thames which was left to the king. The court revolution, in fact, had ended in prisoning Eadwig within the limits of a dominion which was hardly larger than the dominion of any one of his own ealdormen, and in leaving him at the mercy of the 1 Amidst all the changes of the royal style, the one phrase which the Chancery always falls back upon as really descriptive of the character of the realm which the House of Elfred had built up is "King of the Angul-Saxons, and of the peoples that lie about them." 2 It was in the main co-extensive with the Mercia of Æthelred and Æthelflæd, save in the valley of the Thames, which may have passed to the East-Saxon ealdormanry. 3 As to the order of events in 956 we gain no information from chronicle or biographers. The charters however give a few hints which I have used in the text. (1) That for some months of the year Dunstan and Æthelstan remained counsellors at court is shown by their joint signatures to several charters (e.g. Cod. Dip. 1191, 1196-7) in which Æthelstan still signs first among the "duces," while Elfhere still signs as "comes" or "minister." (2) In a smaller group Dunstan's name is no longer found, but Ethelstan still signs at the head of the "duces," and Ælfhere remains "minister" (e.g. Cod. Dip. 1198). (3) In a third, Æthelstan still signs first, but Ælfhere signs as "dux,” no doubt as Ealdorman of Mercia (Cod. 1179, 1181, 1182, 1183, 1184, 1185, 1186, 1187, 1188, 1189, 1190, 1192, 1193, 1194, 1199, &c.) (4) Ethelstan disappears, and Ælfhere signs as head of the "duces" (e.g. Cod. Dip. 1207). (There is a second and inferior" Æthelstan dux," whose signature has gone on side by four great houses who parted all the rest of Britain between them. How helpless the Crown had become in face of these great houses was shown by the events that followed. The two court parties who had triumphed over Dunstan and Æthelstan quarrelled over their victory. They had won the king, but their joint possession was disturbed when Æthelgifu in 957 wedded her daughter Elfgifu' to Eadwig, and the jealousy of the king's kin was shown by their withdrawal from the king's court, as well as by their persuading his younger brother, Eadgar, to join in this withdrawal. For a while Archbishop Odo remained at court, though denouncing the marriage as against Church law; but before the year ended the disregard of his remonstrances forced side with the first, and who signs on into the next year: but he is clearly distinguishable from the East-Anglian ealdorman by the position of his signature.) As the last charters are few, we may suppose that Æthelstan only withdrew from court towards the end of the year. 1 Cod. Dip. 1201. An exchange of lands is witnessed by "Elfgifu the king's wife, and Ethelgifu the king's wife's mother," besides three bishops and one ealdorman, Byrhtnoth. 2 The charters show that Eadgar remained with his brother up to May, 957 (Cod. Dip. 465). We are however far less aided by these documents than in 956, when their number is very large, perhaps from the abundance of coronation grants. In 957 we have but few, and there is little to show to what part of the year they belong. In one group we find Eadgar and the full court as at the close of 956 (Cod. Dip. 463, 465, May 9); in another, though Archbishop Odo and the bishops remain, Eadgar and Ælfhere are both missing (e.g. Cod. Dip. 467, 468, where but two "duces" sign, Eadmund and Æthelsige); in a third Odo is added to the number of absentees, there are few bishops, while to the duces, Eadmund and Ethelsige, are added Elfred, Ælfric, and Ælfsige (Cod. Dip. 1209, 1210). CHAP. VII. The Great Ealdormen. 955988. CHAP. VII. The Great Ealdormen. 955988. him also to retire, and his solemn sentence "parted King Eadwig and Elfgifu, for that they were of kin.' The sentence was at once followed by a general revolt. The new ealdorman whom Eadwig had set over MidBritain was the first to move against him; for it could but have been at Ælfhere's bidding that the Mercians rose and chose Eadgar for their king. The ealdor 2 1 Eng. Chron. a. 958. Of this separation the Saxon biographer and Adelard say nothing, while Osbern gives another tale. 2 As we have seen, the revolt cannot have been earlier than May, and as Odo remained after Eadgar's withdrawal, probably not earlier than the later months of the year. On the other hand, it "cannot be later than the spring of 958, as in that year Eadgar begins to issue charters as king" (Stubbs, "Memor. of Dunstan," Introd. lxxxix.-xc.) The assertion of Dunstan's biographers that it arose out of Eadwig's attacks on monks is a confusion of this struggle with the struggle after Eadgar's death. Robertson ("Historical Essays," 193) says justly enough, "Eadwig is accused of dissolving the monasteries of Glastonbury and Abingdon, and of banishing the Benedictines from England, yet he was the earliest benefactor of Abingdon, for his grants of Ginge and other lands in 956 are realities, while the charter of Eadred, dated in 955 and witnessed by Oscytel, as archbishop of York, is a forgery. Æthelwold, 'father of the monks,' with Ælfric of Malmesbury and two other abbots, attest his latest charter in 959: the clergy as well as the laity of Wessex were his staunchest supporters-Ælfwold, recommended for the see of Crediton by Dunstan, Daniel, and Brithelm of Wells, among the bishops of his party, are claimed by Malmesbury as alumni of Glastonbury-and there were no Benedictines at that time in England to drive away. The struggle between secular and regular began in the reign of Eadgar, and was antedated long afterwards to throw odium on Edwy. If Dunstan was among the supporters of Eadgar, Edwy could point to Ethelwold as his follower, for the contest was fought on political grounds, and not about a question of ecclesiastical discipline" |