and Ælfheah were both of the royal kin, both had stood foremost in the group of nobles about Eadwig; and their rise may have been due not only to the influence of their kinsmen, but to their own desertion of Eadwig's cause. Only the "eastern kingdom" was left without an ealdorman, perhaps from Dunstan's reluctance to set a great noble over Kent, where the primate was supreme.

CHAP. VII.

The Great Ealdormen

955. 988.

With these earlier measures of the reign Dunstan The Primate and King. however can have had little to do; for soon after the first settlement of the realm he became Archbishop of Canterbury, and at once made his way to Rome, where he received his pallium at the hands of Pope John the Twelfth. It was only on his return in 960 that he seems to have taken the main direction of affairs. His policy was that of a cool, cautious churchman, intent not so much on outer aggrandizement as on the practical business of internal government. While withdrawing, save in the harmless arrogance of royal titles, from any effort to enforce the supremacy of Wessex over Welshmen or Cumbrians, and practically abandoning the bulk of England itself to the great nobles, the young king and the primate devoted themselves to the enforcement of order and justice in their own Wessex. In itself this union. of archbishop and king in the government of the realm was of no small moment. The Church and the

1 Ælfheah signs a charter of Eadwig in 955 (Cod. Dip. 436), Ordgar as late as 957 (Cod. Dip. 479).

2 For the difficulties as to Odo's immediate successor see Stubbs, "Memor. of Dunstan," Introd. xciii. The date of the archbishopric is 959; the entries in some chronicles under 961 being later interpolations. (Stubbs, "Memor. of Dunstan," xcvi.)

CHAP. VII.

The Great Ealdormen.

855988.

Monarchy were the two national powers which had been raised to a height above all others through the strife with heathendom and the Danes; and from the very outset of the strife in Ecgberht's days they had been drawn together as natural allies. But it was only at the close of the struggle that this natural alliance hardened into something like complete unity. Dunstan would seem to have contemplated the installation of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a constitutional and fixed adviser of the king, in the place of his own West-Saxon prelates: and though this plan was never quite realized, it left no slight mark on our later history. The displacement of the bishop of Winchester by the primate of Southern Britain as the national adviser of the Crown was at any rate a step forward in the process of developement which, even while the monarchy was weakening day by day, was showing the growth of a national sentiment. During this reign at least the plan was carried out. The rule of the realm was in the hands at once of Dunstan and Eadgar; and king and primate were almost blended together in the thoughts of Englishmen. So far indeed as their work could be distinguished, there was a curious inversion of parts. The king was seen devoting himself to the task of building up again the Church, of diffusing monasticism, of fashioning his realm in accordance with a religious ideal.1 On the other hand the primate was busy

1 Hence his praises from the monastic chroniclers of his own and later days. Thus Eng. Chron. (Peterborough) a. 959. "He upreared God's glory wide, and loved God's law. He was wide throughout nations greatly honoured, because he honoured

with the task of civil administration; and if he dealt with the Church at all, dealt with it mainly as a political power to be utilized for the support of the monarchy. But in fact it is hardly possibly to distinguish between the work of the one and the work of the other. If we read the accounts of the hagiologists, all is done by Dunstan and we see nothing of Eadgar. If we trust to the scanty records of the Chronicle, Dunstan is unheard of, and the glory of the reign is wholly due to Eadgar. The contemporary charters supply the explanation of the seeming inconsistency; they show, so far as their evidence goes, that the work was one; but that its oneness was the result of a common and unbroken action of the primate and the king.

In the earlier years of Eadgar, however, the action of Dunstan must have been far the weightier of the two, for the king was but a boy of sixteen at his accession. It was not indeed till 966, when he had fully reached manhood, that we can trace the individual action of Eadgar himself in English affairs. The young king was of short stature and slender frame, but active and bold in temper; and the legendary poetry which gathered round his name suggests that as he grew to manhood there was at least an interval in his reign which saw an outbreak of lawless passion, if not of tyranny. He must

1

God's name earnestly, and God's law pondered oft and frequently, and God's glory reared wide and far, and wisely counselled most oft and ever for God and for the world."

1 Will. Malm. "Gest. Reg." (Hardy), vol. i. p. 251, "staturæ et corpulentiae perexilis."

CHAP. VII.

The Great Ealdormer.

955

988.

Eadgar.

CHAP. VII.

The Great Ealdormen.

955988

have been married at an early age to Ethelflæd the White, who became the mother of a boy, his successor, Eadward the Martyr; for already in 965 her death had left him free to wed another wife, Elfthryth, the mother of a second son, Ethelred.' It is before the latter marriage, in the years when he was only passing into manhood, that we must place the stories which have been saved from the poetry that gathered about his reign, such as that of the violation of a nun at Wilton, stories which are mainly of interest as showing that popular tradition handed down a very different impression of Eadgar from that given by the monastic hagiographers, though they may possibly preserve a true record of the excesses of his youth. But if this temper ever existed it must have passed away with riper years. Dim as is our knowledge of the king, his progresses, his energy in the work of religious restoration, the civil organ

2

1 The Eng. Chron. (Worc.) a. 965, makes Ælfthryth “daughter of Ordgar the Ealdorman": Will. Malmesbury, "Gest. Reg." (Hardy), vol. i. 255, makes Æthelflæd the daughter of an ealdorman, Ordmær.

2 Will. Malm. "Gest. Reg." (Hardy), vol. i. p. 252, &c., "primis temporibus fuisse crudelem in cives, libidinosum in virgines." Will. Malm. "Gest. Pontif." (ed. Hamilton), p. 190, represents Cnut as thinking Eadgar " vitiis deditus maximeque libidinis servus in subjectos propior tyranno fuisset." But the "vitiis" seem to be borrowed from the Chronicle a. 958, one misdeed he did that he foreign vices loved," which is nothing but the common charge against his policy of union, like “heathen customs within the land he brought too oft, and outlandish men hither drew, and harmful folk allured to this land;" while the "cruelty" may be a popular rendering of the severity of his laws and of such acts as the harrying of Thanet.