CHAP. IX. Cnut. 10161035. an English king to Englishmen which has reached The Reign of us, but even more memorable for the light it throws on the simple grandeur of his character and the noble conception he had formed of kingship. "I have vowed to God to lead a right life in all things," he wrote, "to rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer just judgement to all. If heretofore I have done aught beyond what was just, through headiness or negligence of youth, I am ready with God's help to amend it utterly." No royal officer, either for fear of the king or for favour to is to consent to injustice; none is to do wrong to rich or poor "as they prize my friendship and their own welfare." He especially denounces unjust exactions: "I have no need that money be heaped together for me by unjust demands." "I have sent this letter before me," ends the young king-he was still little more than thirty-" that all the people of my realm may rejoice in my well-doing; for as you yourselves know, never have I spared nor will I spare to spend myself and my toil in what is needful and good for my people." Oxford. any, One of the most important results of the long peace under Cnut, and of the new connexion with the Scandinavian countries which was brought about by his rule, was the developement of English trade and commerce. As yet indeed the inland trade of the country was very small. The rivers were its roads, and it was along the rivers that the trading towns for the most part sprang up. But though the Thames was already a waterway by which London could communicate with the heart of England, no town save Oxford had as yet arisen along its course. CHAP. IX. Cnut. 10161035. The name of the place tells the story of its birth. The Reign of At a point where the Thames suddenly bends for a while to the south, and just before its waters are swollen by those of the Cherwell, a wide and shallow reach of the river offered a ford by which the cattledrovers from Wessex could cross the stream, and traversing the marshy fields which edged it, mount the low slope of a gravel spit between the two rivers that formed the site of the latter city. On this slope a house of secular canons had grown up by the close of the ninth century round the tomb of a local saint, Fritheswith or Frideswide; and at the point where CHAP. IX. Cnut. 10161035. the road, reaching its summit, broke into three The Reign of branches, to run northward, eastward, and westward, a little town furnished the germ of the future Oxford. It probably extended only over the site of three of its later parishes, that of St. Martin, whose claims to be the earliest of its churches were confirmed by its recognition as the "city church" and by the meeting of the Portmannimot in its churchyard; that of St. Mildred, whose name shows its Mercian date; and the parish of All Hallows between them; while it was linked to the ford by a thin line of houses, the later Fish Street, with a church of St. Aldad or Aldate in the midst of it. The little borough was probably extending its bounds to the westward over the ground marked by the parish of St. Ebbe when Elfred established his mint there; and the presence of a mint shows that it was already a place of some importance. The loss of London and of the lower Thames valley in the Danish wars had in fact made it a border-town of the Mercian ealdormanry after the peace of Wedmore; and the mound upon which its castle-keep was afterwards reared may have been among the first of those works of fortification by which Ethelred and his Lady held their own 1 A charter (Hist. Mon. Abingdon (ed. Stevenson), i. 439) shows the church to be older than Cnut's day. 2 The site of this parish is now covered by Lincoln and Exeter colleges. Mildred, who died towards the close of the seventh century, was niece of Wulfhere of Mercia, and one of the most noted of the old English saints. (A. S. G.) 3 As Ebbe was martyred in 870, the churches of her dedication generally mark the revival under Ælfred and his children, and so their parishes may be assigned to this time. against the Danes. As from this time it grew in CHAP. IX. Cnut. 1016. 1035. importance and wealth, Oxford divided with London The Reign of the traffic along the Thames: we catch our first glimpse of its burghers when an abbot of Abingdon, in return for a toll of herrings which their barges paid in passing, consented to cut a new channel for their transit.1 What Oxford had become to the trade of the Nottingham. Thames, Torksey and Nottingham were becoming to the trade of the Trent. Nottingham, where Eadward's bridge spanned the river, while his two mounds commanded its banks, was growing into importance not merely as a point of contact between England and the north, but as a centre of internal navigation. The town was still a small one, with but two churches, one on either side the river, and its life was purely industrial, for no abbey towered over its lanes, nor was the rock that overhung it crowned yet with its castle. To keep open the two highways by land and by water that intersected at this point was the main duty of the burghers; they were bound to guard alike "the water of the Trent" and "the foss and road that leads to York." A fine of eight pounds punished any one who ploughed or trenched within two perches of the road, or hindered in any way the passage of boats along the stream. Tolls for the river traffic formed part of the revenues of the town, and the existence of a merchant-gild side 1 Hist. Abingdon (Stevenson), i. 481, "Nam illorum navigium sæpius transitum illic habebat." 2 See the description of the town in Domesday Book, and its charter. Stubbs, "Select Charters," 159. CHAP. IX. by side with its cnichten-gild showed its trading The Reign of activity. Cnut. 1016 1035. In the richer and busier valley of the Severn, where fisheries were now of great value, for at least Gloucester. sixty-five are mentioned in charters along its course,1 Gloucester was fast rising into importance. The foundation of a nunnery there in 681 showed that life had even in the seventh century returned to the ruins of the Roman Glevum, and in the time of Ælfred the town was already of sufficient note for him to establish a mint there. In later days the nunnery gave place to a college of secular priests, and that again under Cnut to a Benedictine abbey. But besides its religious life the position of Gloucester was rapidly giving to the town an increasing political importance. Lying as it did in the border-land between the two races, in a territory where the Welsh blood and the Welsh tongue were still common, Gloucester was destined in the following reign to become one of the state-towns of the realm. As yet however Worcester, as the dwelling-place of ealdorman and bishop, retained its supremacy; and the gift of its market dues, wain-shilling and load-penny, was the costliest among the many boons which Ethelred and Æthelflæd showered on Bishop Werfrith. Chester. Small however as were the beginnings of English trade, it had begun, and a survey of the seaports will show how much it owed to the impulse of the Danes. The port of Chester depended on the trade with Ireland, which had sprung up since the settlement of 1 There were at least thirty-three on the Wye. The salmon fisheries of these rivers were already leased. Cod. Dip. 695. |