CHAP. II. of the Wikings. 829 858. ecclesiastical policy. The policy of the Mercian kings had been one of The Coming jealousy of this new power and influence of the Church. Ecgberht on the other hand, like the Frank sovereigns in whose court he learned the art of rule, Ecgberht's seized on the priesthood as allies and co-operators in the work he had to do. His earlier work of national consolidation indeed was a work which the Church had been doing ever since the days of Theodore. Its synods were the first national gatherings; its canons the first national laws; its bishops, chosen as they often were with little regard to their local origin, were the first national officers. The national character of the Church rose into yet greater prominence as the hopes of political union died away; and from the defeat of Ethelbald to Ecgberht's day the ecclesiastical body remained the one power that struggled against the separatist tendencies of the English states and preserved some faint shadow of national union. That Ecgberht should seek its aid in his work of consolidation and order would in any case therefore have been natural enough.1 But the inroads of the Wikings supplied a yet stronger ground of union between the Church and the new kingdom. Each suddenly found itself confronted by a common enemy. The foe that threatened ruin to the political organization of England threatened ruin to its religious organization as well. In the attack of the northern peoples, heathendom seemed to fling itself in a last desperate rally on the Christian world. Thor and Odin were arrayed against Christ. Abbey 1 For Ecgberht's attitude to the Church, see Stubbs's "Constit. Hist." vol. i. p. 269. and minster were the special objects of the pirates' plunder. Priests were slain at the altar, and nuns driven scared from their quiet cells. Library and scriptorium, costly manuscript and delicate carving, blazed in the same pitiless fire. It was not the mere kingdom of Ecgberht, it was religion and learning and art whose very existence was at stake. It was a common danger therefore that drew Church and State together into a union closer than had been seen before. In 838 Ecgberht promised lasting peace and protection to the see of Canterbury, and received from Archbishop Ceolnoth a pledge of firm and unshaken friendship from henceforth for ever.1 Like pledges were given and taken from Winchester, and, as we may believe, from the rest of the English Churches. CHAP. II. The Coming of the Wikings. 829 858. This alliance was the last political act of Ecgberht's Ethelwulf. reign, but its results were felt as soon as his son Ethelwulf mounted the throne in the year which followed it, 839; and the energetic attitude of such a bishop as Ealhstan of Sherborne, the political influence of Bishop Swithun of Winchester, mark the new part which the Church was henceforth to play in English affairs. As bishop of the royal city of Winchester Swithun was naturally drawn close to the throne; and throughout Æthelwulf's days he seems to have acted as the king's counsellor. But Ethelwulf was far from being the mere tool of his minister. To the charges made in later times against the son of Ecgberht the actual history of his reign gives little countenance. He 2 1 Stubbs and Haddan, "Councils," iii. 617. 2 Will. Malm. "Gest. Reg." (Hardy), vol. i. p. 151. CHAP. II. The Coming of the Wikings. 829858. The Wikings attack Wessex. is reproached with weakness and inactivity, with an unwarlike temper, and with an excessive devotion to the Church. But it is hard to see any want of energy in the king's actual conduct. His steady fight with the Danes, as well as the crowning victory which foiled their heaviest attack at Aclea, show his worth as a warrior; while the firmness with which he carried out Ecgberht's policy at home and his effort to organize a common European resistance to the northern marauders show his capacity as a statesman.. Æthelwulf had hardly mounted the throne when he had to meet the foe whom his father's sword had driven for a brief space from the land, for not even such a victory as Hengest-dun could long check the attack of the pirates who were cruising in ever growing numbers over the Irish Sea. Their successes, as we have seen, had now given them a base of operations in Ireland itself, the north of which seemed passing into the hands of the Wikings.1 Undisputed master of Ulster, Thorgils dealt a heavy blow at the religion and civilization of the island by the destruction of Armagh, and pressed hard upon Meath and Connaught. Meanwhile, scattered squadrons were seizing point after point along the shore, raising forts and planting colonies to which Ireland owed the rise of its earliest towns, for Dublin, Waterford, Limerick, and Cork, all sprang from pirate settlements.2 It 1 For the character of Thorgils' settlement, see Todd, "War of Gaedhill and Gaill," Intr. p. xlviii. 2 "It was in 837 or 838 that Dublin was first taken by the foreigners, who erected a fortress there in 841 or 842." Todd, "War of Gaedhill and Gaill," Introd. p. liii. was thus from a land that seemed all but their own that the Ostmen, as the Wikings were called in these parts, could direct their attacks against the unharried country across St. George's Channel. But they found a vigorous and well organized resistance. In 837 an attack on the very heart of the realm was repulsed by the fyrd of Hamton-shire under ealdorman Wulfheard.' The bulk of the pirate raids however were as yet directed against the country to the west beyond Selwood, the district which from its half Celtic population was known as that of the Wealh-cyn, and where, in spite of the failure of the Cornwealas in their revolt against Ecgberht, they might still hope for aid from the western Welsh. Here however the local fyrds fought as resolutely as in Hamton-shire. In the very year of Wulfheard's success ealdorman Ethelhelm at the head of the Dorset-folk fell beaten after a well-fought struggle with a pirate force which landed at Portland; and three years later King Ethelwulf was himself defeated in an encounter with thirty-five pirate ships at their old landing place of Charmouth; 3 but in 845 the fyrds of Somerset and Dorset, with their ealdormen and their bishop Ealhstan at their head, repulsed the invaders with heavy loss at the mouth of the Parret, and six years later they were driven back with slaughter by the fyrd and ealdorman of Devon.1 2 CHAP. II. The Coming of the Wikings. 829 858. The stout fighting of the men of Wessex was no The Wikings doubt aided by a sudden weakening in the position Frankland. 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 837. 3 Ibid. 840. 2 Ibid. 837. 4 Ibid. 845, 851. in CHAP. II. of their assailants; for in the year of Bishop EalhThe Coming stan's victory at the Parret, Thorgils was slain in a of the Wikings. 829858. rising of the Irish tribes of the north,' and his host driven from the land, while the Ostmen of the coast wasted their strength in bitter warfare between the older settlers and fresh comers from the northern lands.2 But whether from her own resistance or the weakness of her foes, Wessex at last gained a breathing-space in the struggle: and for twenty years to come only a single descent on her coast disturbed the peace which she had won. The cessation of the strife in one quarter, however, was but the signal for its outbreak in another. The Wikings, as we have seen, had pushed forward from their home in two parallel lines of advance, one, mainly from Norway, by the Shetlands and the Hebrides along the coast of Ireland, the other, mainly from South Jutland, along the coast of Friesland and of Gaul. The last had till now found a formidable barrier in the resistance of the empire. But the wars which broke out only a few years after Ethelwulf's accession between the sons of Lewis the Pious threw open Frank-land to the pirates' arms; and after pushing up the Seine and the Loire to the sack of Rouen and Nantes they reached the Garonne in 844, and wrecked its country as far as Toulouse. In 845 a mighty host crowned the work of havoc by the sack of Paris; and with fresh fire thus added to their 1 See for date Todd, "War of Gaedhill and Gaill," Intr. xliii. 2 According to the "Annals of Ulster," the "Dubhgael," Black Gentiles, or Danes, first came to Ireland in 851, and their coming was at once followed by a great battle with the "Fingalla," or Norwegians. Todd, "War of Gaedhill and Gaill," Intr. lxxviii. |