CHAP. II.

The Coming

of the Wikings.

829858.

Ethelwulf's return and death.

ever, Charles fought on; and the struggle of the harassed king, if it failed to save his own realm, did somewhat to save Ethelwulf's. The visit of Ethelwulf to the Frankish court, where he spent three months in the summer of 856, was a recognition of their common work; and his marriage with the Frank king's young daughter, Judith, with which the visit closed, marks probably the conclusion of a formal alliance, perhaps of a common plan of operations with Charles the Bald.1

But the policy of Ethelwulf was in advance of his age. England had hardly as yet realized the need of national unity, and outside the king's council chamber there can have been few who understood the need of union between the nations of Christendom. The descents of the Wikings had as yet with a single exception been but isolated plunder-raids, and their very success against the invaders would help to blind Englishmen to a sense of their danger. The new connexion with the Frankish king, on the other hand, may have roused suspicions of a plan for setting aside the elder sons of Ethelwulf in favour of the issue of his marriage with Judith; and if such suspicions were once aroused, they would be quickened by the coronation of the queen, a ceremony which was

1 Eng. Chron. a. 855; Prudent. Trec. Ann. a. 856 (ap. Pertz. i. 450), who dates the betrothal in July, the marriage at Verberie on the Oise on Oct. 1, says that Hincmar, "imposito capiti ejus diademate reginæ nomine insignit, quod sibi suæque genti eatenus fuerat insuetum." The marriage can have only been a formal one, as Judith was but twelve years old. The marriage of Judith to Æthelbald, on his father's death, had no doubt the same purely political meaning.

as yet against the wont of the West Saxons. Whatever

CHAP. 11.

of the Wikings.

829858.

was the cause of the rising, on his return at the close The Coming of 856 Ethelwulf found Wessex in arms. In a gathering at Selwood 2 its thegns had pledged themselves to place the king's eldest living son, Æthelbald, who on the death of his brother Ethelstan a few years back had succeeded him in charge of the Eastern Kingdom, on the throne of Wessex, and their course was backed by Bishop Ealhstan of Sherborne. Swithun, on the other hand, remained true to Ethelwulf, and the Kentishmen welcomed him back to their shores. But Ethelwulf had no mind for civil strife. He was already drawing fast to the grave, and if we judge his conduct by the past history of his reign, rather than by the charges of weakness which later tradition brought against him, we may see in his summons of a Witenagemot to settle this question, the reluctance of a noble ruler to purchase power for himself by again rending England asunder in face of the foe. The voice of the Witan bade

1 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 9.; Will. Malm. "Gest. Reg." (Hardy), i. 169. At some time before Æthelwulf's journey the question of the succession had been settled in a somewhat peculiar way. His next successor would naturally be his eldest son, the "Eastern King," Æthelstan; but, whether from the failing health which the death of Æthelstan soon after may indicate or no, it seems to have been needful to look further, and to arrange that the crown should pass at his death to his three brothers successively in the order of their birth, setting aside the children of all of them. Æthelstan died before his father's return; and the next son, Æthelbald, may have looked on the alleged coronation of his youngest brother Alfred at Rome, or on the marriage with Judith, as threatening his right of succession under this arrangement.

2 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 8.

CHAP. II.

The Coming

of the

Wikings.

829858.

Æthelwulf content himself with the Eastern Kingdom; and abandoning Wessex to Ethelbald, the king dwelt quietly in this under-realm for the brief space of life which still was left him.'

1

1 Will. Malm. "Gest. Reg." (Hardy), i. 170; Asser (ed. Wise),

P. 9.

!

CHAPTER III.

THE MAKING OF THE DANELAW.

858-878.

A FEW months after his withdrawal to the Eastern realm brought Ethelwulf to the grave at the opening of 858; and Ethelbald enjoyed but for two years longer the crown which revolt had given him. The reign of his brother Æthelberht," who followed him in 860, was almost as short and uneventful; and for some years there was little to break the peace of the land save a raid of the northmen on Winchester, which was avenged by the men

3

1 "Idibus Januarii," Prud. Trec. Ann. a. 858, (ap. Pertz. i. 451.)

2

By Ethelwulf's will Ethelberht, who succeeded him as under-king in Kent, should have remained there at Æthelbald's death, while Wessex fell to his younger brother Æthelred; but the will must have been set aside by the Witan as inconsistent with the arrangement by which the brothers were to follow one another in order of age. Both the bequest and the setting aside are of the highest import for our after history; the first as the earliest known instance of a claim to 66 bequeath" the crown as a personal property, the second as showing such a claim to be as yet not admitted.

3 This was under Weland, whom we find before and after

The final

attack on Britain.

CHAP. III.

of Hamptonshire and Berkshire under their ealdorThe Making men,' and a ravaging of the eastern shores of Kent

of the

Danelaw.

858878.

by pirates from Gaul in 864. But with the death of Æthelberht and the accession of his next surviving brother Æthelred in 866, the northern storm broke with far other force upon Britain.2 Its occupation had now indeed become almost a necessity for the Wikings. It was the one measure which could draw their other conquests together. They already occupied the Faroes and the Shetlands, the Orkney isles and the Hebrides. On either side of Britain they were a settled power. The west coast of Ireland was dotted with their towns, while eastward their settlements formed a broken line from Friesland to Bordeaux. But in the very heart of their field of operations Britain still lay unconquered, for their descents on its shores had only ended as yet in hard fighting and defeat. And yet it was the winning of Britain which was needed above all to support and widen their conquests to the eastward and westward of it. Had the pirates once become masters of this central post the face of the west must have changed. Backed by a Scandinavian Britain, their isolated colonies along the Irish coast must have widened into a dominion over all Ireland, while their

this in the Seine and the Somme. Munch, "Det Norske Folks Hist." pt. iv. pp. 200, 209-10.

1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 860.

2 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 866. Ethelred's accession marks a new step forward in the consolidation of Wessex. Kent and its dependencies are no longer left detached as a separate underkingdom; and the king's younger brother Alfred, who would otherwise have succeeded to the Kentish under-kingdom, becomes "Secundarius" (Asser, ed. Wise, pp. 19, 22).