CHAP. III.

of the Danelaw. 858878.

came too late.1 The Danes had seized York at their The Making first arrival, and now fell back before the Northumbrian host to shelter within its defences, which seem still to have consisted of a wooden stockade crowning the mound raised by the last Roman burghers round their widened city. The flight and seeming panic of their foes roused the temper of the Northumbrians: they succeeded in breaking through the stockade, and pouring in with its flying defenders, were already masters of the bulk of the town when the Danes turned in a rally of despair. From that moment the day was lost. Not only were the two kings slain, but their men were hunted and cut down over all the country-side, till it seemed as if the whole host of Northumbria lay on the fatal field. So overwhelming was the blow that a general terror hindered all further resistance; those who survived the fight "made peace with the Pagans;" and Northumbria sank without further struggle into a tributary kingdom of the Dane.

Ruin of Northumbria.

3

But the loss of its freedom was only the first result of this terrible overthrow. With freedom went the whole learning and civilization of the North. These, as we have seen, were concentrated in the great abbeys which broke the long wastes from the Humber to the Forth, and whose broad lands had as yet served as

1 Sim. Durh. "Hist. Dun. Ecc." lib. ii. c. vi.

2 "Non enim tunc adhuc illa civitas firmos et stabilitos muros illis temporibus habebat." Asser (Wise), p. 18.

3 "Illic maxima ex parte omnes Northanhymbrensium coeti, occisis duobus regibus, cum multis nobilibus deleti occubuerunt." -Asser (Wise), p. 18. Flor. Worc. gives the date of this battle as Palm Sunday, or March 21, 867.

refuge for what remained of order and industry in the growing anarchy of the country. But it was mainly the abbeys that roused the pirates' greed; and so unsparing was their attack after the victory at York that, in what had till now been the main home of English monasticism, monasticism wholly passed away. The doom that had long ago fallen on Jarrow and Wearmouth fell now on all the houses of the coast. The abbey of Tynemouth was burned. Streoneshealh, the house of Hild and of Cadmon, vanished so utterly that its very name disappeared, and the little township which took its place in later days bore the Danish name of Whitby. It was the same with the inland houses. Cuthbert's Melrose, Ceadda's Lastingham, no longer broke the silence of Tweeddale or Pickering. If Wilfrid's church at Ripon still remained standing, his abbey perished; and though Archbishop Æthelberht's church still towered over York in the glory of its new stonework we hear no more of library or school. As a see indeed, York in time profited by the blow. On the general fabric of the church in the north it fell heavily; after the sack of Holy Island the Bishop of Lindisfarne was hunted from refuge to refuge with the relics of Cuthbert; 3 the Bishop of Lindsey was driven to seek a new home in the south; while the bishopric at Hexham came wholly to an end. But the ruin of its fellow sees

2

1 Bernicia, however, was not ravaged nor its abbeys destroyed till Halfdene's raid in 875.

2 It was destroyed by Eadred in 948.

3 Sim. Durh. "Hist. Dunelm. Ecc." lib. ii. c. vi.

4 Stubbs, "Const. Hist." i. p. 274.

CHAP. III.

The Making of the Danelaw.

858878.

CHAP. III.

of the

Danelaw.

858878.

brought to York a new greatness. As representative of The Making conquered Northumbria, and as the one power which remained permanent amidst the endless revolutions of the pirate state which superseded it, the Primate at York became the religious centre of the North at a moment when the North regained the political individuality it seemed to have lost since the days of Eadberht.1 The gain of the primacy, however, was a small matter beside the losses of the country at large. The blows of the Dane were aimed with so fatal a precision at the centres of its religious and intellectual life that of the houses which served as the schools, libraries, and universities of Northumbria not one remained standing in the regions over which the conquerors swept. So thoroughly was the work of destruction done that the country where letters and culture had till now found their favourite home remained for centuries to come the rudest and most ignorant part of Britain.

The Danes threaten Mercia.

As yet, however, the Danes seem to have had little aim but plunder; and they were hardly masters of Deira when, setting up Ecgberht as an underking, they turned to seek new spoil in the south. They seized the passage of the Trent at Nottingham, formed their winter camp there, and threatened Mercia in the coming spring. But their way was suddenly barred. At the threat of invasion the Mercian king Burhred, with his Witan, called for aid

1 Stubbs, "Const. Hist." i. p. 273.

2 "Sub suo dominio regem Ecgberhtum præfecerunt," Sim. Durh. "Hist. Dunelm. Ecc." lib. ii. c. vi.

3 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 19, 20; Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 868.

2

CHAP. III.

of the Danelaw.

858878.

from his West-Saxon overlord,' The inaction of Ethelred through the strife in Northumbria shows The Making that in spite of the submission at Dore the northern realm stood practically without the West-Saxon supremacy. But time and the policy of the house of Ecgberht had tightened the bonds which linked central Britain to the West-Saxon crown; and the appeal for help against the Welsh in Ethelwulf's days, as now for help against the Danes, shows that Mercia thoroughly recognized its position as an under-kingdom. The call was heard, and a rapid march brought Ethelred's host to the Danish front at the passage of the Trent. of the Trent. At the head of his joint army of Mercians and West-Saxons the king sought at once to give battle. The Danes however were too good soldiers to be drawn into the field; they fell back on their invariable policy of fighting behind earthworks and the defences of their camp proved too strong to be broken through, even by the fierce attacks of the English host. But if Ethelred failed to crush the Dane, he at any rate saved Mercia, for a peace between the Danes and Mercians at last parted the combatants. While Ethelred withdrew to Wessex, the Danes fell back baffled to winter at York; and the severity of their losses seems to be shown by their inactivity for the rest of the year.1 When they next quitted York indeed it was to

1 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 19.

3

4

2 The Northumbrians had owned Ecgberht as their overlord at Dore, on the borders of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, in 827. Eng. Chron. a. 827. (A.S.G.)

3 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 20.

4 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 869.

CHAP. III.

of the

Danelaw.

seek another prey than Mercia. It was the wealth The Making of the great Fen abbeys that drew the pirate force, with Ivar and his brother Hubba still at its head, at the close of 869 to an attack on the East-Anglian Their realm. The Lincolnshire men may, as after tradition East-Anglia. held,' have thrown themselves across their path; but if so, it was to be routed in as decisive an overthrow

858878.

conquest of

They attack

Wessex.

2

as that of York; and Peterborough, Crowland, and Ely were sacked and fired while their monks fled or lay slain among the ruins. From the land of the Gyrwas however they suddenly struck for East-Anglia itself; and crossing the Devil's Dyke without resistance raised their winter camp at Thetford. The success of their inroad was complete. Brave as their strife with Mercia but a few years before shows them to have been, the. East-Engle were utterly defeated in two attacks on the Danish camp; and the strife ended with the capture of their king, Eadmund, who was brought prisoner before the pirate leaders, bound to a tree, and shot to death with arrows. His martyrdom by the heathen made him the St. Sebastian of English legend; in later days his figure gleamed from the pictured windows of church after church along the eastern coast, and a stately abbey which bore his name rose over his relics.

How great was the terror stirred by these successive victories was shown in the action of Mercia, for though still free from actual attack, it cowered panic-stricken before the Dane, and by payment of

1 Ingulf gives plentiful details of this inroad; but it is impossible to make more than general use of so late a forgery. 2 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 870.