CHAPTER XIV.

THE DANISH CONQUEST.

EFFECTS OF DUNSTAN'S POLICY. RENEWED DANISH INVASIONS. WORTHLESS CHARACTER OF ETHELRED. THE DANISH MASSACRE. MARTYR. DOM OF ELFEG. SWEYN OVERRUNS THE COUNTRY. EADRIC STREONA. REIGN OF EDMUND IRONSIDE. ACCESSION OF CANUTE. POLITICAL REVIEW OF THE REIGN.

HOW

OW fatal the triumph of an idealist can be to the interests which he himself has at heart may be seen from the issue of Dunstan's political career. He remained to the end of his life supreme in the Church, and the chief man in the State. To him it is due that the celibacy of the regular clergy was henceforth enforced more or less rigidly in England, and that theory was in favour of extending that rule to the secular clergy, as was done about a hundred years later. But he himself must have felt that the battle was only half won while livings, and even bishoprics, were enjoyed by married men;1 and he himself would probably have

"Almar, bishop of Elmham, (at the Norman conquest), was a married man, and held the manor of Blofield in right of his wife, before and after he was made bishop." Munford's Domesday of Norfolk, p. 94. As late as A. D. 1194, "the incumbents of Dunston held the Church by inheritance." "Pope Pascal (A. D. 1107), while

using his utmost endeavours to prohibit the marriage of the priesthood, was compelled to allow that the sons of the clergy should be instituted to ecclesiastical benefices." Palgrave's Introd. Rot. Cur. Regis., pp. xxviii.

XXX.

"It seems to yourselves that ye have no sin in so living in female intercourse as laymen." Elfric's

thought that feudalism had been shut out of the Church at too great a cost, had he lived to see the unbounded dissolution of morals that prevailed in the eleventh century among the clergy, who sank under the weight of a doctrine which they had neither strength to live up to nor to contest.1 Still more important for England was Dunstan's influence in training the young king. It is doubtful if Ethelred could ever have been good for much; the race of Alfred was rotting away under vices. which seemed to be sapping energy and intellect: but in the character of a man who combined the superstition of a monk, and unbridled passions with incapacity to act, it is impossible not to recognize the results of that rigid narrow-minded training which destroys the will in order to save the soul. So long as Dunstan lived, all was outwardly well. His pupil indeed was not always obedient. At the instigation of one Æthelsine, whom he afterwards denounced as the enemy of God and of the people, he ravaged the church lands in a quarrel

3

Pastoral, s. 32; A. S. Laws, vol. ii. p. 377. "Lichfeldensis episcopus. cui uxor publice habita filiique procreati." Lanfranc, Epist. 4, vol. i. p. 22. Compare Bracton, fol. 32. lib. ii. c. 15, for an attempt to change the endowment of a church from "personæ et ecclesiæ et successoribus suis" to "personæ et heredibus suis." But this was not allowed, as being to the prejudice of the Church.

'Malmesbury's evidence on this point (lib. iii. p. 418) has been called in question, on account of his tendency to flatter the Normans. But it is confirmed by the general tone of Elfric's Pastoral Canons, by the Institutes of Polity, and by the sermon of Wulfstan, quoted in the Biog.

Ang. Sax., pp. 507, 508. In the history of the abbey of Ramsey there is a curious story of a bishop Etheric, under Canute, who makes a Dane with whom he is dining drunk, and so cheats him of an estate. Cap. 85; Gale, vol. iii. p. 441.

monachum

2 "Ethelredus. potius quam militem actione prætendebat." Vita S. Elphegi, Ang. Sac., ii. 131. One of the most curious transactions of the reign is, that in A. D. 1013, when Ethelred and his family were fugitives, abbot Ælfsige, who was in attendance on the queen, found means to purchase the body of St. Florentine, all but the head, for five hundred pounds. A. S. Chron., A. 1013.

3 Cod. Dip., 700, from which it ap

DEATH OF DUNSTAN.

213

with the citizens of Rochester, and forced the primate to buy him off (A. D. 986); but the ascendancy of unworthy favourites had not yet brought treason and anarchy into the land. Before long Ethelred was deprived of the counsels of the two churchmen who had some influence for good over him; the bishop of Winchester, Ethelwold (A. D. 984), and Dunstan (A. D. 988). The statesmen trained by Athelstane and his brothers were now passed away; the Danish ships already appeared on the seas to ravage the English coasts; and men were looking forward with awe to the completion of the first thousand years since the birth of Christ, and believing that their Lord would return to judge the world. The death of Dunstan seemed to be the beginning of woes.

The event soon corresponded to these presages. In A. D. 988, the Danes appeared at Watchet, and in A. D. 991, they burned Ipswich, when the fatal precedent of buying them off was introduced by the counsel of archbishop Siric. Of course, claimants for the tribute of cowards were never wanting, and during the next ten years, (A. D. 991-1001), the Danes ravaged the country far and wide. It was no one leader with views of ultimate conquest; but men whose only object was to destroy and plunder. The first great expedition equipped against them miscarried through Ethelred's folly in the choice of a general. With his father-in-law, the earl Thored,' an old veteran, he associated Elfric, son of the infamous Ælfere of Mercia, who had succeeded his

pears that he kept a portion of the lands for several years.

Ailred of Rievaulx, 1. 158. Brompton (X Scriptores, c. 877) says that Ethelred married the daughter of count Egbert, and Lappenberg, accordingly, makes her a second wife,

which was not Brompton's idea, as he calls her the mother of Edmund Ironside. The name Egebert was given to a son of Ethelred's, (Cod. Dip., 698), but I can find no mention of an earl of that name.

214

ETHELRED AS WARRIOR AND DIPLOMATIST.

father as ealdorman (A. D. 983), and was banished for some unknown offence, only two years later, by the witan. Restored to Æthelred's favour, but not to power, Ælfric took the first occasion of revenge, and deserted with his men, to the Danes, whom he warned of an impending attack. (A. D. 992). In the short action that ensued, Elfric's own ship was sunk by his indignant countrymen and his son taken prisoner and blinded, but the traitor himself escaped, and the Danes were saved. The history of this campaign is pretty much the history of all. With inexplicable baseness the nobles of the Anglo-Saxons, sometimes actuated by Danish affinities, more often by the sordid lust of gain, betrayed the trusts committed to them, and sent private intelligence to the enemy, or refused to lead their soldiers into battle. The city. militias, on the other hand, appear to have done their duty nobly, and London in particular beat back the invaders with more loss than they ever thought to have sustained from townsmen.1 But the country was paralyzed by the conduct of the king. At times sunk in pleasure, at times rousing himself with a flash of activity to some effort which proved useless because isolated, he completed the ruin of the country by the gigantic measures taken to defend it; and the fleet starved while it waited for the forces that were not yet mustered. On the whole Ethelred succeeded best in diplomacy. He invited the savage Olaf to Andover, loaded him with gifts, stood godfather to him at confirmation, and so worked upon his dormant Christianity that he consented to leave the island (a. D. 994). It was only one chief the less, and Sweyn kept the field with a host of inferior captains. The crisis

2

A. S. Chron., A. 994.

2 A. S. Chron., A. 999.

HIS UNSUCCESSFUL NORMAN WAR.

215

was complicated in the year A. D. 1000 by a war with Normandy. The war was impolitic, for the Normans were the natural allies of England against the Danes; and the English forces were repulsed with loss by the men of the Cotentin, whom their wives assisted to do battle against the invaders. It would seem that the relations of the two countries were extensive, for Richard imprisoned a number of Englishmen who were in his dominions for the sake of commerce or of good government. Already once before, in A. D. 991, Pope John XV. had interfered in the interests of Christendom, and negotiated a peace; on this occasion a marriage was arranged between Ethelred, now a widower, and Emma, the sister of the Norman duke (A. D. 1002). This connection of the two courts alarmed the jealousy of the Danes, who had lately sustained a defeat in Devon from the ealdorman Palig, and had agreed to sell peace; but were scattered up and down the country, still meditating its conquest, and only neglecting the precautions of war. They now resolved to anticipate any league that might be formed against them by the murder of the king and witan. Their plan was disclosed, and Ethelred and his nobles, panic-struck and frenzied, took refuge in the last resource of cowards, assassination. Orders were sent over the country to exterminate the Danes on the next St. Bride's day, (November 13). The people, who had seen their wives and daughters insulted, their houses occupied, and their stores consumed by the invaders in time of peace, executed their commission with fearful

2

1 Gul. Gemit., lib. iv. cap. 4, who, however, places the marriage before the war. The Saxon Chronicle gives the true date, A. D. 1002.

"Because it was made known to

the king that they would treache rously bereave him of his life, and afterwards all his witan." A. S. Chron., A. 1002. Flor. Wig., vol. p. 156.

i.