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Celtic and Teutonic ideals-Arthur and Alfred-Scope of the present work-English settlement of Britain-Gradual unification-Marks -Kinglets-Bretwaldas-Church of England-Bede's forecast.

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HROUGH the mist of long-past ages, two heroic names shine out as the special glory of our island, each the peculiar possession of one of the two branches of the Aryan family whose fusion has made Britain what it is. The Celtic ideal has embodied itself in the character of Arthur, the Teutonic in that of Alfred. And it is characteristic of the genius of the two races, that while the individuality of Arthur, as expressed in Cymric legend, is almost wholly mythical, that of Alfred, as handed down by Anglo-Saxon story, is almost entirely historical.

§ 2. He is a singular instance,' says Mr. Freeman, 'of a prince who has become a hero of romance; who, as a hero of romance, has had countless imaginary exploits and imaginary institutions attributed to him, but to whose character romance has done no more than justice, and who appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable. No other man on

forth Augustine, of a united British Church, including the whole island, and subject, under the Pope, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, was, indeed, never fully carried out; but that of Pope Hadrian, two generations later, of a united Anglican Church, was not entrusted in vain to the genius of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury 668 to 690, 'the first Archbishop,' as Bede tells us, 'whom the whole English Church obeyed.' Thenceforward every Englishman was a member of the Church of England. Clergy from every kingdom of the Heptarchy met in synod for common counsel and common regulation of their ecclesiastical interests, thus paving the way for a like solidarity of the realm in political affairs also.

§ 8. And with the spread of Christianity the bitterness of intertribal war was immensely softened. The shedding of Christian blood was looked upon as no light matter, and warfare more and more tended, not only to be less deadly, but to cease altogether. When, in 731, Bede concluded his 'Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation,' he thus depicts the striking progress of civilizing influences: 'The Picts have now made a treaty of peace with the English nation, and rejoice in being united in Catholic peace and truth with the Church Universal. The Scots that dwell in Britain,1 content with their own bounds, neither plot nor conspire more against the English. The Britons, though they for the most part hate all English folk, and wrongfully, from wicked use, oppose the appointed Easter of the Catholic Church, yet can in no way prevail as they would, the power of God and of man alike letting them. For though in part they are their own masters, yet in part also are they under English sway. Such being the peaceful and calm state of the times, many lay aside their weapons, and incline . . . to monastic vows rather than . . soldiership. What will be the end hereof the next age will show.'

The Scots migrated from Ireland in the sixth century A.D., and settled in Galloway. The l'icts held all the land north of the Forth.

The Celtic Christians merely differed as to astronomical minutia from the Catholic reckoning; but these often involved considerable practical divergence in the date of any given Easter. The Picts and Scots renounced these errors in 701, at the instance of Adamnan; but the Britons (Welsh) long persisted in them.

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Earliest Danish troubles-The Heptarchy-Egbert, first King of the English-Egbert and Charlemagne-Defiance of Roman claim to Britain.

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HEN Bede penned his forecast, he doubtless expected the next age' to perpetuate and develop the Christian civilization which gave so bright a promise. The event was different indeed; for it turned out to be the age of the last great inroad of Northern barbarians from which; Christendom has suffered. Wildlyferocious swarms of heathen pirates, arriving in never-ending succession from the inlets of Norway and Denmark, brought back to Britain all the horrors of the Saxon invasion, and made such havoc that the outlook grew dark and darker. Their black barks were first seen in 787, when, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle narrates: 'This year . . . first came three ships of the Northmen, out of Hæretha-land [Norway]. And then the Reve [Sheriff] rode to the place, and would have driven them to the King's town, because he knew not what men they were. And then and there did they slay him. These were the first ships of Danish men that sought the land of Angle-kin."

§ 2. Again, in 794, after dire forewarnings over the land, mighty whirlwinds and thunderbolts and fiery dragons flying through the air,' we read that, 'on the 6th of the Ides of January [January 8] heathen raiders full piteously wasted God's Church at Lindisfarne, with rapine and slaughter.'

3. This expedition was crushed the following year by This was the earliest name for England.

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aid of a tempest which cast away the pirates on the Northumbrian coast, and the daunted freebooters made no further attempt on our shores for a generation. And that generation witnessed, just in time, the long-delayed unification of England. Of the seven kingdoms which made up the socalled Heptarchy, three were Saxon. Two of these, Essex and Sussex, yet keep their old name and their old boundaries, as counties; the third, Wessex, took in all the rest of the island (save Kent and Cornwall) south of the Thames. Three more were Anglian : Northumberland, from the Forth to the Humber, and from the Pennine Hills to the North Sea; Mercia, from the Humber to the Thames, and to the Welsh border; and East Anglia, containing Norfolk and Suffolk. And one, Kent, belonged to the earliest of all the English settlers, the Jutes.

§ 4. In the incessant strife always bickering amongst these kingdoms, Wessex early absorbed Sussex and Kent. Essex, in like manner, was annexed by East Anglia, and both East Anglia and Wessex became for awhile subject to Mercia. But the wonderful year Soo, which saw the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor at Rome, witnessed at Kingstonon-Thames a humbler ceremony, which was destined to bring about yet more momentous results. On the ancient coronation stone of the West Saxon monarchs, still to be seen in Kingston Market-place, did Egbert, 'the uniter of the Heptarchy,' the grandfather of Alfred, take his seat (after three years' exile, at Mercian instance, in France) as King of Wessex.

§ 5. Little did those who took part in the acclamations which greeted him imagine that this tributary monarch of a few counties, occupying his position only by the sufferance of his Mercian overlord, was to be the founder of an empire destined to outlast that of the great Charles, and to extend its bounds incomparably further than his! Yet so it was. This petty under-King of the West Saxons worked his own way to be 'King of the English.' Three generations more, and his descendants were Emperors of Britain; nor have

This dignity was first attained by Edward, the heroic son of Alfred, in 924, and culminated in the coronation of Edward's great grandson, Edgar the Peaceful, as 'Basileus' of Britain, 973.

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