CHAP. 9. Ethelred, Duke of CHAPTER IX. The Political History of Mercia continued. The Earls of Mercia, &c. FROM the time of the victory of Egbert over Bernulph, king of Mercia, at Ellisfield, near Winchester, which happened about the year 819, the state of Mercia became tributary to the kings of Wessex. The East Anglians, who since the time of Offa, had been subjected to Mercia, immediately revolted and joined the conqueror. The Mercians, however, as we have seen, struggled against their impending fate, and it was not until after the complete defeat of Wichtlaf and the mediation of the abbot of Croyland, with whom he had taken refuge, that the submission of Mercia was confirmed by a treaty. Buhred's queen was the daughter of Ethelwulph, king of Wessex, and he relied much upon that connexion in his endeavours to free his dominions from the ravages of the Danes, but although his brother-in-law, Ethelred, brought aid to him at Nottingham, he was obliged to purchase an inglorious truce with the invaders. About the time of the accession of Alfred to the throne, the Danish chieftain, Ubba, invaded Mercia, and Buhred again raised money from the monasteries in order to induce the barbarians to quit his territories. They soon returned, and Buhred, unable to raise an army or to save his factious kingdom from their depredations, retired to Rome. When Alfred had reduced the Danes to submission and taken from them the city of London, he conferred upon Ethelred, who had espoused his daughter Ethelfleda, the title of Duke of Mercia, and placed London under his government. This was in the year 887, when Mercia was still in the hands of the Danes. They possessed the towns of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Lincoln and Stamford, and Alfred, upon condition of their acknowledging his sovereignty over them, permitted them to retain these places, under the denomination of the Five Danish Burghs of Mercia. The title of Ethelred, as it is said to be found in his charters, was Dux et Patricius Merciorum;" but some of our historians assert that his title was Subregulus or Vice-regent of the Mercians. In confining ourselves as strictly as possible to the history of Mercia, we pass over many of the leading events of the reign of the illustrious Alfred, which belongs to the general history of England. On the accession of Edward the Elder, the son of Alfred, the Danes again revolted, and renewed their ravages under pretence of supporting the claims of the prince Ethelward, the son of Alfred's elder brother. The courage and activity of Edward were well seconded by the Earl of Mercia and his heroic wife, the Ethelfleda. princess Ethelfleda, who in the arts of war as well as those of peace emu lated the actions of her father. Some of the strong holds which the Danes held in Mercia were seized, and the Britons of Wales, who had been called upon to aid the cause of Ethelward, were checked and defeated in their progress towards the borders of Mercia. It was not, however, until two years after Ethelward had fallen in battle, that the Danes sued for peace. CHAP. 9. It was granted them, but uneasy under the authority which Ethelfleda Ethelfleda. and her husband exercised in Mercia, they renewed the war in the year 910. Their audacity cost them dear; they suffered severely in two battles, and, by the advice of his sister, king Edward established a line of military posts across the country, of which one was fixed near Becanwell or Bakewell in this county. Ethelred died in 912, and the sovereignty of Mercia was exercised by Ethelfleda alone. Her first care was to repair those towns that had been demolished by the Danes, and to raise castles and other fortresses; the chief of which were Tamworth, Stafford, Warwick, Runcorn in Cheshire, Cherbury in Shropshire, Wensbury in Staffordshire, Leicester, Edesbury in Cheshire, besides the castles of Stamford, Bridgnorth and Scargate. Whilst she was thus employed, Hughan, a Welsh prince, encouraged by the insurgent Danes, entered Mercia at the head of a considerable army, but he had scarcely made a junction with his allies when he was met and defeated by Ethelfleda, and compelled to take refuge in the town of Derby. The Saxon princess immediately carried her arms into the unprotected territories of the Cambrian prince, laid the country waste, took and demolished the castle of Brecananmere (now Brecnock) and made prisoners his queen and her attendants. She then, with her victorious army, marched upon Derby, which was strongly garrisoned by the Danish Burghers and by Hughan with the remnant of his forces. Her first assault upon the town was unsuccessful. The castle, which stood on the elevated ground that rises south of the town from the banks of the Derwent, was strongly fortified and well defended. Four of her principal officers, the wardens of her person, fell before the walls, and it was not till the gate was burnt down by the direction of the Lord of Ely, one of the confidential counsellors of Ethelfleda, that the Saxon soldiers were able to force their way into the citadel. The destruction that ensued was sanguinary, and the Cambrian prince fell in the conflict. The Danish chieftain, who held the government of the town, fled into Northumberland, and the castle was completely demolished.* In the ensuing year, 919, Ethelfleda compelled the Northumbrian Danes to acknowledge her dominion, and obtained by capitulation the town of Leicester. She died at Tamworth on the 19th of July in that year, and was buried by the side of her husband in the eastern porch of the cathedral church of St. Peter at Gloucester. The heroic character of this princess has been the subject of high eulogium: her father had made her his companion in the camp and in his counsels, and she made his actions the examples of her own conduct. Ingulphus says, her brother, Edward the Elder, was greatly indebted to her courage and wisdom, and he calls her "virago prudentissima et antiquis Amazonibus præferenda:" a heroine of the highest prudence, and surpassing the ancient Amazons.-She was the mother of only one daughter, and it is related of her, that having suffered severely in giving birth to that princess, she devoted her life to military affairs and to government. Her abstinence from her husband's bed was The bones, spear-heads, &c. that have recently been found in ground to the south of Babington hill, and in castle fields, are supposed to have remained there ever since this memorable conflict. Ethelfleda. CHAP. 9. not the consequence of that superstitious restraint which was prevalent at that period: it was a devotion to the recovery and welfare of the country placed under her dominion, which she fixed in her estimation above the pleasures or the cares of domestic life. Elder. On the death of Ethelfleda, the sovereignty of Mercia was resumed by Edward the her brother, Edward the Elder. This was an act of indispensible policy: for whatever might have been the hereditary claims of his niece Elwina, the daughter of Ethelfleda, it would have been imprudent to have entrusted an extensive and disturbed territory to the dominion of a youthful female, particularly if it be true that she had already betrothed herself and promised the sovereignty of Mercia to Reginald, one of the Danish chieftains. According to some authors, it is said that she was consigned by her uncle to a nunnery, and by others, that she was disposed of in marriage to a thane of the West Saxons. Athelstan. Edmund. Seculars and The Danes, though compelled to acknowledge the sovereignty of Edward, were still in possession of great part of the kingdom, north of the Trent. The succours they received from Norway and Denmark enabled them to make further ravages, and the ensuing reign of the brave Athelstan, the son of Edward, was a series of desperate conflicts. The five Mercian towns, already mentioned, were again in the hands of the invaders, and although Athelstan and his brother Edmund, who succeeded him, were generally successful in checking and chastising these barbarians, yet no peace made with them was of any considerable duration. After a cessation of arms, to which two of the Danish chieftains of Northumbria had been compelled by king Edmund to submit, no sooner had, he retired into Wessex than the Danish princes engaged the Mercian Danes to aid them in their renewal of the war. Edmund, apprized of their movements, returned into Mercia and dispossessed the Danes of Derby, Leicester, and the three other places which they still retained in that province. But it was not only by the irruptions of the Danes and their attempts at conquest, that the peace of the kingdom was disturbed: jealousies had arisen between the secular clergy and the monks, and the clamorous dissensions of those whose duty it was to inculcate the christian doctrines of peace and good-will, prevented the kingdom from enjoying the advantages that might have resulted from its temporary deliverance from the ravages of the northern invaders. The monasteries were desolate, and those monks who escaped the swords of the plunderers fed into distant countries. On the return of more tranquil times, the secular clergy were not slow in possessing themselves of the monastic lands, which they bestowed upon the resident priests, and placed under the protection of their bishops. Alfred was unwilling to disturb this new arrangement, and was probably more inclined to encourage the residence of the priesthood among the people than to restore the monastic establishments to their former wealth and influence. In compliance with the remonstrances of the pope, he built and moderately endowed some new monasteries, but was very reluctant to grant any aid for the repair and restoration of those which the ravages of war had left in ruins. So far do we find him favouring the secular priesthood, in preference to the monks, that in his hereditary kingdom of Wessex he caused Plegmundus, the archbishop of Canterbury, to consecrate seven bishops at one time. It cannot be supposed that the monks saw this preference without envy and displeasure, particularly when they perceived that it made a part of the state policy of the three succeeding reigns. Such resolute and heroic monarchs as Edward the Elder, and his two sons, Athelstan and Edmund, were not likely to yield either to monkish prayers or monkish denunciations, though the latter, struck with the uncommon talents of Dunstan, the celebrated abbot of Glastonbury, opened to his ambition the road to power. After the victories obtained over the Danes by this succession of prudent and warlike princes, the kingdom might have obtained stability and flourished under equal laws, but for the growing animosity between the monks and the secular clergy. The former, reduced everywhere to a state of want by the devastations of the invaders as well as by the imposts laid upon them by various sovereigns for the support of the armies, increased in sanctity and in the affection of the lower orders of the people. This was particularly the case in the districts occupied by the Danish settlers, who received the first rudiments of christianity from the few survivors of those whom they had slaughtered and plundered, and who, either from necessity or devotion, lingered among the ruins of their monastic establishments. In Mercia the secular clergy were nearly extirpated. The manors which formerly constituted the wealth of the religious houses in that province, were in the hands of military thanes or were held by the Danish soldiery. To the latter of these, in particular, the secular clergy were extremely obnoxious, on account of their dependence upon the suffragan bishops, whose authority the Danes considered as connected with that of the Saxon monarchs. CHAP. 9. Dissensions of Seculars and Monks. When Ethelward disputed the right of succession to the crown with his cousin, Edward the Elder, his claim was espoused by the Danes, who were then quietly settled in Mercia and East Anglia, and to the care of the monks was confided the tuition of his infant son Turketul,* who was proba- Turketul. bly born of a Danish mother. The child imbibed from his instructers much of their knowledge and piety, and when on the defeat and death of his father, he was taken to the court of his victorious kinsman and restored to his paternal estates, he retained that regard for the monks which had been implanted in his mind during his earliest years. He seems to have been a man of talents and probity, but attached even with prejudice to the principles in which he had been educated. King Edward urged him in vain to espouse some one or other of the illustrious daughters of his thanes and dukes, but that devotion to chastity which he had acquired among his monkish preceptors was unsurmountable. When the monarch saw this he endeavoured to persuade him to accept of ecclesiastical dignities, and these persuasions were seconded by Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury, who was originally a Mercian monk, and had been one of the counsellors and friends of Alfred the Great. "But he, with various excuses," says Ingulphus,† "escaping from all honours of this description, retained Some writers make Turketul the son of another prince of the name of Ethelward. Turketul. CHAP. 9. almost as much horror of them through every period of his life, as though they were the snares of Satan for the subversion of souls." The king, still desirous of placing him in a situation in which his learning and virtue might be of service to the state, made him his chancellor." When Athelstan led an army into the north to repress the insurrection of Anlaff, the tributary king of Northumberland, who was aided by Constantine, king of Scotland, and Eugenius, king of Cumberland, he was attended by his chancellor, Turketul, who commanded a chosen division of Mercians and Londoners, and was present at the celebrated battle of Brunford, in Northumberland, in which the king of Scotland, with several Irish, British and Danish chieftains, was slain. This victory is said to be chiefly owing to the prudence and intrepidity of Turketul, who, accompanied by a stout and valiant soldier named Singrin, a centurion in the troop of Londoners, pierced through the opposing squadrons, and arriving at the spot where the king of Scotland was encouraging his troops, smote him from his horse to the ground and endeavoured all he could to take him alive as his prisoner. "Then the Scots rallied in compact bodies, and made every effort to preserve their fallen sovereign. Multitudes fell upon the few followers of Turketul and Singrin, and Turketul himself became the principal object of their vengeance, who at that moment, as he frequently afterwards confessed, began to repent his temerity. The Scots advancing had nearly overpowered his small but valiant band, and were dragging their king out of his grasp, when the centurion Singrin, with one blow of his sword, despatched the struggling prince. Constantine being slain, the Scots again gave way and left an open road to Turketul and his soldiers. As soon as the death of the Scottish monarch was known, Anlaff took to flight, and a most unheard-of slaughter of the barbarian troops ensued. Turketul was accustomed to glorify God for his preservation in this dreadful battle, and esteem himself most happy and fortunate, that he had not killed any man and had severely wounded none, although in fighting for one's country and particularly against pagans, this is permissible.”+ This brave but peaceable chancellor was subsequently employed in a mission more suitable to his disposition. The victory obtained by Athelstan had spread his renown throughout the continent, and the most powerful princes courted his alliance. The emperor Henry and Hugh the Great, king of France, sent ambassadors with presents, to demand two of the sisters of Athelstan in marriage with their sons, and Lewis, prince of Aquitain, sued to be the husband of a third. The chancellor Turketul was appointed to conduct the princesses, who, Ingulphus says, surpassed Diana in the honour of chastity, and Helen in corporeal beauty. On his return to England, Turketul devoted himself with earnestness to the object he had nearest his heart, and exhausted his powers of persuasion with the hope of inducing Athelstan and his successor Edmund to restore the monasteries. These princes respected his motives and sometimes appeared to encourage his views; but such a measure was not contemplated There is some doubt respecting the existence of this office before the Conquest. Lambard affirms that the use of the great seal and the office of chancellor, were brought from Normandy by Edward the Confessor. Ingulphus, page 37. |