without alarm by the thanes and the secular ecclesiastics, who dreaded CHAP. 9. lest they should be called upon to make restitution to the monasteries of Turketul. the monastic manors in their possession. The poor, whom the wars and the extortions of the nobility and clergy had reduced to a state of abject destitution, deplored the desolation of those establishments, at the gates of which their fathers had met with temporary relief in periods of famine and misery; and the benevolent spirit of Turketu! induced him to take part in their complaints. Still his representations obtained for his cause little more than promises, when in the court of Edmund he met with a young and powerful assistant, who sought his patronage, and whom he honoured with his intimate friendship. This was Dunstan, so well known in history under the name of St. Dunstan. The extraordinary proficiency of this St. Dunstan. youthful priest, who had been brought up under his uncle, Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, in all the acquirements of that age, recommended him to the notice of Athelstan. His skill in music and painting was great, and as it excited admiration so it created envy among some ecclesiastics of the court; and their ignorance of these arts as well as other branches of knowledge, then not generally cultivated, but in which he also excelled, he treated with proud contempt. Those whom he offended had sufficient influence to procure his expulsion from court; and though he was shortly after recalled, through the entreaties of his patron Turketul, he never forgot the disgrace, and he even then requested that he might be permitted to retire to the village of Glastonbury, where he passed some years in seclusion, corresponding with few except his patron the chancellor. Whether there had been a monastery at Glastonbury previously to the retirement of Dunstan is uncertain, but he obtained permission from king Edmund to draw together a company of Benedictine monks in that place, over whom he presided. As a testimony of his friendship, Turketul bestowed upon him an elegant chalice, which long afterwards was preserved and known by the name of the chalice of Turketul.

land.

In the following reign of Edred, the third son of Edward the Elder, the chancellor, proceeding on an important mission to the archbishop of York, Turketul paid a visit to the desolate abbey of Croyland, where he was hospitably visits Croyreceived by three venerable old men, the only remains, with two others, who had retired to the monasteries of Wynton and Malmesbury, of this once populous and wealthy establishment. He was deeply affected by their condition, and on his return to the court, he declared to the king his determination to profess himself a monk, and to endow the abbey of Croyland with all his possessions. He obtained the permission of the monarch with much difficulty, but having resolved not to be frustrated in his intentions, he resigned the chancellorship, and a charter* was granted, at his intercession, to the monastery of Croyland, of which he became the abbot. Dunstan was of a very different disposition from his friend and patron St. Dunstan. Turketul, on whose secession from court, he was made the confessor and

* The animosity of the monkish party towards the seculars must have been strong and unrestrained, for in this charter, the new abbot is thus mentioned, " Turketulus, qui juxta Psalmistæ vocem propheticam, odit Ecclesiam Malignantium, et dilexit decorem domus Domini." Turketul, who, according to the prophetic voice of the Psalmist, hated the Church of the Malignants and loved the beauty of the House of the Lord.

A a

CHAP. 9. prime minister of his sovereign. He was ambitious and fond of wealth. St. Dunstan. Instead of the horror with which Turketul regarded the rich benefices of the secular clergy as snares for the soul, he determined to promote his friends and partisans, the monks, to the highest offices in the church. On this account the monks extolled his sanctity, and in preaching to the people they did not hesitate to attribute to him an abundance of miracles. His popularity was great in every part of the realm, and the secular ecclesiastics, though supported by the nobility, began to tremble at his influence. Secure in the countenance of his sovereign, he was rapidly placing the wealth and power of the realm under the control of the party whose cause he espoused, when the death of Edred afforded to his enemies an opportunity to triumph over him.

Edwy.

Edgar.

Edwy, the nephew of the deceased monarch, was a youth of fourteen, and his council was composed of thanes and secular priests, who immediately called upon Dunstan to account for the sums of money with which Edred had entrusted him. The monks were deprived of all ecclesiastic emoluments and dignities, and were even expelled from some of their monastic establishments, the revenues of which were bestowed upon the secular priests; and in order to take from the monks the aid of their most strenuous champion, Dunstan was banished the realm, and he retired to a monastery in Flanders.

The partisans of the monks, in the meantime, were not idle. In Mercia and all the districts where the Danes had settled they were numerous, and there they raised a considerable force and proclaimed Edgar, the younger brother of Edwy, king in his stead. This measure was probably resolved upon by the advice of Dunstan, who was instantly recalled by the monks acting in the name of Edgar. Their opponents were taken by surprise; the people generally espoused the cause of the monks, and it was rumoured that the king of Denmark was preparing a fleet to assist or to take advantage of the insurrection. Under these circumstances, the council of Edwy was obliged to submit to a compromise, and it was agreed that Edgar reigns Edgar should reign in Mercia, which was then understood to comprise Northumbria and East Anglia; and, indeed, the whole country, excepting the small kingdom of Essex, that lay north of the Thames.

in Mercia.

Edgar sole Monarch.

Mercia thus became for a short period an independent kingdom, but on the death of Edwy, which happened before he attained his nineteenth year, the whole of England fell under the dominion of his brother Edgar. As he owed to the monks his first elevation to the crown, Edgar's gratitude and interest induced him to listen to their counsels and to favour their objects, and it must be confessed that the country was, during his reign, free from internal commotions and at the same time respected by foreign states. Dunstan, who was made archbishop of Canterbury, continued to repress the party of the nobility and secular clergy, and to promote the monks to dignities in the church and to offices of trust in the state. If we may give credit to the historians of those days, we might venture to say after them, that the reign of Edgar, the wise and peaceable, was the golden age of England.

But the adversaries of the monks, though repressed by the determined

of Mercia.

conduct of Edgar, were powerful, and waited only for an opportunity to CHAP. 9. resume their authority; and this they found on the death of the king, who was succeeded by his son Edward, a youth fourteen years old, to whom Edward. Dunstan was appointed the guardian. Among those who opposed the influence of the monks, was Alfer, duke of Mercia, who encouraged the Alfer, Duke seculars to resist the encroachments of their antagonists, and joining the party of the dowager queen Elfleda, who was desirous that her own son Ethelred should ascend the throne, he endeavoured to despoil the monks of their possessions. From many of the monastic establishments in Mercia, the monks were ejected and the seculars installed in their place, who readily surrendered the manors of the monasteries to the thanes, in order to induce them to defend their cause against the monkish faction. Edward, on whom the monks have bestowed the appellation of martyr, reigned only four years, and was slain by the order of his step-mother, when he accidentally visited her, while he was hunting in the neighbourhood of Corfe castle, which was then her residence. His body was thrown into a well at Warham, but the duke of Mercia, opposed as he had been to the counsellors of the youthful monarch, could not bear that such an indignity should be shown to his corpse. He went, attended by an immense concourse of people, and removed it to the monastery at Shaftesbury.

These dissensions between the secular and the regular priesthood divided Dissensions. the people into violent factions, of which aspiring men among the nobility took advantage. Alfer, the duke of Mercia, now protected the secular ecclesiastics, but at the same time, became the patron or rather the proprietor of the manors, which the monasteries were compelled to surrender to their adversaries. Still the monks had their friends, who, with superstitious devotion, continued to enrich the monastic establishments. According to the statement of Ingulphus, the treasure of the abbey of Croyland had accumulated, in the thirty years from its restoration to the death of the abbot Turketul, to the sum of ten thousand pounds, which, if we consider the difference in the value of money, may be estimated at little less than one million and a quarter in our present currency. But the wealth of the monasteries served only as an inducement to the nobles and the court to render them subservient to their wants, and to seek occasions to levy imposts upon them. A great inequality of property ensued. Many of the class of the thanes sunk into poverty and obscurity, while a few became possessed of such immense tracks of territory, that they rivalled one another and excited the jealousy of the sovereign. In such a condition of the nation, the people, impoverished and despised, without attachment to the owners of the land whom they served, and totally estranged from all the professors of religion, whether secular or regular, except hermits and wandering fanatics, who were to be met with in every district, were ready to submit to any change either foreign or domestic. The Saxon power, which for more than four hundred years had been establishing its dominion over this country, sunk into the hands of a turbulent nobility and priesthood: it soon fell prostrate before the Danes, and in less than half a century its nobility was completely extinguished and replaced by a band of adventurers from Normandy. This downfall of the Saxon name and dominion in

CHAP. 9. England might be the subject of much political reflection, and might be made to afford fearful examples to statesmen in modern times; but we leave it to the general historians of the kingdom, who have, it must be lamented, too much neglected a period which time, as well as the intricacies of its leading events, have combined to involve in considerable obscurity. Our business is with a province and not with the kingdom at large.

of Mercia.

In the year 983, which was early in the unfortunate reign of Ethelred II. Alfer, Duke died Alfer, the powerful duke of Mercia, who, notwithstanding his animosity towards the monks, was a statesman of resolute mind. He sought to give stability to the crown by uniting the nobility and secular clergy in its support, against the more popular faction of the monks and their dependents; we are therefore not surprised to find his memory stigmatized by the monkish historians of that period, who assert that long before his death he was afflicted with the morbus pediculosus as a divine punishment for his iniquities.

Alfric, Duke of Mercia.

He was succeeded in his title and domains by his son Alfric, who is mentioned by Ingulphus, as one who enforced the levy of insupportable sums on the monasteries for the payment of tribute to the Danes. In the year 986, Alfric was banished. The cause of his banishment does not appear, but he was probably suspected of carrying on negociations with the invaders. When a peace was made in 991 with the Danish leaders, Alfric, together with earl Ethelward, negociated the terms and engaged for the payment of ten thousand pounds, as a recompense to these marauders for quitting the country. Alfric, after this was recalled and placed in high offices of trust, but he did not desist from his treacherous correspondence with the enemy. The policy of the court was pusillanimous and fraudulent; nor did the nobility feel any compunction at engaging in the most traitorous designs. Duke Alfric, in courting an alliance with the Danes, was undoubtedly actuated by a desire to retain his territories, under a power whom he might foresee to be destined to drive from the throne a sovereign who had lost the confidence of the people; and it is not impossible that he might look forward to the separation of Mercia, and the other Danish districts from the Saxon crown. Whatever were his views, he contrived to obtain from Ethelred the command of a fleet, which that monarch had prepared to defend the coast; and then, being in sight of the enemy, he sailed privately away, and left the vessels with which he was entrusted to the mercy of the foe. The fleet had been equipped out of the money which he had himself levied upon the monasteries, and of which he and the king were suspected to have shared a considerable portion. It is only from this circumstance that we can account for his being speedily again restored to the favour of Ethelred, who entrusted him with the command of a large and well-appointed army, destined to oppose Sweyn, king of Denmark, who, with a fleet of three hundred sail, had landed upon the coast of Cornwall, and marched directly against Exeter. That city was taken and made a heap of ashes, and Sweyn marched with his victorious troops through the counties of Wiltshire and Hampshire, laying waste the country in his progress. The inhabitants of those districts, driven from their homes, joined the advancing army under the command of the duke

of Mercia, and expectation was raised that the invader would be defeated CHAP. 9. and that the spoils with which his camp was laden would be taken from Alfric, Duke him. The armies met on the borders of Hampshire, but just as the attack of Mercia. was about to commence, duke Alfric feigned himself to be taken sick very suddenly, and led off the army under his command, in such a direction that the king of Denmark had time to take Salisbury and other towns, which having pillaged and consumed to ashes, he marched unmolested to his ships and set sail with his booty to his native country.

Duke of

Whether it was in consequence of this conduct that Alfric was disgraced, and deprived of the dukedom of Mercia, is uncertain, but we find him in the year 1007, dispossessed of his territories, which were bestowed on Edric, surnamed Streon, or the Acquirer. This man was of low origin, Edric Streon, but by the acuteness and versatility of his mind, had attained so complete Mercia. an influence over his sovereign, that the most manifest proofs of his treachery could never wholly eradicate the favour and confidence to which he owed his elevation. Ethelred bestowed upon him his daughter Edgitha in marriage, and appointed Brithric, the brother of Edric, to the command of the fleet destined to act against the Danes. These two brothers employed their interest with the infatuated monarch in ruining many of the wealthiest thanes, whose riches and possessions were confiscated in consequence of the charges brought against them. Among these was Wolnoth, earl of Kent, the father of the celebrated Goodwin, afterwards as distinguished for his immense wealth as for his eminent treachery, which seems to be the prevailing characteristic of the Saxon nobility of that period. Wolnoth was nearly related to the two brothers, for Edric Streon is by many historians stated to be the uncle of Goodwin.* It is not improbable that Wolnoth had married a sister of the two brothers. In consequence of accusations brought against him, Wolnoth fled from a prosecution in which he suspected that his destruction was previously concerted, and being joined by several leaders of the fleet under Brithric, with their vessels, he infested the coasts, and particularly levied large contributions from Mercia and East Anglia. Brithric, by the direction of Edric, who was desirous to preserve his own domains from spoliation, set sail with the large and well-appointed fleet destined to protect the coast from the ravages of the Danes, to chastise their private enemy. A storm arose: the vessels were scattered and many of them wrecked: Brithric was lost, and most of the surviving captains were persuaded to unite with Wolnoth in his piratical enterprises. In fact, this species of piracy along the coasts, appears, from the accounts of the old historians, to have become quite common; and it is doubtful whether the country suffered more from the Danes than from the armaments of the greedy and ambitious thanes, who were ever ready to join and participate in the booty of the invaders.

The Danes were ever ready to take advantage of the disorders of a country where a few powerful noblemen controlled the king and were intent upon ruining one another. In the year 1009, two large fleets of these invaders arrived on the coasts of England; one of which, under the com

*The genealogy given by Dugdale can scarcely be correct, for he makes three generations between Edric and Goodwin, that is, in less than twenty-five years.