and refused to aid the common foe-the Northmen -by becoming a party to a civil strife. He retired to the under-kingdom of Kent, where he ruled as under-king, leaving his son in undisputed possession of Wessex. He remained under-king of Kent until two years later, when death ended his humiliation. Most of those who tell this story are satisfied to put down the defection of the Witan to a West Saxon prejudice against queens, which dated from the misdeeds of Eadburg, the wife of Berhtric of Wessex. This notorious person, whose shadow falls repeatedly across the history of her successors, is thus described by Asser: "Having the king's affection and the control of almost all the kingdom, she began to live tyrannically like her father [Offa], and to execrate every man whom Berhtric loved, and to do all things hateful to God and man, and to accuse all she could before the king, and to deprive them insidiously of their life or power; to take them off by poison; as is ascertained to have been the case with a certain young man loved by the king, whom she poisoned, finding that the king would not listen to any accusation against him. It is said, moreover, that King Berhtric inadvertently tasted of the poison, though the queen intended to give it to the young man only, and so both of them perished."

Such an accumulation of misdeeds might reason

ably justify the Wessex men in refusing to give to any other woman the opportunity of rivalling Eadburg. But, in fact, there is no need to go so far in search of a reason for their rejection of Æthelwulf. The question of the succession to the throne had to be considered by them in the light of the threatening Danish invasion; and the kind of considerations which would determine it are evident. The nation must have a leader in the battlefield, and Æthelwulf was already an old man. Age had probably increased a natural love for peace, and he was half suspected of being more monk than soldier at heart. Kings who married in their dotage had been known to grow indifferent to the interests of their elder children, and even to the interests of the kingdom. No doubt it was pointed out that the last conspicuous instance of this was the marriage of Lewis the Pious with another Judith, the grandmother of this very queen of the ill-omened name. Charles had insisted on his daughter being crowned and having the right to sit beside her consort: and if this foreign fashion were allowed to pass unchallenged, the superior rank of the mother might be held to give a superior claim to any children she might have. It might be called foresight rather than disloyalty which led the Witan [Wise Men] to shrink from risking at such a time as this that woe which falls on a land whose king is a child.

E

On the other hand (Æthelstan having died before his father's return from Rome), the son who was now the eldest, Ethelbald, had already shown that he had the making of a warrior in him. When, three years before (in 851), there came "three hundred and fifty ships to the mouth of the Thames, and the crews landed and took Canterbury and London by storm, and put to flight Berhtwulf, King of the Mercians, with his army, and then went south over the Thames into Surrey," Ethelbald, under the king, had led part of the army which met the Danish host and wrought the great slaughter at Ockley. This seemed to promise an active and vigorous policy, and not only explains, but in part justifies, the action of Æthelwulf's leading ealdormen in deserting the old king for the new. But they soon found that the man who can usurp a throne is not necessarily the man who can lead a kingdom. When Æthelwulf died, the clergy of Wessex heard with a thrill of horror that Ethelbald had married his father's young wife. It seemed, at least to the ecclesiastical chroniclers of the events, as though the trees had chosen King Bramble to rule over them.

The mischiefs which might have followed from this alliance were happily averted. Judith had no

1 Though the slaughter was great its significance was small, for in the same year the Wiking host wintered in Thanet, and secured its first settled lodgment on English ground.

children,—she was still hardly more than a girl, -and in 860 King Ethelbald died.1 Whatever virtues he may have had as a leader he had no further opportunity of showing, nor of retrieving his position with his clergy, who had the important power of recording his virtues or marring his fame in the eyes of later generations.

The peculiar provisions of Ethelwulf's will might at this point have raised a serious difficulty for the kingdom. Æthelwulf had, for the first time in English history, assumed the right to bequeath the crown as a personal property. He had provided that the crown should go at Æthelstan's death to Æthelbald, from Ethelbald to Ethelred, and from Æthelred to Alfred-to the exclusion of the children of each. Æthelberht, who came between Æthelbald and Ethelred, in order of age, was to become under-king of Kent on his father's death and to remain there. The possibilities of disaster in such a disposition were infinite, not the least being the disruption of the eastern and western parts of the kingdom. The Witan [Wise Men], true to the traditions of the military chieftainship which was the root of the Anglo-Saxon kingship, and looking

1 English Chronicle, yr. 851. The account of his divorce rests on very dubious testimony. Judith returned to her father, ran away with Baldwin I. of Flanders, and from her Matilda, daughter of Baldwin V. of Flanders, who married William the Conqueror, was descended. Alfred's daughter married Judith's son; this is the link which enables Queen Victoria to trace descent from Alfred the Great.

steadily at the need of having a united kingdom should the Danes attack Wessex, decided to ignore this testament and to choose their kings in succession from the royal sons. It is creditable to all the brothers that with so many possible occasions for jealousy and friction there seem to have been none. Each in turn abstained from interference or loyally seconded the work of the elder brother.

On the death of Ethelbald in 860, Æthelberht was brought from his under-kingdom of Kent and became king over both Wessex and Kent. In his days the storm-clouds threatened and drew nearer. The laconic chronicler reports a calm before the storm, broken by one sharp thunderclap. "And Æthelberht succeeded to all the realm of his brother, and he held it in goodly concord and in great tranquillity. And in his days a large fleet came to land and the crews stormed Winchester, and Osric the Alderman with the men of Hampshire, and Æthelwulf the Alderman with the men of Berkshire [note this Ethelwulf: he is a man to remember], fought against the army, and put them to flight, and had possession of the place of slaughter. And Æthelberht reigned five years, and his body lies at Sherborne." 1

Æthelberht was succeeded by the next brother, Æthelred, in 866. Alfred was now seventeen, and English Chronicle, 860.

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