events and the places which were attacked by the Daneswritten with notes on the civil wars between the English kingdoms. It will be observed, as regards the former, that, for a long time there is no method in the attacks of the pirates from the North. They begin with Northumberland, because that was nearest to them. They turn their attention to other parts of the country. They land on Sheppey, at Charmouth, at Southampton; they storm and sack London and Canterbury; they land at Bridgwater, and so on. No part of the coast was safe from them. Evidently they inquire, one year, into places likely to prove profitable for plundering in years to follow. In course of time they find it unnecessary to go home for the winter. They make their winter quarters at some convenient place on the coast, easily fortified, as Thanet and Sheppey. There they form lasting settlements, from which they are never afterwards dislodged. In the final place they retain the lands they have settled, and here we find their descendants at the present day. A.D. 787.-The first ships of the Norsemen came to the country, and there was bloodshed. 792.-The King of Mercia murdered the King of East Anglia, and the King of Northumbria was seized and slain. 793.-The "heathen men" came over in force, and ravaged Lindisfarne with much slaughter. 794. They returned again to Northumberland, and after ravage and plunder, were wrecked by a tempest. 796.-There was war between the kingdoms of Mercia and Kent. 798.-There was a great battle in Northumberland. 800.-Egbert succeeded to the crown of Wessex. In the same year there was a battle with the men of Wiltshire. 806.-The King of the Northumbrians was driven from his throne. 813.-Egbert laid waste West Wales. 821-A battle between the Welsh and the men of Devon. Defeat and death of the King of Mercia. East Anglia, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex submitted to Egbert. 825.-The King of the Mercians slain in battle. 827.-Egbert completed the conquest of the country, and became Bretwalda. 828.-Egbert invaded North Wales. 832.-Sheppey ravaged by the heathen. 833.-Egbert fought the Danes at Charmouth. Danes. 836.-Egbert died. 837.-Fighting against the Danes at Southampton, and at Portland with the Danes. 838.-Fighting against the Danes among the Marshmen, and in Lincolnshire, East Anglia, and Kent. 839.-Great slaughter at London, Canterbury, and Rochester. 844.-Fighting against the Danes at the mouth of the Parret. 851. A great year of fighting. The men of Devonshire fought the Danes at Wembury, near Plymouth. Athelstan, Alfred's eldest brother, fought them in ships; but the Danes wintered in Thanet. They came, the same year, with 350 ships, up the Thames, took London and Canterbury by storm, defeated the King of the Mercians, and were then defeated, at Oakley, by Ethelwulf and his son Ethelbald. 853-Ethelwulf fought the North Welsh, and “made them obedient." The men of Kent and Surrey fought the Danes in Thanet. 855.-The Danes wintered in Sheppey. 866.-Settlement of Danes in East Anglia. 867.-Invasion of Yorkshire by the Danes. Battle before York, and defeat of the English. 868.-The Danes took up their winter quarters in Mercia. Fighting before Nottingham. 869.-The Danes spend a year at York. 870.-Great victories for the Danes in East Anglia. 871.-Battle of Ashdown. Nine battles fought in the south of England. 872.-The Danes wintered in London. 873.-The Danes wintered in Lindsey (Lincolnshire). 874.-The Danes wintered in Repton, and overran the whole of Mercia. 875.-Alfred's first fleet engaged the enemy. 876.-Fighting at Wareham. 877.-The Danes at Exeter. 878.-Fighting in Wessex. Alfred at Athelney. Stour. 886.-Alfred repaired London. 893-895.-Long and stubborn fighting. CHAPTER IV. ALFRED IN RELIGION. THE dominant aims of Alfred as a king might be arranged in the following order. First, security from the Dane, throughout his reign the only enemy of Wessex. For this purpose everything must be sacrified; security was necessary for all that might follow. Next; in all societies of men there is one common basis: the society must be fed. For this purpose there must be security of cultivation; the farm and the farmer must be protected; the people must be fed. The third aim was the cohesion of all the people one with another; without the power of acting together, and the instinct of acting together as if nothing else was possible, there was no stability of order and security the country would fall back to its former condition of separate tribal communities, in which there might be courage but no strength. This necessity involved the administration of justice with an equal hand, ruthless as regards the individual, but beneficent to the community. Security being provided for as far as was possible, justice and the sense of justice being recognized, so that there would be no oppressions of one class by another, and the sense of community might be developed and strengthened, the next point of importance was that of religion. And first it must be the religion which ruled the whole of Western Europe. I do not suppose there was ever any question in Alfred's mind as to the truth of the dogmas in which he was educated; the time was not yet arrived for these dogmas to be questioned by him or his people. Apart, however, from the doctrine, it was essential for a country which sought advancement in civilization to belong to the great family-Italian, Spanish, French, German, with all that their modern names signify -of Latin Christianity. The common faith was a bond which seems, indeed, to have held the nations together loosely enough, yet had more strength than we are perhaps ready to acknowledge; it was a form of faith imposed upon the nations by the ecclesiastics, who rested their claims on the inspiration of councils and the authority of the Pope. So long as there was one supreme head of the Church acknowledged by all alike, there would be the same doctrine common to all; the same doctrine, the same services, the same priesthood, the same ritual. The pilgrim on his way to the Holy Land was with his own spiritual kin so long as he found himself within the authority of the Pope; every church was a copy of the churches he had left behind; the Mass sung in Venice was the same as that sung at Westminster. There were the same words, the same ceremonies, the same vestments, the same priests, to outward seeming. Of course, when the pilgrim was on the Byzantine side of Europe he was among strangers who marked differences of creed, unintelligible to the people, by differences of rites which they could understand. It was of the highest importance, indeed, that there should be a common creed and a common ritual. We have only to remember the wonderful heresies into which ignorant people fall whenever they reasoned out for themselves (being wholly without history, without learning, without power of formulating reason, or arriving at conclusions), to understand the Christian anarchy that would certainly have followed on premature separation from Rome. One man called himself the Christ, another preached vicarious flagellation for the sins of the people, another advocated free love, another created a new sect by a new statement of the Incomprehensible. There was no end to the fancies and the visions which were accepted as realities and served as foundations to new forms of faith. The modern example of Protestant nations shows also like absurdities into which persons of fair education may fall even at the present day. When, in a time when some education is within the reach of all, we find such forms of faith as the Jezreelites, the Perfectionists, the Oneida Community, with the narrow tenets of Baptists, Seventh Day Sabbatarians, Primitive Methodists, Plymouth Brethren; when we read about the early Quakers, the Fifth Monarchy Men, the believers in Joanna Southcott and Muggleton, the Mormons, the Spiritualists, who |
