146

2

DEATH OF OFFA.

Charlemagne's court; English merchants, wishing to evade the revenue duties as pilgrims, were imprisoned by the Frank custom-house officers; and at last Charlemagne, indignant at the demand of his daughter's hand for Offa's son, broke off all communication between the two countries. Friendship was restored, in part by the good offices of Alcuin, a scholar and divine, who had been attracted from Northumbria to live like an ancient Greek sophist in the court of the Frank emperor, teaching king and courtiers to think. It is among the strangest phenomena of the times that religion and learning were now flowing back on the continent from the west, and that missionaries like Gall and Boniface, thinkers like Alcuin and Scotus Erigena, were keeping alive the divine flame which had almost been crushed out in the ruins of the Latin world. This flux and reflux between east and west is among the causes of that wonderful unity which the civilization of different countries exhibits during the very centuries in which they seem most isolated.

Partly perhaps in penitence for the death of Ethelbert, partly as a resting-place for travellers on the highroad from York to London, the magnificent king, as Offa is called, had founded the monastery of St. Albans. It was the last great work of his life; he died A.d. 796, only four years after his victim. The chapel built over his body was swept away by the Ouse; and might be seen, men said, long afterwards, deep down in the river's bed.3 As the earth did not suffer him to rest, so a mysterious

1 Malmesbury, lib. i. p. 129.

2 Gesta Abbatum Fontanellensium, c. 16. Pertz. Mon. Germ., vol. i. p. 291. Eginhard indirectly confirms the story, saying of Charle

magne," nullam earum, (sc. filiarum,) cuiquam aut suorum aut exterorum nuptum dare voluit." Vita Kar., c. 19. 3 Wendover, vol. i. pp. 261, 262.

fate visited his crimes in his family. His only son, Ecgferth, died without issue a few months after his father; the blood-stained sceptre passed into another line. Of his daughters, one became an early widow, a second died in a cloister, and the third, Eadburga, had perhaps the most tragical fate any English princess has known. She had married Brihtric, the reigning, though not the lawful, king of the West Saxons. Jealous of one of her husband's favourites, and frenzied with the hereditary taint of murder in her veins, Eadburga poisoned a cup for her rival, which her lord accidentally drained. The West Saxons, in their grim horror of the crime, divested, by a prospective law, all queens to come of the honours of royalty. But Eadburga escaped from their justice to the continent. Appointed by Charlemagne abbess of a convent, she became a scandal by her life, and was expelled; the second disgrace was irretrievable, and she died a beggar in the streets of Pavia.'

'Asser, M. B., pp. 471, 472.

CHAPTER X.

THE DANES.

EGBERT'S SUZERAINTY. ETHELWULF. FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE DANES. CONFLICT OF PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY. INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS UPON ODinism. LEADING FEATURES OF NORSE CHARACTER. EUROPE SAVED FROM IMPERIALISM AND ROTTENNESS BY THE DANES. SAGAS OF RAGNAR LODBROC, AND BEORN. DANISH CONQUEST OF NORTHUMBRIA AND ANGLIA.

HE consequences of Offa's death were soon felt by

TH

the Mercians. The ascendancy passed from them to Wessex, where the crown, left heirless by the death of the usurper Brihtric, had devolved on the rightful heir, Egbert, who had passed his years of exile at Charlemagne's court. The new king had fallen upon stormy times. The very day of his accession (A. d. 800) was chosen by Æthelmund, earldorman of the Hwiccas in Gloucestershire, for a fray across the frontier at Kempsford. The men of Wiltshire met him and defeated him in a great battle, in which both ealdormen were slain. The event was ominous of Egbert's fortunes. Yet more than twenty years elapsed with no great change of fortune among the Saxon kings, though a campaign of Egbert's with west Wales (A. D. 813) seems to show that Wessex had territory along the line of the Severn. Meanwhile, Mercia had passed from the hands of its saintly king, Kenwulf, and his murdered child,

1 The words of the Saxon Chronicle, A. D. 813, " Egbert harried west Wales from east to west," seems to

imply that he crossed from the line of the Severn.

Kenelm, to a new race of chiefs, who had no claim to descent from Woden, and who quarrelled so violently with the Church that for six years not even baptism was administered.1 A great battle at Ellendune, in which Egbert defeated the Mercian army, was followed by the conquest of Kent. Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex now_acknowledged the supremacy of Wessex, and the Saxon provinces were thus consolidated into one. The East Angles implored aid against the oppressive Mercian rule. Before Egbert could assist them they were compelled to fight for their lives against the vengeful king of the Mercians, and slew him and his successor in two battles. Egbert profited by the event to annex Mercia, and carrying his arms beyond the Humber, received the submission of the Northumbrian princes. He was now lord paramount in Britain. The different provinces enjoyed their own laws administered by their own kings, but they were bound to contribute troops against the foes of their suzerain; they perhaps paid a nominal tribute, and in the case of Kent, at least, an important public grant would be made by Egbert's authority, and only subscribed by the local prince. In sanctioning the acts of his Anglian vassals, Egbert indicated his title to authority by styling himself King of

See a charter of Wulfred. Cod. Dip., 220, in which Kenwulf (the St. Kenulf of Florence) has evidently been confounded, perhaps by a clerical error, with Ceolwulf, who at least profited by the murder of Kenelm. Compare Charter 1034, which gives the date of the quarrel as after Kenwulf's death. Wulfred was evidently supported by Egbert. Cod. Dip., 1032, 1034. The story in Florence that Kenwulf mutilated a captive king of Kent is only found

in one copy of the Saxon Chronicle, (which, however, ascribes it to Ceolwulf,) and is due, I think, to an error of the scribe transferring the story of Pope Leo's mutilation. Malmesbury says that Kenwulf treated him with memorable clemency. Malmesbury, lib. i. p. 131.

2 "Quando Ecgbertus Rex exercitum Gewissorum movit contra Britones." Cod. Dip., 1035. 3 Cod. Dip., 223, 224.

the Angles, or, it might be, King of the West Saxons, and of the province of which he was then dealing.' But usually he preserved the style of his ancestors, and simply subscribed himself King of the West Saxons. Monarchy in the ninth century was the lordship of a people, not the government of a territory; and King of England, or King of Britain, are titles expressing facts which belong to a later age.3

Neither Egbert nor his successor Ethelwulf, who had been withdrawn from the service of the Church to discharge the difficult duties of royalty, are of any high importance in English history. Both seem to have been competent generals and popular with their subjects. But Æthelwulf, the pupil of Swithin, and who had been in orders as a sub-deacon till the death of an elder brother called him to discharge the sterner duties of royalty, united a weak character to the dangerous virtues of a saint. His devout liberality, which imposed a rentcharge on his kingdom for the Church, his pilgrimage to Rome, and his marriage, late in life, to a Frankish prin

3 The fiction that Egbert called himself king of England was invented at a very late period. Its first mention is in terms that ought to have shown its spuriousness: "Egbertus rex totius Britanniæ in Parliamento apud Wintoniam mutavit nomen regni de consensu populi sui et jussit illud de cætero vocari Angliam." Hist. Fund. Hosp. S. Leon Monasticon, vol. vi. p. 608. It would seem, however, that Egbert has been confounded with Alfred in this deed, which is much later than Stephen's time. The name Brittannia is always used for the island in early charters; "tamdiu fides Christiana in Brittanniâ perduret," or,

apud Anglos in Brittanniâ." Cod. Dip., 140, 166, 242, 258, 261.

Cod. Dip., 1048.