NO SUCCESSION FROM THE PROVINCIAL EMPERORS. tinuous 151 from the see how any continuous Imperial tradition could have CHAP. III. been carried on from a Roman ruler in Britain to a West- No conSaxon King. Every circumstance of the English Con- tradition quest shuts out such a belief. It is likely enough that provincial in Wales and Cornwall memories might still linger on from Emperors. the days when Cæsars and Augusti reigned in Britain. It is likely enough that Aurelius or Arthur or any other Welsh leader may have put forward some sort of Imperial pretensions. But that these princes should have handed on such rights or claims to their English conquerors and destroyers seems to me utterly inconceivable. We have seen in the last Chapter how completely the English Conquest of Britain differed from all other Teutonic conquests. Elsewhere the conquerors became more or less Romanized; they rejoiced to receive from the reigning Emperor the investiture of some Roman dignity, some empty title of Consul or Patrician. From the assumption of the Imperial dignity itself our whole race shrank with a kind of superstitious awe till the spell was broken by the coronation of the Great Charles. This last motive indeed was one which could have no effect upon the mind of Ælle or Ceawlin; but its place would be fully supplied by utter ignorance, carelessness, and contempt for the titles and institutions of the vanquished. Consul, Patrician, Augustus, all would be alike unintelligible and despicable in their eyes. The chief assertor of this theory seems to hold that Elle the South-Saxon, the first recorded Bretwalda, was called to the post of Emperor of Britain by an election of the Welsh Princes. Now it is not easy to see in what Elle's Bretwaldadom The Bretconsisted. It is possible that the Jutes of Kent, and the settlers who had already begun to Teutonize the East of the Coast of Britain, may have invested him with some sort Emperors. of general leadership for the better carrying on of the Conquest. It is possible that he may have reduced to waldas not successors Provincial CHAP. III. tribute some Welsh tribes which he did not exterminate, and that he may so far have presented a dim foreshadowing of the glories of Æthelstan and Eadgar. But the days of the Commendation had not yet come. It is utterly incredible that Ælle held any authority over any Welsh tribe, save such as he won and held at the point of the sword. It is utterly incredible that any Welsh Congress ever assembled to make him Cæsar, Augustus, Tyrant, Bretwalda, or anything else. Cnut and William indeed were chosen Kings of the English by electors, many of whom must have shared as unwillingly in their work as any Welsh prince could have shared in the work of investing Elle with an Imperial Crown. But the times were utterly different; Cnut and William were not mere destroyers; they took possession of an established Kingdom, and it was not their policy to destroy or to change one whit more than was absolutely necessary for their own purposes. But Elle, who did to Anderida as Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai, was little likely indeed to receive an Imperial diadem at the hands of the surviving Gibeonites. The dream of a transmission of Imperial authority from the vanquished Briton to his Teutonic conqueror certainly seems to me the vainest of all the dreams which ingenious men have indulged in. Real posi tion of the "Tyrants" Again, we should remember what the true position of the so-called Tyrants1 or Provincial Emperors really was. 1 The word Tyrant in those times bore a sense which may be called a monarchical antitype of its old Greek sense. The Greek Tyrant was a man who obtained kingly power in a commonwealth; the Tyrants of the third and fourth centuries were men who revolted against a lawful Emperor. In both cases, the word in strictness expresses only the origin of power, and not the mode of its exercise. Many of the so-called Tyrants were excellent rulers. But the Imperial Tyrant had this great advantage over the Greek Tyrant, that success might turn him into a lawful Emperor, while the Greek Tyrant remained a Tyrant always. In medieval writers the word is often used in this later Imperial sense, as equivalent to "usurper" or "pretender.” rors. 153 perors of tenders to Roman Carausius, Maximus, Constantine, and the rest, never called CHAP. III. themselves Emperors of Britain. Of course, according to or provincial Empethe strict Imperial theory, an Emperor of Britain is an absurd impossibility; the titles assumed by Eadgar are in themselves as ridiculous as the titles assumed by the persons who in later times have called themselves "Emperor of Austria," "Emperor of Hayti," "Emperor of Mexico," "Emperor of the French." The Emperor is essentially Lord of Rome and of the World; and it was only by setting itself up as being in some sort another world that Britain could lay any claim to either a Pope or an Emperor of its own. But the very last thought of the old Tyrants Not Emor Provincial Emperors would have been to claim any Britain, independent existence for Britain, Gaul, or any other part but preof the Empire of which they might have gained possession. the whole Nothing could be further from their wishes than to set up Empire anything like a separate national Kingdom. They were pre- sessing tenders to the whole Empire, if they could get it, and they only a part. not uncommonly did get it in the end. A man who began as Tyrant often became a lawful Emperor, either by deposing the reigning Emperor or by being accepted by him as his colleague. Carausius, the first British Emperor according Carausius. 286-294. to this theory, held not only Britain but part of Gaul. It must not be thought that part of Gaul had been annexed to an Empire of Britain, like Calais by Edward the Third or Boulogne by Henry the Eighth. It is simply that Britain and part of Gaul were those parts of the Empire of which Carausius, a candidate for the whole Empire, had been able actually to possess himself. At last Carausius was accepted as a colleague by Diocletian and Maximian, and so became a lawful Cæsar and Augustus. Allectus was Allectus. less fortunate; he never got beyond Britain, and, instead 294-297. 1 1 Yet, as both Edward and Henry asserted a right to the Kingdom of France, their conquests may, in this point of view, be looked upon as really analogous to those of Carausius and the rest. while pos tius. 350. Constan tine. 407. No analogy between these Em CHAP. III. of being acknowledged as a colleague, he was defeated and slain by Constantius. Constantius himself reigned in Britain; but no one would call Constantius a British Emperor, and Carausius was a British Emperor just as Magnen little. Magnentius, Maximus, Constantine, were simply Emperors whose career began in Britain, and not in Syria Maximus. or Africa; they were not content to reign as British Em383-388. perors or Emperors of Britain; they speedily asserted their claim to as large a portion of the Roman world as they had strength to win and to keep. Now it is perfectly possible, especially if any of the Welsh Princes were descendants of Maximus, that a remembrance of these Emperors may have survived in Britain, and it is not unlikely that the conquest of Gaul by an Emperor who set forth from Britain may be the kernel of truth round which much of the mythical history of Arthur has gathered. But it is certainly hard to understand the analogy between a Roman General, trying to obtain the whole Roman Empire, but who is unable to obtain more than Britain, or than Britain and Gaul, and a Teutonic chief, winning by his own sword some sort of superiority over the other princes, Celtic and Teutonic, within the Isle of Britain. The essence of the position of Carausius and his successors is that they aspired to an universal dominion, and with such dominion any independent or national existence on the part of Britain would have been utterly inconsistent. The essence of the position of an English Bretwalda or Basileus is that he is the very embodiment of an independent national existence, that he aspires to a dominion purely insular, that he claims supremacy over everything within the Island, but aspires to no conquests beyond it. As I before said, the exact position of the Bretwalda or Brytenwealda, whether he be the "wide ruler" or the "ruler of Britain," is a most obscure subject, and it is extremely hard to make out the exact nature of the supremacy implied by the title. But perors and the Eng lish Bret waldas. DIFFERENT POSITION OF THE BRETWALDAS. Æthel 155 coinage or I think, on the one hand, that we may safely assert that CHAP. III. the passages which describe that supremacy mean something and not nothing, that it did imply a real supremacy of some kind, and, on the other hand, that we may be equally sure that whatever it implied was something of purely English growth, something in no way connected with, or derived from, any older Welsh or Roman dominion. Nothing is proved by the fact that Æthelberht Nothing imitated the coinage of Carausius and put a wolf and proved by twins on his money. Nothing was more common than berht's for the Teutonic states everywhere, and for the Saracen Eadwine's "tufa." states too, to imitate the coinage which supplied them with their most obvious models. But on a coin of Carausius the wolf and twins had a most speaking meaning; on a coin of Æthelberht they had no meaning at all. It may be that Eadwine assumed some ensigns of dignity in imitation of Roman pomp;1 with the Roman Paullinus at his elbow, he might well do so, without any necessity of traditions handed on from Maximus and Carausius. These are, I believe, the only attempts at evidence to prove that the Bretwaldadom had a Roman origin, and they prove about as much as King Alfred's notion that the immemorial Teutonic3 practice of the wergild was introduced by Christian Bishops in imitation of the mildheartedness of Christ. The title of Bretwalda may, at least in its later, though excessively rare, use, be fairly rendered by Emperor of Britain. But it is hard to see the likeness between a Wielder of Britain, Emperor so far as that he is independent of either Empire, and a 1 Bæda, ii. 16. See Palgrave, i. 564. 2 Laws of Ælfred. Thorpe, i. 58. 3 I should rather say Aryan than merely Teutonic ; καὶ μέν τίς τε κασιγνήτοιο φόνοιο Ποινὴν, ἢ οὗ παιδὸς ἐδέξατο τεθνειώτος Καὶ ῥ ̓ ὁ μὲν ἐν δήμῳ μένει αὐτοῦ, πόλλ ̓ ἀποτίσας. Il. ix. 628. |