DISPUTED ELECTION TO THE CROWN.

291

man among the immediate members of the royal family, CHAP. V. and there was no one, either among strangers or among more distant kinsmen, who possessed the predominant merit and predominant influence which marked out Harold for the crown ninety years later. The evils of a minority had therefore to be endured. Yet it seems strange that, if a minor King was to be accepted, there could be any doubt as to which minor was to be chosen. Eadward is said to have been distinctly recommended by his father, and with good reason. He was the elder son, and though primogeniture gave no positive right, yet it would surely be enough to turn the scale, even in a doubtful case, and this case, one would have thought, was not doubtful. The election of Eadward would have the unspeakable advantage of bringing the minority to an end six years sooner than the election of his brother. Yet we read, on excellent authority, that there was a distinct division of sentiment among the electors, and that a strong party supported the child Æthelred against the boy Eadward. In this we can hardly fail to see the influence of the Queen Dowager1 Ælfthryth, in alliance with one of the two parties in the state. And there is every reason to believe that the party Party of of Ælfthryth was the party of the monks. She was, by and the

1 Compare the case of Ethelwine's succession to the Ealdormanship of East-Anglia to the exclusion of Ælfwold.

2 Fl. Wig. 975.

3 The ground alleged in Eadmer's Life of Dunstan (Anglia Sacra, ii. 220), that Eadward was not the son of a crowned King and Queen, would not be so utterly frivolous as it sounds, if both brothers, as Dr. Lappenberg remarks, were not equally liable to the objection. The argument was used long after on behalf of Henry the First against his elder brothers. Cf. Herod. vii. 2-3. Probably all that was meant was that Eadward had no preference on this ground (see above, p. 117), so that the two lads were candidates on equal terms. The fears said (Eadmer, u. s., and Osbern, Ang. Sac. i. 113) to have been entertained from the character of the boy Eadward seem still less to the purpose.

The more correct description would be "the Old Lady." See Chron. (Abingdon), 1051.

Ælfthryth

monks.

Patrotic conduct of Dunstan, and election of

CHAP. V. her first marriage, the sister-in-law of Ethelwine, and we find several signs that Dunstan and the monks were not so all-powerful under Eadward as they had been under his father. It was therefore a distinct sacrifice of their party to their country, when Dunstan and his fellow Archbishop Oswald settled the controversy by a vigorous appeal on Eadward. behalf of Eadward, urging the will of the late King, and no doubt enlarging also on the manifest expediency of the choice. Eadward was accordingly elected, crowned, and anointed. But that his short reign was not wholly favourable to the monastic party may be inferred by the continuance of the controversy, and the holding of several synods to discuss the points at issue. We may see a similar inEarl Oslac, fluence at work in the banishment of Earl Oslac, a special favourite of Eadgar's, whose punishment and its injustice are bitterly lamented by our best authorities. It will be remembered that, when the last Northumbrian King was overthrown by Eadred, the government of the country was entrusted to an Earl of the King's choice. Oswulf, thus appointed by Eadred, ruled over all Northumberland, till Eadgar again divided the old Kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, giving the northern province to Oswulf and the southern to Oslac. On Oslac's banishment, the whole seems to have been again united under Waltheof, who

Banish

ment of

954.

966.

1 See Eadmer, u. s., Osbern, 112, and Lingard's note, Hist. of England, i. 274.

2 Fl. Wig. A. 976. The poems in the Chronicles certainly seem to me to connect the banishment of Oslac with the predominance of Ælf here and the anti-monastic party.

3 Oswulf seems to have been the son of Ealdred of Bamborough, who did homage to Æthelstan in 926 (see above, p. 62). He signs two Charters of Eadred in 949 as Lord of Bamborough ; "Osulf ad bebь. hehgr.," whatever this last abbreviation may stand for (Cod. Dipl. ii. 292), and “Osulf bebb." (ii. 296). In 954 he seems to have exchanged this infinitesimal sort of kingship for the Earldom over the whole country. See Simeon of Durham (Gest. Reg. X Scriptt. 204).

I infer this from the words of Simeon (u. s.), "His [Oslaco et Osulfo] successit Walthef senior." Yet, if so, he must have been at a later time

ELECTION OF ETHELred.

was probably of the family of Oswulf, and of whose own descendants we shall often hear again.

§ 2. From the election of Ethelred to the first dispute with Normandy. 979-1000.

293

CHAP. V.

Edward

tion of

Dunstan.

988.

Eadward, after a four years' reign, was cruelly murdered. Murder of There is little doubt that this foul deed was done at least and elecby the instigation of his step-mother Ælfthryth,1 whose Æthelred. son Ethelred was now elected at the age of ten years. 979. For thirty-seven years England was governed by him or in his name, and after Dunstan was gone, the reign of Death of Æthelred meant only the reign of his unworthy favourites. The world soon learned how great was the change when the Imperial sceptre of Britain was no longer grasped by the hand of Eadgar the Peaceful. Æthelred had not been two years on the throne when the Danish invasions began again. The whole interest of the history so completely centres on this fearful scourge that we may pass swiftly by the few, and mostly unfortunate, events of internal history which are handed down to us. In one year London was burned, London seemingly by one of those accidental fires which, then and 982. long after, were so common and so destructive in cities (Chron. and where the buildings were mainly of wood. In another year, owing to some internal sedition the cause of which Siege of is not explained, Æthelred, then a youth of seventeen, be- 986. sieged the town of Rochester, and being unable to take it,

deprived of the southern province, as we shall find Deira held by Ælf helm from about 993 to 1006, while Waltheof was still in office.

The Chronicles bitterly lament the crime, without mentioning the criminal. Florence distinctly charges Elfthryth with it. In the hands of William of Malmesbury (ii. 162) the story becomes a romance, which gets fresh details in those of Bromton (X Scriptt. 873 et seqq.). The obiter dictum of William of Malmesbury (ii. 165), that Ælfhere had a hand in Eadward's death, is contrary to the whole tenor of the history. See Chron. 980. Fl. Wig. 979.

burned.

Flor. Wig.)

Rochester.

CHAP. V. 987.

Death of Ælfhere. 983. Banishment of Elfric. 986.

The Danish invasions renewed ;

ravaged the lands of the Bishoprick. In another year we hear of an epidemic fever, and of a murrain among beasts, seemingly the forerunner of the modern cattle-plague, which raged through the whole of England in a way unknown to former times.2 Besides these misfortunes of different kinds, Elfhere of Mercia died, and was succeeded in his Ealdormanship by his son Ælfric, who, some years afterwards, was banished, we are not told for what cause. The first marriage of Ethelred to the daughter of one of his nobles, whose name and parentage are uncertain,3 and the birth of his eldest son Eadmund, afterwards the renowned Ironside, are also placed within this period.

4

From these obscure domestic events we turn to the terrible drama of the Danish wars. This new series of invasions, those which led in the end to the submission of all England to a Danish King, are those which form the third and last period of Danish warfare. But the third period, after so long an interval, is as it were ushered in by a kind of repetition of the two earlier periods. Before the great attack on the Kingdom of England by a first, with King of all Denmark, we find a short period of mere dering in plunder and a short period of attempted settlement. Durcursions, ing the first years of Ethelred, the Danish invasions once [980-982]; more become mere piratical incursions. Then for a few

mere plun

1 Chron. and Fl. Wig. in anno. The beginnings of a legendary version may be seen in William of Malmesbury (ii. 165) and Roger of Wendover (i. 423).

2 Fl. Wig. 987. The English and Welsh Chronicles both put the cattleplague a year earlier, and do not mention the disease among men.

William of Malmesbury (ii. 179) professes ignorance of her name. Æthelred's namesake, the Abbot of Rievaux (X Scriptt. 362), calls her the daughter of Thored, a chief who was employed by Eadgar to ravage Westmoreland, and whom we hear of again in this reign. But the higher authority of Florence calls her Elfgifu, daughter of Ealdorman Æthelberht. Gen. Reg. West Sax. vol. i. p. 275, Thorpe.

4 Roger of Wendover (i. 422) places Eadmund's birth in 981, when Æthelred was only twelve years old.

RENEWED DANISH INVASIONS.

295

[988-993].

of Swend of

and Olaf of

years they cease altogether. Then they begin a second CHAP. V. time, in a shape which seems to imply intended settlement, then attempts at and which presently grows into regular political conquest. settlement, The leading spirit of all these invasions was Swend, the son of Harold Blaatand, the Danish King who played so Characters important a part in the affairs of Normandy. And for a Denmark while there appears by his side another rover of the North, Norway. whose career was, if possible, stranger than his own, the famous Olaf Tryggwesson of Norway. But it is hard indeed to force the entries in the English Chronicles, which hardly ever touch upon the internal affairs of Scandinavia,1 into agreement with the half fabulous narratives in the Danish historian and in the Norwegian Sagas. Swend, baptized in his infancy, and held at the font by an Imperial godfather, had received the name of Otto, as Guthrum received the name of Æthelstan. But he cast away his new name and his new faith, and waged war against his Christian father on behalf of Thor and Odin.3 The life of Olaf, as told in the Sagas of his country, is one of the most amazing either in history or in romance. The posthumous child of a murdered King and a fugitive Queen, he is sold as a slave in Esthonia, he flourishes through court favour in Russia, he wins principalities by marriage in Wendland and in England, and is converted to Christianity by an Abbot in the Scilly Islands. The early life of Swend too is connected by tradition with England; he is said to have been driven from Denmark, to have sought for shelter in England, and, when repelled by Ethelred, to have taken refuge for a time at the more hospitable court of Kenneth

4

1 This is in marked contrast to the affairs of the Empire, on which our Chroniclers evidently kept a careful eye, and of which they contain many notices.

2 He is called Suein Otto by Adam of Bremen, ii. 25.

3 Adam Brem. u. s. Sax. Gram. lib. x. p. 185, ed. Hafn. 1644.

See the "Saga om Oloff Tryggwasson," "Historia Olai Tryggwa Filii," Upsala, 1691, or Laing's Sea-Kings of Norway, i. 367.