GREAT INVASION OF WESSEX. 361 preserves the name of Cwichelm, one of the pair of West- CHAP. V. Saxon Kings who first submitted to baptism. This was 636. a spot where, in times of peace, the people of that inland shire had held their local assemblies, and some unknown seer had ventured on the prediction that, if the Danes ever got so far from the sea, they would never see their ships again. They climbed the height and soon showed the falsehood of the prophecy. They crossed the range of hills, and went on to the south-east. At Kennet, now Marlborough, an English force at last met them, but it was speedily put to flight. They then turned homewards. They passed close by the gates of the royal city of Winchester, displaying in triumph to its inhabitants the spoils of the inland shires of Wessex, now become the defenceless prey of the sea-rovers.1 1006-7. This was the most fearful inroad which England had Witenagemót of yet seen, one which showed that the parts most remote Shrewsfrom the sea were now no more safe from Danish ravages bury. than the exposed coasts of Kent and Sussex. The King kept his Christmas at Shrewsbury, and there the Witan met. All heart and hope seemed to be gone; no one could devise any means of withstanding the force which had now harried every shire in Wessex. Nothing could be thought of but the old device; the broken reed was again to be leaned upon; ambassadors were sent, offering money once more as the price of the cessation of the ravages. The offer was accepted; but the price was Tribute again paid naturally again raised; thirty-six thousand pounds was to the to be paid, and the Danish army was to receive provisions. Danes. They were fed during the whole winter at the general cost than a mere Scirgemót?-at Cwichelmeshlaw, see Cod. Dipl. iii. 292. The prophecy comes from the Chronicles; it is omitted by Florence. 1 The Chronicler here becomes very emphatic and eloquent, setting down no doubt what he had seen with his own eyes. Florence, harmonizing eighty or ninety years after, is much briefer. 1007. CHAP. V. of England, and early in the next year the sum of money demanded was paid. Two years' respite. 1007-8. Eadric We can never speak or think of these wretched attempts to buy peace without a feeling of shame, and yet, in this case at least, the payment may not have been such utter madness as it appears at first sight. Of course nothing more than a respite was ever obtained; when the Danes had spent the money, they came again for more. And it would seem, from the example of Ulfeytel, that a respite could be as effectually won by a manful, even if not perfectly successful, resistance. Still this payment did gain for the country a breathing - space, when a breathing - space was absolutely needed. We hear nothing of any more invasions for two years, and there was at least an attempt made to spend the interval in useful legislation and in putting the country into a more efficient state of defence. Ethelred and his favourites, as usual, spoiled everything, but we need not attribute their cowardice and incapacity to the whole Witan of England. As far as we can see, the schemes of the Legislature were well considered, and, however humiliating, it may have been absolutely necessary to buy a respite in order to devise any scheme at all. In this reign everything was thwarted by Executive misconduct. Æthelred first laid on his Witan the necessity of consenting to all this degradation, and he then frustrated their endeavours to make such degradation needless for the future. Meanwhile the reigning favourite attained the height made Eal- of his greatness. He was made Ealdorman of the Mercians,1 dishonouring the post once held by the glorious dorman 1 Chron. Flor. 1007. From this time he signs as Dux; hitherto he has been Minister. The Charter in Cod. Dipl. vi. 151, which Mr. Kemble assigns to 1004, and does not mark as spurious, cannot be genuine. Here Eadric signs as "Dux," but then the King is Æthelred and the Archbishop is TWO YEARS' RESPITE. 363 Mercians. 1003. The Inexplic able trea sons of daughter of Ælfred. It was most likely at this time that CHAP. v. he received the King's daughter Eadgyth in marriage. of the We have now to repeat the same comments which we 1007. made in the case of Elfric. That old traitor, after his last treason four years before, now vanishes from history,1 and his place in every sense seems to be taken by Eadric. He probably succeeded him in his Ealdormanship; he certainly succeeded him in his post of chief traitor. history of Eadric from this moment is simply a catalogue of treasons as unintelligible as those of his prede- Eadric. cessor. Why a man who had just risen to the highest possible pitch of greatness, son-in-law of his sovereign and viceroy of an ancient Kingdom, should immediately ally himself with the enemies of his King and country, is one of those facts which are utterly incomprehensible. But that it is a fact there is no good reason to doubt. Our best authorities for this period, the writers nearest to the time, those least given to exaggeration or romantic embellishment, distinctly assert that it was so, and we have no evidence or reasonable suspicion to the contrary. 1008-1009. The next year is one memorable in the annals of our Legislation early legislation, and the year which followed it is still of the years more so. The civil functions of the King and his Witan were evidently in full activity during the two years of respite. The Laws of Ethelred form several distinct statutes or collections of clauses, most of which are without date; but, of the few dated ordinances, one belongs to the former of these two years, while another may, on internal evidence, be safely set down as belonging to the same Æthelnoth, who did not become Archbishop till 1020, four years after 1 He is never mentioned again, and the Ælfric who signs many charters after this with the title of "Dux" is doubtless the Elfric who died at Assandun. It is inconceivable that they should be the same man. Laws of 1008. CHAP. V. period. The former statute deals mainly with ecclesiastical matters, but it also contains provisions both of a moral and of a political kind. On these points however we get much more of general exhortations than of really specific enactments. The whole reads like an act of penitence on the part of a repentant nation awakened by misfortune to a sense of national sins. Heathenism is to be cast out, an ordinance which shows what had been the effect of the Danish invasions. Such a precept would have been needless in the days of Ine or Offa. But now, not only were many heathen strangers settled in the land, but we may even believe that some native Englishmen may have fallen off to the worship of the Gods who seemed to be the stronger. Some of the clauses are vague enough. All laws are to be just; every man is to have his rights; all | men are to live in peace and friendship-excellent advice, no doubt, but hard to carry out in any time and place, and hardest of all when Ethelred and Eadric were to be the chief administrators of the Law. Punishments are to be mild, death especially is to be sparingly inflicted; Christian and innocent men are not to be sold out of the the slave- land, least of all to heathen purchasers.2 This prohibition is one which is constantly repeated in the legislation of this age, showing, it would seem, how deeply the evil was felt, and how little legislation availed to remedy it. We must never forget that slavery was fully established throughout England, though the proportion of slaves varied greatly in different parts of the country. The slave class was recruited from two sources. Englishmen were reduced to slavery for various crimes by sentence of law, and the children of such slaves followed the condition of their fathers. 1 Thorpe, i. 304. Schmid, 220. Laws against trade. 2 Cap. 2. "And úres hláfordes geradnes and his witena is, þæt man cristene menn and unforworhte of earde ne sylle, ne huru on hæðene leóde, ac beorge man geórne, þæt man þá sáwla ne forfare, þa Crist mid his ágenum life gebohte." LAWS OF THE YEAR 1008. 365 3 Welsh captives taken in war formed another class, and it CHAP. V. would seem that the proportion of slaves to freemen was unusually large in the shires on the Welsh border. Slaves of both classes were freely sold to the Danes in Ireland, and the words of the statute seem to imply that the kidnapping of innocent persons was not unknown.1 Both these practices our present statute endeavours to prevent. The same prohibition was re-enacted under Cnut,2 but the practice survived all the laws aimed against it, and it was in full force a few years after the Norman Conquest. Bristol, a city which in much later times acquired or retained a reputation of the same kind, was the chief seat of this hateful traffic, and among the good deeds of Wulfstan, the sainted Bishop of Worcester, the vigour with which he preached against it is specially recorded. The intention in this enactment is as good as it could be, but the enactment is vague, no definite penalty is attached to breaches of the law, and we are not surprised to hear that it had little practical effect. Some of the other precepts are even vaguer. We may sum up the whole by saying that all virtues are to be practised and all vices avoided; all church-dues are to be regularly paid, and all festivals are to be regularly kept, especially the festival of the newest English saint, the martyred King Eadward. The whole is wound up with a pious and patriotic resolve of real and impressive solemnity. The nation pledges itself to fidelity to God and the King. It will worship one God 5 1 This seems to be implied in the word unforworhte-in the Latin text (Schmid, 237) insontem. 2 It occurs in nearly the same words in the Statute of Enham, c. 9, and in the Laws of Cnut, Thorpe, i. 376. 5 See Macaulay, Hist. Eng. i. 337. W. Malm. Vit. Wulst. ii. 20 (Ang. Sacr. ii. 258). Cap. 16 (Thorpe, i. 308). "And Sce Eâdwardes mæsse-dæg Witan habbað gecoren, þæt man freólsian sceal ofer eal Engla-land on xv. Kal. Aprilis." Mark the way in which the Witan, as a matter of course, pass an ordinance on this matter, which a century or two later would have been held to be a matter of purely ecclesiastical concern. |