992, CHAP. V. service. For the fourth time during this reign, the in-¦ vaders were beaten back from the walls of the great me 991309 chant city, the only resistance that Swend seems to have 994, Swend Bath; Saxon Thegns submit. met with during this fearful march. He now turned back into Wessex, first to Wallingford, then to Bath, destroying, in his former fashion, as he went. At Bath the marches to terrible drama was brought to an end. Æthelmær, Ealthe West- dorman of Devonshire, with all the Thegns of the West, came to him, submitted, and gave hostages. Putting the language of the different accounts together, there can be little doubt that this was, or professed to be, a formal act of the Witan of Wessex, deposing Ethelred and raising Swend to the throne. Northumberland had already acknowledged him; and, considering that Swend brought the contingents of the North of England with him, it is possible that there may have even been enough of the chief men of different parts of the kingdom present to give the assembly something like the air of a general Witenagemót. An election of Swend was of course an election under duresse in its very harshest shape, and would in no way express the real wishes of the electors. But that some approach to the usual legal formalities were gone through, seems implied in the significant way in which we are told that Swend was now looked upon as "full King" by the whole people. Whether he was crowned is a much more Swend is acknowledged King. 1013. 1 Chron. "And eall beodscipe hine hæfde þá for fulae cyning." Flor. "Ab omni Anglorum populo Rex, si jure queat Rex vocari, qui fere cuncta tyrannicè faciebat, et appellabatur et habebatur." Florence's scruple as to the title only confirms the probability of the formal election. So Henry of Huntingdon; "Suain vero ab omni populo habebatur pro Rege." "Suain jam Rex Anglorum." (M. H. B. 754 D.) So among later writers, Roger of Wendover; "Regem Angliæ se jussit appellari” (i. 447); Bromton (X Scriptt. 892), "Swanus jam Rex Anglorum factus." William of Malmesbury (ii. 177) loses himself in fine writing, "totâ jam Angliâ in clientelam illius inclinatâ." The Encomium Emmæ (p. 9) might seem even to hint at a coronation, "jam sæpe dictus Rex totâ Anglorum patriâ est intronizatus.” But I almost think this looks the other way; had any ceremony of conse SWEND ACKNOWLEDGED KING. 2 397 submits. doubtful matter; the nominal religion of Swend at this CHAP. V. moment is a great problem, and we may doubt whether, if the apostate sought the Christian rite, any Prelate would have been found to admit him to it. But that Swend was acknowledged King is perfectly plain. He now went northward to his fleet, seemingly for the purpose of attacking by sea the one city which still held out. But now the spirit even of the Londoners at last gave London way; out of sheer fear of the threatened cruelty of the new King, they submitted and gave hostages. By a strange turning about of events, all England was now in the hands of Swend, while the cause of Ethelred was still maintained by Thurkill and the Danish fleet in the Thames. The monarchy of Cerdic was now confined to Ethelred the decks of forty-five Scandinavian war-ships. The fleet fuge in still lay at Greenwich, the scene of the martyrdom of fleet. Ælfheah. Thither, immediately after the submission of London, Æthelred and Thurkill betook themselves. The Emma and Lady Emma went over to her brother in Normandy, in company with Elfsige, Abbot of Peterborough, and she Nor-, was presently followed by her two young sons, the Æthel- August, ings Eadward and Elfred, with their tutor Ælfhun, cration really taken place, the writer would hardly have contented himself with so vague a word as "intronizatus." 1 That the ecclesiastics kept aloof from Swend might almost be inferred from the Chronicles. Florence mentions only Ealdormen and Thegns, while at the election of Cnut in 1016 the Bishops and Abbots are distinctly mentioned. It confirms this view that William of Malmesbury, though his account is evidently inaccurate in some points, makes Æthelred, before going to Normandy, summon a meeting of Bishops and Abbots, and seemingly of them only, as the only people who adhered to him. "Abbates et Episcopos, qui nec in tali necessitate dominum suum deserendum putarent." 2 Compare Thucydides' comment (iv. 12) on the battle at Pylos, where the natural parts of the Lacedæmonians and the Athenians were reversed in the like way; ἐς τοῦτό τε περιέστη ἡ τύχη ὥςτε Αθηναίους μὲν ἐκ γῆς τε καὶ ταύτης Λακωνικῆς ἀμύνεσθαι ἐκείνους ἐπιπλέοντας, Λακεδαιμονίους δὲ ἐκ νεῶν τε καὶ ἐς τὴν ἑαυτῶν πολεμίαν οὖσαν ἐπ ̓ ̓Αθηναίους ἀποβαίνειν. takes re Thurkill's her sons sent to mandy. 1013. 1014. CHAP. V. Bishop of London.1 Ethelred himself stayed some time longer with the fleet, but at Midwinter he went to the Isle of Wight, the old Danish quarters, which the adhesion of the Danish fleet now made the only portion of his lost realm accessible to the English King. He there kept the Ethelred feast of Christmas, and in January he joined his wife and takes refuge in young children in Normandy, where his brother-in-law Normandy. Duke Richard could hardly refuse him an honourable reJanuary, ception. We seem to be reading the history of James the Second before its time. Eadric, according to some ac counts, had already gone over with the Lady. Of Æthelred's sons by his first marriage, the gallant Æthelings Æthelstan and Eadwig and their glorious brother Eadmund, we hear nothing. As far as we can see, Swend was the one acknowledged King over the whole realm. If the West-Saxon banner was anywhere displayed, it could have been only on the masts of Thurkill and his During the whole winter, Swend on his side, 3 sea-rovers. The Chronicles distinctly make Emma and her sons go at two different times, and they rather imply that Emma went of her own accord. “Seo hlafdige wende pa ofer se to hire brodor Ricarde, and Ælfsige Abbod of Burh mid hire; and se cyning sende Ælfun Bisceop mid þam Æðelingum Eadwearde and Ælfrede ofer se." Florence and William mix up the two things together, but this trait in Emma's character should not be forgotten. 2 William of Malmesbury, seemingly to avoid naming Thurkill, confuses everything. He makes Æthelred fly secretly from London to Southampton, and thence to the Isle of Wight. It is there that he holds his synod of Bishops and Abbots (which perhaps grew out of his keeping Christmas in the island), makes a long speech to them, and sends Emma and the children across. Roger of Wendover tells the same story, only without Bishops. William of Jumièges (v. 7) has a romance about Æthelred bring. ing over some hidden treasures which he kept concealed at Winchester. He fancies that Ethelred was living there, whereas the city was in the power of Swend. William, by his secret flight of Æthelred, at least avoids this absurdity. 3 Roger of Wendover sends him across with a hundred and forty "milites." For a minute and highly coloured version of the whole story, see Mr. St. John, ii. 34. Some of the Bishops must certainly have revealed the confessions both of Æthelred and of Emma. IMPORTANCE OF SWEND'S CONQUEST. 399 and Thurkill on his, levied contributions and ravaged the CHAP. V. land at pleasure. § 5. From the Conquest of England by Swend to the ance of as intro William's This conquest of England by Swend forms an important Importstage in our history. It was, for the moment at least, Swend's the completion of the Danish invasions in their third and Conquest final shape of actual Danish conquest. And it was more ductory to than this. The Danish Conquest by Swend was, so to Conquest. speak, the precedent for the Norman Conquest by William. Swend's own possession of England was indeed most short, but he at least held it as long as he lived, and he handed on his mission to his son. showed that the Crown of England, of England so lately united into a single Kingdom, could, by the event of war, be transferred from the brow of a native sovereign to that of a foreign invader. It was Swend's conquest which made the conquests both of Cnut and of William possible. Cnut's conquest was of course only the com=pletion of Swend's. It was Swend who conceived the idea and who actually for the first time carried it out. That idea was something very different from anything Distinction which had been set before the eyes of any earlier Scan- Swend's dinavian invader. Hitherto England had been largely Conquest ravaged, and had even been partly occupied. But mere earlier ravages were in their own nature temporary; and the invasions. Danes who had settled in England had been gradually = brought into a greater or less degree of submission to the English King, into a greater or less degree of amalgamation with the English people. The third stage of the Danish wars, that which had now for a moment accomplished its object, aimed at something of quite another between and the Danish Circum stances in Swend, CHAP. V. kind. It sought, as I have before shown, not only to ravage or even to occupy, but to transfer the Crown of all England, the rule of all its inhabitants, English and Danish alike, into the hands of the King of all Denmark. This object Swend had now accomplished. Succeeding events indeed called for the work to be done over again by his son Cnut. But the example was set; the establishment of a foreign King in England, his recognition, willing or unwilling, by the English nation, were processes which had now become familiar. What Swend had done Cnut might do, and what Cnut had done William might do. Swend now, like William afterfavour of wards, was singularly favoured by fortune. But the good luck of the two invaders took quite different shapes. Swend found an incapable prince on the throne, under whom no effective resistance was possible. He was thus enabled to wear out the strength and spirit of the nation by a series of successful, though partial, attacks. He was thus able, at the end of a long series of years, to obtain possession of the whole land without ever having put his forces to the risk of a decisive engagement. William found a hero on the throne; he had therefore, at the very beginning, to stake all his chances on a single battle. But in that single battle England lost her hero, and with him her hope. Swend and William were thus equally lucky, but William ran a far more terrible hazard. Character Swend is apt to be forgotten in a cursory view of English history, because he is overshadowed by the fame of his son. But Swend was no ordinary man. If greatness consists in mere skill and stedfastness in carrying out an object, irrespective of the moral character of that object, he may even be called a great man. His pur and of William. of Swend. 1 See above, p. 46. The epithet of Great however, in Danish annals, belongs not to him but to his grandson Swend Estrithson. Chron. Roskild. ap. Langebek, i. 378. |