CHAP. II.

of Ecgberht of Wessex.

800.

reason to believe that both the Northumbrian and his Scottish neighbours acknowledged themselves the vassals of the new Augustus.1

After the death of Offa the greatness of Mercia continued for a while undiminished under the reign of his son Cenwulf. But meanwhile the seeds of a mighty revoluAccession tion were being sown. A prince, taught in the school of adversity, who had learned the arts of war and statecraft at the feet of the hero of the age, was, in the sixth year after Offa's death, raised to the throne of the West-Saxons. He was destined to achieve a dominion for which that narrow and local description seemed all too mean. Once, and seemingly once only, in the hour of victory, did the eighth Bretwalda, the founder of the permanent supremacy of Wessex, venture to exchange his ancestral title of King of the West-Saxons for the prouder style of KING OF THE ENGLISH.2

Analogy between Charles

and Ecgberht.

§ 4. Permanent Supremacy of Wessex. 823-924.

Ecgberht was chosen King of the West-Saxons in the same year in which Charles the Great was chosen Em

stored by the legates of the Emperor and the Pope. "Per legatos Romani Pontificis et Domni Imperatoris in regnum suum reducitur." Eardwulf's homage seems to be attested in a letter from the Pope, Leo the Third, to Charles. All the passages bearing on Charles' relations to the Northumbrians and Scots are collected and discussed by Palgrave, i. 484. 1 Eginhard, Vita Kar. 16. "Scotorum quoque Reges sic habuit ad suam voluntatem per munificentiam inclinatos, ut eum numquam aliter nisi dominum, seque subditos et servos ejus, pronunciarent." One would suppose that the Scots both of Ireland and of Britain are included. This mention of the Scots comes between the dealings of Charles with Alfonso of Gallicia and those with Haroun al Rashid. The relation of the Scots was probably a case of commendation, a term on which I shall enlarge hereafter. Ecgberht's titles commonly run, "Rex," "Regali fretus dignitate," "Occidentalium Saxonum Rex," once "Rex Occidentalium Saxonum necnon et Cantuariorum" (830. Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 289), but in one Charter of 828 (Cod. Dipl. i. 287) he appears as 'Ecgberhtus gratiâ Dei REX ANGLORUM." In that year he had granted out Mercia to an underKing and had reduced all the Welsh to submission.

2

SUPREMACY OF WESSEX ESTABLISHED BY ECGBERHT.

41

supremacy

Wessex.

peror. And we can hardly doubt that the example of his CHAP. II. illustrious friend and host was ever present before his eyes. He could not indeed aspire, like Charles, to the diadem of the Cæsars, but he could aspire to an analogous rank in an island which men sometimes counted for a separate world. He could win for his own Kingdom a permanent superiority over all its neighbours, and so pave the way for the day when all England and all Britain should acknowledge only a single King. The eighth Bretwalda not only esta- Permanent blished a power over the whole land such as had been held now estaby no other prince before him, but he did what no other blished in Bretwalda had ever done, he handed on his external dominion as a lasting possession to his successors in his own Kingdom. From this time forward, Wessex remained the undisputed head of the English nation. The power of the West-Saxon Kings might be assaulted, and at last overthrown, by foreign invaders, but it was never again disputed by rival potentates of English blood. In short, Ecgberht as Charles founded the Kingdom of Germany, Ecgberht of the at least laid the foundations of the Kingdom of England. Kingdom of England. In his reign of thirty-six years he reduced all the English Gradual Kingdoms to a greater or less degree of subjection. The submission smaller states seem to have willingly submitted to him as states. 800-836. a deliverer from the power of Mercia. East-Anglia be- Kent, &c. came a dependent ally; Kent and the smaller Saxon King[See Chron. doms were more closely incorporated with the ruling state. in anno.] While in East-Anglia Kings of the old line continued to reign as vassals of the West-Saxon over-lord, Kent, Essex, and Sussex were united into a still more dependent realm, which was granted out as an apanage to some prince of the West-Saxon royal house.1 Northumberland, torn by civil dissensions, was in no position to withstand the

1 One can hardly describe these relations between the different states without using such words as "homage,' apanage," and the like, though of course they were quite unknown in England at the time.

the founder

of the other

823.

CHAP. II. power which was growing up in the south of Britain. Submission At the approach of a West-Saxon army the Northum

of Northhumber

land. 827. Final struggle with Mercia.

800-827.

823.

brians seem to have submitted without resistance, retaining, like East-Anglia, their own line of vassal Kings. But Mercia was won only after a long struggle. Ecgberht had inherited war with Mercia as an inheritance from his predecessors. The first year of his reign, before he had himself returned to assume the crown to which he had been chosen, was marked by a successful resistance to a Mercian inroad.1 And even many years after, one of the greatest victories of his reign, the fight of Ellandun, was a victory over Mercian invaders within the West-Saxon realm. That victory deprived Mercia of all her external dominion; it was immediately after it that Ecgberht annexed the smaller Kingdoms which had become Mercian Submission dependencies. Four years later, Mercia herself had to sub827. mit to the conqueror, and though she retained her Kings 828-874. for another half century, yet they now received their crown at the hands of the West-Saxon over-lord. It is immediately after recording this greatest of Ecgberht's triumphs that the Chronicles give him in a marked way the title of Bretwalda.

of Mercia.

It was immediately after the submission of Mercia that Ecgberht received the far more easily won submission of Northumberland, which completed his work of welding all the Teutonic kingdoms of Britain into one Successes whole. But, while thus occupied, he had also to carry of Ecgberht over on the usual warfare with his Celtic neighbours. The power of the Cornish Britons was now utterly broken. The long struggle which had gone on ever since the days of Cerdic was now over; the English frontier seems

the Weish. 813-835.

1 A local invasion of the Hwiccas was repelled at Kempsford by the Wilsætas. The Hwiccas now act as Mercian subjects; but the war seems to have been quite local, carried on by the Ealdormen of the two shires.

EXTENT OF HIS DOMINION.

2

835.

828.

43

to have been extended to the Tamar,1 and the English CHAP. II. 823. supremacy was certainly extended to the Land's End. The Welsh however within the conquered territory still retained their distinct existence, and they sometimes, with the aid of foreign invaders, strove to cast off the yoke. Against the North-Welsh, that is the inhabitants of Wales proper, Ecgberht was equally successful. As Lord of Mercia he inherited from the Mercian Kings a warfare against them as constant as that which he had inherited from his own ancestors against the Welsh of Cornwall. As soon therefore as he had established his supremacy over Mercia, he went on to require and to receive the submission of the Celtic neighbours of his new dominion. From this time forth all the Celtic in- North and West habitants of Britain south of the Dee were vassals of the Welsh West-Saxon King. But his power seems not to have vassals of extended over the Picts, the Scots, or the Strathclyde Welsh. In fact, the northern Celts, except so far as Independthey came in for their share of the Danish invasions, Picts, enjoyed, from about this time, a century of unusual in- Scots, and dependence. The power of Northumberland had long clyde been unequal to maintaining its old supremacy over its Celtic neighbours, and the new over-lord of Northumberland seems not to have attempted to enforce it. Ecgberht therefore, when at the height of his power, was not Lord of the whole Isle of Britain. To win that title was the work of the West-Saxon conquerors of the next century.

1 I infer this from the description of the battle of Gafulford in 823, which is said to have been fought between the Welsh and the men of Devon, who must therefore have been English, or at least acting in the English interest. Yet Devonshire, and even the city of Exeter, remained partly Welsh as late as the time of Athelstan.

2 Norð- Wealas in the Chronicles means the inhabitants of Wales in the modern sense, both North and South; they are opposed to the West- Wealas, the Welsh of Cornwall.

Wessex.

ence of

Strath

Welsh.

of the

Danes. 787-1070.

787. [Chron. in anno.]

CHAP. II. But, just as the West-Saxon monarchy was reaching Invasions this pitch of greatness, it was threatened by an enemy far more formidable than any that could be found within the four seas of Britain. We have now reached the time of the Danish invasions. The Northern part of Europe, peopled by a race closely akin to the Low-Dutch, and speaking another dialect of the common Teutonic speech, now began to send forth swarms of pirates over all the seas of Europe, who from pirates often grew into conquerors. They were still heathens, and their incursions, both in Britain and on the continent, must have been a scourge almost as frightful as the settlement of the English had been to the original Britons. The incursions of the Northmen began before the accession of Ecgberht, and even his power did not keep them wholly in check. It must however have had some considerable effect, as it is only quite towards the end of his reign that we hear of them again. In his last years their incursions became frequent and formidable, and in one battle the Bretwalda himself was defeated by them. But he afterwards gained, over the united forces of the Northmen and the revolted Welsh, the battle of Hengestesdun in Cornwall, which may rank with Ellandun as the second great victory of his reign. Soon after this success, which barely checked the Danish invasions, but which completed the submission of the WestWelsh, King Ecgberht died, like his model Charles, with his own power undiminished, but possibly foreseeing what was to come when his sceptre should pass into weaker hands.

833.

835.

836.

Three

Periods of

The Danish invasions of England, as I have already the Danish said,1 fall naturally into three periods, each of which invasions. finds its parallel in the course of the English Conquest of Britain. As the Saxons and Angles plundered and

1 See above, p. 12.