No More Learning

The example set by Kent was not lost on Ine. Early in his reign
he also issued a collection of written laws. As we have them now, they
form an appendix to the dooms issued two hundred years later by
Alfred, and it is not quite clear how far they have been abbreviated
and subjected to revision. None the less they give most valuable
evidence for the seventh century, for they seem to present a contrast
to the Kentish dooms on many points, and also deal with a larger
number of topics. The most interesting sections are perhaps those
C. MED. H. VOI. II. CH. XVII. 96


## p. 562 (#594) ############################################

562 Death of Wilfrid. Ine abdicates [702-726
dealing with the conquered Welsh in Somerset and Dorset. Though it
is usual to speak of these laws as codes, it must always be remembered
that they are in reality no more than brief amending clauses, dealing
only with certain sides of the law, more particularly with the penalties
for important crimes, and with the status of the clergy. Family law
and the law of property are only scantily touched on, and public institu-
tions, even if alluded to, are never explained, but taken for granted.
Moreover, the codes when all put together are extremely brief. Aethel-
berht's laws, for example, are confined to ninety clauses, and Wihtraed's
to twenty-eight, while no laws of this date at all have come down to us
from Mercia or Northumbria. It is clear then that any picture of
society, which can be deduced from them, must be most imperfect, and
that much is left to inference. They have, however, a superiority over
similar codes produced by the conquering Germans on the Continent in
that they are written in English and so give the native terms for the
things of which they speak, whereas the continental codes being in
Latin only give approximate equivalents which are often merely mysti-
fying and misleading.
We must now turn back to the affairs of the North. Wilfrid, while
in Mercia, had never abandoned his claim to be bishop of undivided
Northumbria. In 702 a fresh attempt was made to deal with it, a
synod being held at Austerfield on the Idle under the presidency of
Archbishop Berctwald. As before, neither Wilfrid nor Aldfrid would
give way; the upshot was that, in spite of his age, Wilfrid once more
set out for Rome to lay his cause in person before the Pope. In 704,
while he was still abroad, Aethelred retired from the throne of Mercia
to become a monk at Bardney, and was succeeded by his nephew
Coenred; and when Wilfrid returned in 705 with fresh papal letters,
he found Aldfrid on his death-bed. Before a synod could meet, the
crown of Northumbria passed to a child. This seemed to facilitate
a compromise; Wilfrid, however, did not attain his object. He never
regained even York and had to be content with the see of Hexham.
He lived four years longer and died at Oundle in 709. His death
brings to an end the interesting period of Northumbrian history. The
northern kingdom from this time onwards is of little account, and its
story one long record of faction and decay. The only bright spots in its
annals are Bede's literary career at Jarrow and the development of the
schools of York, and the only event of permanent importance the
conversion of the bishopric of York into an archbishopric. This took
place in 735, the year that Bede died, the first archbishop of York
being Ecgbert, the prelate who founded the schools and who for thirty-
two years devoted himself to their development.
For the whole of the eighth century the Mercian State clearly holds
the headship of England. Wessex at first caused some trouble under
Ine, and we hear of a fight in 715 at a place usually identified with


## p. 563 (#595) ############################################

716-757] Aethelbald of Mercia 563
Wanborough near Swindon. But Ine was entirely occupied with the
internal affairs of Wessex and Sussex for the last ten years of his reign,
and in 726 he followed the example of Ceadwalla and abdicated, being
filled with a desire to see Rome and die in the neighbourhood of the
popes. Coenred and Ceolred, who occupied the Mercian throne after
Aethelred, may perhaps have feared Ine, but all doubt, as to which
state was supreme, disappeared with the accession of Aethelbald, who
ruled from Tamworth for forty-one years (716-757), only to be suc-
ceeded by the still more famous Offa, who ruled for thirty-nine (757-
796). These long reigns are not filled with struggles for supremacy
like those of the seventh century, and lend themselves to briefer
treatment.
Aethelbald's reign is roughly contemporaneous with the career of
Charles Martel, while Offa's extends over a part of the reign of
Charlemagne, with which prince he had friendly relations. Aethelbald
calls himself in his landbooks "King of the Mercians and South Angles11;
Offa is addressed by the popes as "King of the English" without qualifi-
cation. This difference of style pretty well sums up the progress made
in the period, so that at OftVs death it must have seemed to contempo-
raries that the domination of all England by Mercia was merely a question
of time. As it was, Kent and East Anglia had already been practically
absorbed. In spite of this development these reigns are usually held to
be "an age of little men, of decaying faith and of slumberous inactivity";
but this is hardly the whole truth and arises from the fact that we no
longer have Bede's lively narrative to help us to fill out our picture, our
materials being cut down to the bald statements of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle supplemented by a few lives of saints and some two hundred
landbooks, more than half of which are under suspicion of being spurious.
The Chronicle, too, being chiefly concerned with Wessex, gives a quite
inadequate impression of the aims and activities of the leading Mercians.
Aethelbald's reign was clearly favourable to the growth of church
endowments. The earliest Rochester and several of the earlier Worcester
landbooks are ascribed to him. More important, however, than his actual
grants of land, if we can trust it, is his general decree issued in 749, by
which he conceded to all the minsters of his kingdom freedom from all
burdens (a publicis vectigalibus et ab omnibus oneribus) excepting only
the duties of repairing bridges and maintaining fortresses. Here we
have an important step towards the encouragement of feudalism; for
clearly this concession does not mean that the peasantry on ecclesiastical
lands are to be free from vectigal, but that what has hitherto been paid
to the king will go for the future into the treasuries of the churches.
Thus, as has been well said, the Church got "a grip on those who dwelt
on the land. 11 It should be noticed too that in the grants of this period
little stress is laid upon any consent by the Mercian magnates as a
necessary condition required to make the grants valid. The king declares
ch. xvii. 36—2


## p. 564 (#596) ############################################

564 Reign of Offa [757-796
himself to be granting his own lands and his own rights. The magnates
appear as a rule only in the attesting clauses as adstipulatores or witnesses.
While Aethelbald was active in supporting the Church, there is also
evidence that under him the clergy, led by Archbishop Cuthbert, made
strenuous efforts to improve themselves, a synod being held in 747 at
Clovesho in which thirty canons were drawn up for the reform of
ecclesiastical discipline. These canons no doubt are good evidence that
there were abuses needing reform and so bear out to a certain extent the
gloomy picture of ecclesiastical decay which Bede has put on record as
characteristic of Northumbria in his time. It would, however, be unfair
to assume that the decay was as bad in flourishing Mercia as in declining
Northumbria; and the acts of this synod point rather to progress and
activity. As a warrior Aethelbald does not come much before us.
Early in his reign he raided Somerset as far as Somerton on the
Parrett, and towards the end of it the West Saxons, led by Cuthred,
retaliated by a raid into Oxfordshire as far as Burford, an achievement
which the Wessex chronicle makes much of. There seems no real
evidence however that this reverse had any permanent effect on the
Mercian supremacy. It may have rendered Wessex somewhat more
independent, and more hopeful of regaining the Chilterns, but when
Offa succeeded to the Mercian throne in 757 there was clearly no
question as to his ascendancy in England.
Offa's reign marks the culmination of the power of Mercia. All
accounts admit that he was the most powerful of the Mercian kings
and easily supreme in England. Among facts that illustrate this are
the disappearance of the sub-kings who had hitherto maintained them-
selves in Essex and in the province of the Hwicce, and the appearance of
landbooks in which Offa disposes of estates in Sussex, the kings of Kent
and Wessex figuring as consenting vassals among the witnesses. The
Kentish men rose against him in 774 at Otford and the men of Wessex
in 777 at Bensington; but in both cases only to meet with crushing
defeats, and for the rest of his reign he had no further troubles south of
the Thames. In 778 he devastated all South Wales and again in 784,
and it must be about this period that he ordered the great earthwork to
be erected along his western frontier which later ages called Offa's Dyke.
This work is still traceable between the Dee and the Wye, and marks,
not so much an advance of the Mercians, as a final delimitation of their
territory, all beyond it being definitely left subject to Welsh law and
custom, even if occupied by the English. Finally, in 793 Offa put the
king of the East Angles to death, and annexed his kingdom. On the
Continent Offa had considerable renown and Charlemagne even negotiated
with him for the hand of one of his daughters for his eldest son. In
internal affairs he was also active. For example, he reformed the Anglo-
Saxon coinage, introducing a new type of silver penny in imitation of
Charles the Great's denarius, a type which lasted almost unchanged down


## p. 565 (#597) ############################################

796] The Archbishopric of Lichfield. Death of Offa 565
to late Plantagenet times, and also a gold coin, called the mancus, copied
from the dinars used by the Moors in Spain. He also issued a code of
Mercian laws; these are unfortunately lost, but they were utilised by
Alfred a century later as a source for his own code. In church matters
he is remembered as the founder of St Alban's Abbey (also perhaps of
Westminster) and as a liberal benefactor to Canterbury and Worcester,
but more especially for his determination to make the Mercian dioceses
independent of Canterbury. For this purpose he applied to the Pope to
convert the bishopric of Lichfield into an archbishopric. The Archbishop
of Canterbury naturally resisted the design, but Hadrian I sent legates
to England in 786 to examine the matter, and a synod was held at
Chelsea which settled that Higbert of Lichfield should be put in charge
of the seven dioceses of Mercia and East Anglia and receive a pallium.
In return for this concession Offa promised to give the Pope an annual
gift of money, and so inaugurated the tribute known to after ages as
Peter's Pence. Offa died in 796, completely master of his realm, but
his good fortune did not descend to his only son, a delicate youth called
Ecgfrith. This prince only survived his father 141 days, and on his
death the crown passed over to his remote kinsman Coenwulf, who once
more had to struggle with Kent and who ultimately abandoned Offa's
scheme of a separate archbishopric for Mercia in return for the support of
the archbishop of Canterbury against the rebels. This concession was
undoubtedly a good thing for England, but it marks the beginning of
the fall of Mercia.
Before leaving the Mercian period it is natural to ask a few questions
as to the social and political organisation of the English in the days of
Theodore and up to the close of the eighth century. Can a satisfactory
short statement be made about these matters, or must it be admitted
that our sources are so scanty and so full of gaps that it is impossible to
obtain any definite light on them? The chief difficulty arises from the
absence of contemporary laws for either Northumbria, Mercia or East
Anglia. Except for a few Mercian landbooks, for Bede's incidental
remarks and for the general picture of society presented in lives of such
saints as Wilfrid, or in heroic poetry like the Song of Beowulf, ap-
parently composed in Mercia about a. d. 700, we have no contemporary
evidence illuminating English institutions north of the Thames. The
Kentish laws and those of Ine furnish a fair amount of material for the
southern provinces, but can this evidence be assumed to apply to the
whole country, especially when we find that there were marked differences
between Kent and Wessex? As a rule this question has been answered
in the affirmative, and it has been assumed that the main customs of
Wessex were also in force in the midlands and the north, while the gaps
in the southern evidence have been filled by having recourse to parallel
continental practice or to English customs of a later day. It must be
admitted that no very sure generalisations can be attained by these


## p. 566 (#598) ############################################

666 Social Organisation of the English
methods, and the resulting picture is bound to be marred by mis-
conceptions. However, if an outline is to be attempted at all, no other
methods are available.
As regards the social organisation the most striking feature revealed
by the laws is the great complexity of the class divisions. Society in a
petty English kingdom about a. d. 700 did not consist in the main of
men on an equal footing with one another, but took the form of an
elaborately graded social ladder, each grade above the slaves being
distinguished, as in all primitive societies, by its special "wergeld" or
money price. In Kent there were four main divisions, theows, laets,
ceorls and eorlcund-men, corresponding to the servi liberti ingenui and
nobiles spoken of by Tacitus when describing the Germans of the first
century; but these main classes had many subdivisions, as for instance
four grades of bondmen, three of laets and four of eorlcund-men, while in
addition there was the further distinction between the godcund and the
woruMcund, the clergy and the laity, the former having also their own
grades. In Wessex there were also four main divisions of the laity but
the classification was clearly not the same as in Kent. The four main
classes were the theows, the Welshmen, the ceorls and the gesithcund-men.
Here too there were subdivisions, the laws distinguishing several categories
of Welshmen, two of ceorls (the twihynde and the sixhynde classes) and
two of gesithcund-men. In both kingdoms above the eorlcund and
gesithcund classes, or perhaps forming their highest subdivisions, were
the aethelings. This grade was composed of the members of the princely
kindreds from whom the kings were chosen. These men furnished the
bulk of the provincial officials, and from time to time they are seen
deposing the kings and breaking up the kingdoms among themselves,
each aetheling claiming for himself a "shire," that is to say his "share,'"
as a petty principality. It is these aethelings, men like Ceadwalla before
he seized the crown, who should be regarded as the "nobles'" in such
petty states as Essex, Sussex, Kent or even Wessex and not the mass of
the eorlcund or gesithcund classes, who were clearly not so much nobles
as the equivalent of the knights and squires of later ages. The ordinary
gesithcund-man, as the name implies, was suited by birth and training to
be the companion or "comes" of the aetheling. Like the latter, he
spent most of his time in war and hunting; but to regard both the
leader of a "comitatus" and his "comites" as "nobles" is only
confusing.
The upper grades, the "dearly-born" men as they were termed
because of their higher " wergelds," were often spoken of in the mass as
eorls, an expression best translated as the "warriors,'" whereas all the
lower free classes were in a general sense ceorls or agriculturists. The
most remarkable fact revealed by the laws about the ceorls, in the
stricter sense of the term, was the inferior status held by the Wessex
ceorls as compared with the Kentish ceorls. It is somewhat difficult to


## p. 567 (#599) ############################################

The Wergelds in Kent and Wessex
567
compare their respective " wergelds," for the monetary systems of Kent
and Wessex differed; but, whatever the obscurities, it seems to be now
agreed that whereas the wergelds of the eorlcund and gesithcund classes
were approximately of equal value, the value of the Wessex ceorl was
far below that of the Kentish ceorl, and little higher than the value of
the lowest class of Kentish laet. The best way to shew this is to convert
the money values given by the laws into terms of livestock, the medium
in which the fines were mostly paid. In the case of Wessex this is not
a difficult problem. The laws state the amount of the wergeld in
Wessex "shillings," and there are passages in Ine's code and also in the
later West Saxon laws which indicate that this "shilling" was the
equivalent of a "sheep. " It seems further that the English reckoned
four sheep as the equivalent of one cow. When therefore the laws state
that the twihynde ceorVs wergeld was 200 shillings, we can interpret the
meaning to be that the manslaughter of a twihynde ceorl could be
atoned for by paying his maegth either 200 sheep or 50 cows. In the
Kentish laws, on the other hand, we find that the ceorVs wergeld was
100 Kentish shillings; but this shilling was at least four times as
valuable as the Wessex shilling; many passages in Aethelberhfs code
shewing that it contained 20 pence, whereas the Wessex shilling most
probably contained five. The Kentish shilling was therefore the equiva-
lent, not of a "sheep," but of a " cow "; and accordingly the killing of
a Kentish ceorl could only be atoned for with 100 cows, or twice the
Wessex penalty. The subjoined table, giving the values (manwyrth) of
the chief grades in cows, shews, better than any description, the differences
between Kentish and West Saxon society.
Kent (1 shilling=20d. = 1 cow),
aetheling 1500 sh. —1500 cows
eorlcund 300 sh. = 300 cows
ceorl 100 sh. = 100 cows
laet, 1st grade 80 sh. = 80 cows
laet, 2nd grade 00 sh. = 60 cows
laet, 3rd grade 40 sh. = 40 cows
Welshmen (none mentioned)
Wessex (1 shillings5d. = 1 sheep).
aetheling
gesithcund or twelf-
hyndeman
sixhynde ceorl
Welshman holding
5 hides
twihynde ceorl
Welshman holding
1 hide
do. holding \ hide
do. without land
(not given)
1200 sh. = 300 cows
600 sh. = 150 cows
do. ■= do.
200 sh. = 50 cows
120 sh. =
80 sh. =
60sh. =
30 cows
20 cows
15 cows
We may next ask, in what relation did the classes stand to each
oth^r? It is clear that among men of Teutonic descent the distinctions
of rank were for the most part hereditary distinctions. A man was
borni a ceorl or born a laet, whereas the gradations recognised among the
Welshmen depended on property. It was possible however for an
English ceorl to acquire a higher rank by accumulating landed property.
It is adso clear that the lower grades were the dependents or " men" of
/


## p. 568 (#600) ############################################

568 The Landlords and the Peasantry
the upper grades. Everywhere in the laws we meet with the hlqfords
or lords who were entitled to fines called manbots if their men were
injured, and these lords were lords over freemen as well as over slaves.
The peasantry too are put before us as gqfblgeldas or tributarii, that is to
say rent-payers, and it is clear that they not only paid tribute to the
king, but had also to work for their lords, as well as pay them dues
(gqfol) (Ine, 67). The amount of the work is not recorded, but we may
be sure that the warriors and the churches got their lands tilled for
them by their men, and for the most part by freemen. A gesUhcund-
man with an estate assessed at 5 hides could not till his land by himself,
still less could those with estates assessed at 10 or 20 hides. They
worked them by placing lesser freemen upon them, who paid them rents in
kind, or services, or both.
Section 70 of Ine's Laws gives an indication of what might be
exacted in this way, giving the year's revenue to be derived from
a 10 hide estate as 10 vats of honey, 300 loaves, 12 ambers of Welsh
ale, 30 ambers of clear ale, 10 sheep, 10 geese, 20 hens, 10 cheeses,
an amber of butter, 5 salmon, 20 weighs of hay and 100 eels. We
must understand this as the combined render collected by a land agent
from many small tenants, some holding no more than a "gyrde" or
"yard" of land, that is land assessed at a quarter of a hide, the bulk of
them being probably in the position of the laet class in Kent. This
class, who correspond to the lazzi of the Continent, were only as it were
half-free; that is to say, they were freemen, but freemen depressed by
having alien or servile blood in their ancestry. This affected their status
in two ways. Firstly they lacked the protection given by a full maegth
of free relatives. A freedman, newly freed, as a rule could have had no
free relatives, and his descendants only gradually acquired them. At
least four generations, or a century, had to pass away before the handi-
cap ceased to be felt, and in the interval the support furnished by a
maegth had to be obtained instead from the hlqford to whose family the
laet owed his freedom. Secondly, such land as a laet, or Welshman, held
had not been acquired by conquest at the original settlement, but also
came from the hlqford, and as a consequence was not held freely, but on
conditions prescribed by the lord. No doubt it was regarded as heritable,
but subject to the goodwill of the lord. In some cases, too, the lord
provided a botl, or house, for his man as well as the land. These
features, it is true, are only mentioned in the Wessex laws, and not in
those of Kent; but the low wergeld of the Wessex ceorls seems easiest
explained, if we regard them as originally descended from a class of laets,
and subsequently raised in status and dignified by a nobler name in
consequence of the victorious wars, which had superimposed them on
the top of the alien Welsh peasantry among whom they were settled.
An exactly parallel change occurred again in England in the ninth
century, when the Norsemen conquered eastern England. They too had
-v


## p. 569 (#601) ############################################

Political Organisation. The Witan 569
their laet class, called leysings, and when these leysings settled among
the English they were at once raised in status and made to rank as ceorls1.
The political organisation of the petty English states of Theodore's
day, or even when Offa was at his zenith, is as difficult to elucidate as
the social organisation. Much has to be inferred from later evidence,
and many generalisations, which are possibly true for the tenth century,
seem to lack authority when applied, as they have been, to the eighth.
It is of course clear that all the states had kings, some of them even a
dual kingship as in Kent and Essex, and we may also believe that they
all possessed some kind of national assembly, known as the witenagemot
or " meeting of the wise. " But when we inquire what part the witam
played, and how they were composed, little can be asserted with con-
fidence. The lists of witnesses to the landbooks attributed to Aethelbald
and Offa are usually supposed to be evidence for the personnel of the
Mercian witan before a. d. 800; but these records are very difficult
material to deal with, while still less confidence can be placed in the
landbooks of Wessex or Sussex. What the landbooks shew, if genuine,
is that the Mercian witan was a very aristocratic and restricted body,
comprising the king and the bishops, a few abbots and about a dozen
other magnates who are described either as "princes" or "dukes. "
Even when joined to the Kentish witan, the assembly rarely numbered
thirty; and except on these occasions there is hardly any evidence of lesser
personages than dukes attending. In some Wessex documents the dukes
are described as "praefects,'" and seem to have been seven in number. The
Kentish magnates are occasionally described as "comites. " The Mercian
dukes were clearly aethelings set over the various provinces which made
up the kingdom, such as Lindsey or Wreocensaete, and many of them
were near kinsmen of the king. It is not known whether the kings were
expected to summon their witans to confer with them regularly, nor can
we say how far the kings were really guided by them. They clearly
were consulted on the rare occasions when new laws were framed, but it
does not follow from this that a strong king submitted to their advice
in matters of ordinary administration. Certainly in making grants of
land the kings claimed to be dealing with their own property at their
own will. In the case of a disputed succession, however, the witan
played an important part, determining which of the royal kindred should
be acknowledged, when the rivals were not prepared to appeal to arms.
The king's power must really have depended chiefly on his wealth, and on
his prestige as a warrior. If he could keep together and endow an effective
retinue and at the same time maintain friendly relations with the bishops,
he was probably not much hampered by any organised political system.
If we turn from the central to the provincial institutions, the same
want of evidence prevails. We can only dimly imagine what the districts
were which had separate dukes; but it is usual to assume that the
1 Alfred and Guthrum Treaty, a. d. 886.


## p. 570 (#602) ############################################

670 The Dukes and the Local Assemblies
indications as to the local government of Wessex, which can be gleaned
from Ine's laws, may be also applied to Mercia. These laws shew that
Wessex was divided into shires, and that each shire had an " alderman"
at its head. These officers, the praefecti of the Wessex landbooks, were
presumably the equivalent of the Mercian dukes. Their duties were to
preside in the local assemblies or shiremoots, to maintain order and
promote justice, and to lead the forces of their shire in war. Their
power, like that of the kings, was dependent on their wealth and on
their prestige as military leaders. In theory no doubt they were the king's
agents and removable at the king's will, but in practice the aldermanries
were not often interfered with, and they tended to become hereditary.
The chief use of the shiremoot was as a court of justice; it appears
to have met twice a year and was attended by the gesithcund-men
and the more important ceorls. For small men attendance must
have been a burden, for the richer an opportunity for display and for
social intercourse. The actual administration of justice was in the
hands of those who attended. It was for them to declare the law, and
fix what manner of proof should be furnished by the litigants. It was
they, rather than the presiding alderman, who must be regarded as the
judges. In the language of the time they were the "doomsmen," and
they dealt with all cases both criminal and civil.
It is obvious that a
court of this kind, sitting at long intervals, and not particularly easy of
access for the bulk of the inhabitants of a shire, could not have been the
only court; for ordinary cases the shires must have been further sub-
divided, and the courts of these smaller districts must have sat more
frequently. Such courts are found in later times sitting once a month,
the districts appropriate to them being called " hundreds," and consisting
of groups of villages varying in number from two or three to as many
as twenty. There is every reason to suppose that these "hundred"
divisions existed in England from the first; they are in fact a common
feature of all primitive races, but neither the Kentish nor the West
Saxon laws have anything to say about them. Traces of them are
perhaps seen in the smaller divisions recorded in the Tribal Hidage.
We may assume however that only the more important men laid
their suits before the shire courts, and that monthly courts of some
kind were the really popular courts attended by the mass of the people,
the same methods of procedure being used in them as in the higher
courts. There is reason to suspect however that, already in Offa's age,
some of these smaller courts were no longer under the direct supervision
of the alderman or officials appointed by him. Already the greater
churches were aiming at special immunities for their estates, and the
landbooks bear witness to the readiness of the kings to purchase safety
for their souls by freeing the clerical and monastic owners from secular
control. In this way the Church took over functions that should have
belonged to the king or the alderman, with the result that in many
subdistricts the bishops and the abbots rather than any secular authority


## p. 571 (#603) ############################################

The Tendencies towards Feudalism 571
were practically the controlling officials. For the peasantry in a rude
age this may have been a gain, but the outcome was a fusion of the
ruler and the landowner which greatly assisted the growth of a system
approaching feudalism.
The difficult questions connected with the development of feudal
tendencies in the English kingdoms cannot be adequately discussed
here for want of space. Not only is the whole subject very complicated,
but for a long time past it has formed a topic for controversy, and
though some light has been shed upon the darkness, many points
still remain obscure. Three problems have been much debated. First,
what proportion of the peasantry were free landowners? Secondly, by
what stages did the landlord class acquire the right to exact rents and
services from their lesser neighbours? and thirdly, how did it come
about that military and judicial powers properly belonging to the kings
and dukes also fell into the hands of the landowners?
Thirty years ago it used to be supposed, following the current
German views as to Teutonic society, that at the outset the bulk of
the English peasantry were virtually free landowners, and the problem,
which perplexed historians, was how best to account for the rapid decline
of their freedom and the rise of landlordism. These views, however, were
directly challenged in 1883 by Frederic Seebohm in his treatise on the
"English Village Community. " This book not only drew a vivid picture
of the methods of husbandry employed in Anglo-Saxon times, shewing
how tillage was carried on by joint ploughing and how the usual peasant
holding or "yardland" was formed of a number of acre and half-acre strips
scattered up and down the arable lands of the village and lying inter-
mixed with those of other holdings, but also attempted to trace back
all the chief features of medieval serfdom into the earliest periods. In
the main he contended, not so much that the English took over a servile
system of agriculture ready made from the Romanised Britons, but that
dependent tenure and the power of the lord were innate features of all
tribal societies, and that consequently the English tribes or " maegths,"
no less than the tribes of Keltic Wales or Ireland, were at no period
within our ken without a considerable percentage of dependent workers.
Hence much of the later manorial system and many feudal features
should be regarded as present in their villages from their first settlement
in England. These views did not command complete assent and
were partly challenged by Maitland and other writers, who pointed out
many gaps in the chain of argument; but none the less the evidence,
marshalled by Seebohm in this book and in two later studies on the
characteristics of tribal custom in Northern Europe, entirely revolutionised
the whole current of the discussion, so that it is no longer supposed that
the marked equality of the yardlands in the English villages can be
traced back to a primitive stage of freedom and equality. On the
contrary, it is recognised that such equality is much more likely to have


## p. 572 (#604) ############################################

572 The various kinds of English Village
been produced and maintained by pressure from above exercised by lords
who for their own purposes prevented inequalities arising, such as would
naturally spring up within a few years in any free society by the mere
application of the Teutonic rule of partible succession among children.
Further discussion has also shewn that, in reality, there were several
different types of village community in early England. To begin with,
the terms used in the earliest laws for a village vary. 'In the Kentish
laws we find tun, ham and wic, in the West Saxon weorthig and hiwisc.
The former terms survive as English words in the forms "town,'" "hamlet'"
and " wick," the latter only in somewhat disguised shapes in suffixes of
place-names—for example in Tamworth, Holsworthy, Leintwardine and
Hardenhuish. Other terms, not used in the early laws but common
enough as suffixes, are stede, hamstede, hamtun and burh, the latter being
the parent of both "borough" and "bury. " Whether differences of
type are implied by this wealth of terms is not clear. It has indeed
been argued that the suffix " ham " betokens an earlier settlement than
the suffix "tun"; but this seems doubtful. As yet no comprehensive
study of English place-names has been attempted. The evidence for
the divergence of types is really found elsewhere, by studying the plan
and structure of the villages as recorded in the maps of the Ordnance
Survey. Two divergent types stand out clearly. On the one hand we
see villages in which all the homesteads lie clustered together in a single
street; these have been termed by Maitland "nucleated villages"; on
the other, villages in which the homesteads lie scattered here and there
over the village territory. The former is perhaps the most common
type, and is especially noticeable in the Thames Valley, in the Eastern
Midlands, in Kesteven and Yorkshire, but the latter prevails in Essex
and in the south-west. In the Anglo-Saxon landbooks we also have
evidence of a third type of village organisation, common in districts
where woodlands predominate. In this type an arable head-village had
appendant to it a number of woodland members, often lying at a
considerable distance and quite detached. The English spoke of these
woodlands as " den baere" or " wald baere," or more shortly as "dens. "
Instances of villages having detached woodlands should perhaps be given,
as this type has hardly attracted the attention it deserves. In Middlesex,
Fulham and Finchley; in Hertfordshire, Hatfield and Totteridge;
in Buckinghamshire, Eton and Hedgerley, or Taplow and Penn; in
Berkshire, Ilsley and West Woodhay; in Hampshire, King's Worthy
and Pamber, or Micheldever and Durley; in Surrey, Battersea and
Penge; in Sussex, Felpham and Fittleworth; Stanmer and Lindtield;
Washington and Horsham. In all these pairs the second village named
was originally a detached woodland dependent on the other. In the
Chilterns, in Kent and in the Weald generally this was the common
type of organisation, and it is for this reason that so many of the woodland
villages appear to be absent from the Domesday Survey. A "den"
might sometimes be fifteen miles away from the head village and even


## p. 573 (#605) ############################################

English Schools and Scholars 573
in another county. The system applied also to marshes, heaths and
moorlands. Yet another type was the arable village with a number of
surrounding " ends," "cots," or "wicks,11 some of these dependencies being
tilled, some only used as pasture farms producing cheeses. It is obvious
that no one hypothesis can be imagined which will account for the
development of all these varieties of type or for the great differences in the
conditions under which the occupying peasants held them. One thing only
stands out clearly. In quite early times the basis of the organisation was
distinctly aristocratic, and constantly became more so as the kingdoms
became consolidated and the relative distance between a king or aetheling
and the cultivating peasants became greater. The advent too of the
church, as a considerable landowner, only strengthened the aristocratic
and feudal tendencies.
Before closing this chapter a few words should perhaps be added on
the spread of learning and education among the English, while Mercia
was dominant. Something has already been said as to the immediate
effect produced by the advent of the first missionaries; it remains to
speak of the schools which gave lustre to the seventh and eighth
centuries and of the writers trained in them. The most important
schools were those of Wearmouth, Canterbury, and York. The first
was set up by Benedict Biscop, founder of Wearmouth and Jarrow,
who died in 690. He journeyed five times to Rome and each time
came back with art treasures and a goodly store of books. These he
particularly recommended to the care of his monks on his death-bed.
The progress of his school can best be judged by the after career of its
most famous pupil, the Venerable Bede. The school of Canterbury
owed its efficiency, not to Augustine, but to Hadrian the African abbot,
who first recommended Theodore to Pope Vitalian and then accompanied
him to England in 669. Like Theodore, Hadrian was well versed in
both Latin and Greek, and he also taught verse-making, music, astronomy,
arithmetic, and medicine. Pupils soon crowded to the school and many
afterwards became famous clerics, for example, John of Beverley; but
undoubtedly the most considerable of all from the literary standpoint
was Aldhelm, whom we have already spoken of as bishop of Sherborne.
For his time AldhelnTs learning was very comprehensive. His extant
writings comprise a treatise both in prose and verse on the praise of
virginity, which had an immediate success, a collection of one hundred
riddles and acrostics, and several remarkable letters, one being addressed
to Geraint, the king of Devon, and another to Aldfrid, the king of
Northumbria. These writings shew acquaintance with a very extensive
literature both Christian and profane, and also a great love for an
out-of-the-way vocabulary. A considerable number of scholars took to
imitating his style, the most important among them being Hweetberct,
abbot of Wearmouth from 716, and Tatwin, a monk of Bredon in
Worcestershire, who became archbishop of Canterbury in 781.


## p. 574 (#606) ############################################

574 Bede. Alcuin. The Court Minstrels
Far the greatest and most attractive figure among the scholars of
the period is Bede, who was born in 672 and spent his whole life of
sixty-three years at Jarrow, never journeying further afield than York.
His style is exactly the opposite to that of Aldhelm. It has no
eccentricities or affectations, but is always direct, sincere, and simple.
Year by year for forty years he worked industriously, producing in turn
commentaries on the Scriptures and works on natural history, grammar,
and history. For us his historical works are the most important, and
of these the greatest and best is the Ecclesiastical History of the English
Nation. This contains five books. The first is introductory and deals
briefly with Christianity in Britain before the advent of Augustine; the
other four books deal each with a period of about 83 years, or one
generation, and bring the story down to 731. The success of this history
was immediate, and copies of it quickly spread over the Continent, so
that at his death Bede had secured a European reputation.
Bede's most important pupil was Ecgbert, already mentioned as the
first Archbishop of York. To him Bede wrote his last extant letter,
dated 5 Nov. 734, pleading for ecclesiastical reforms in Northumbria
and denouncing pseudo-monasteries. Ecgbert partly answered this
appeal by developing his cathedral school, forming it on the Canterbury
model, and here was educated Alcuin, the second English scholar to
gain a European reputation in the eighth century. His work, though
it throws great lustre on York, was not done in England, but at the
court of Charles the Great, with whom he took service. It is a sufficient
proof, however, that England in Offa's day had attained to a literary
pre-eminence in the West that the great Frankish ruler should have
looked to England for a scholar to set over his palace school.
Besides these Latin scholars, there is good evidence that throughout
the seventh and eighth centuries there were also many court bards in
England who cultivated the art of poetry in English, handing on from
generation to generation traditional lays which told of the deeds of the
heathen heroes of the past and perhaps composing fresh ones in honour
of the English kings and their ancestors. These lays have much in
common with the Homeric poems and like them are highly elaborated.
Both Aldhelm and Alcuin refer to their existence, but only fragments of
them still survive modified to suit Christian ears. The most important
example is the Song of Beowulf already referred to. This deals with
Danish and Swedish heroes and extends to 3000 lines. English poetry
was also cultivated in ruder forms by the common people; for Bede tells
us that wherever villagers met for amusement it was customary for the
harp to be handed round among the company and for English songs to
be sung. A tale is also told of Aldhelm which points in the same
direction, how it was his wont to stand on a bridge near Malmesbury
and sing songs to the peasants to attract them to church. The best
known maker of English Sacred Songs was Caedmon of Whitby.


## p. 575 (#607) ############################################

575
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CARLOVINGIAN REVOLUTION AND FRANKISH
INTERVENTION IN ITALY.
The eighth century had hardly entered on its second half when the
last of the long-haired Merovingians was thrust from the throne of the
Franks, and Pepin the mayor of the palace hailed as king. The change
seemed slight, for the new dynasty had served a long apprenticeship.
For more than a century the descendants of Clovis had been mere puppets
in a king's seat, while the descendants of St Arnulf, though called
only Mayors of the Palace or Dukes and Princes of the Franks, had
managed, and with vigour and success, the affairs of the realm. Their
neighbours, the scoffing Greeks, marvelled at the strange ways of the
Franks, whose lord the king needed no quality save birth alone, and all
the year through had nothing to do or plan, but only to eat and drink
and sleep and stay shut up at home except on one spring day, when
he must sit at gaze before his people, while his head servant ruled the
State to suit himself. But it was one thing to rule the State and quite
another to lay hand upon those sacred titles and prerogatives which the
reverence of centuries had reserved for the race of the Salian sea-god; and
the house of Arnulf was little likely to forget their kinsman Grimoald
who in the seventh century had outraged that reverence by setting his own
son upon the throne, and had paid the forfeit with his life and with his
child's. Charles Martel (the Hammer), in the last years of his long rule,
had found it possible, indeed, to get on with no king at all, dating his docu-
ments from the death of the latest do-nothing; but, if he hoped that
thus the two sons between whom at his own death he divided Francia
like a private farm might enter peacefully upon the fact of kingship
without its name, a year of turbulence was enough to teach the sons
that to rule the Franks a kingly title must back the kingly power. The
shadowy Merovingian whom they dragged forth from obscurity to lend
a royal sanction to their acts was doubtless from the first a makeshift.
Through their surviving charters, especially those of Pepin, the younger
and more statesmanly, who not only appended to his name the proud
phrase "to whom the Lord hath entrusted the care of government" but
used always the "we" and "our" employed hitherto by royalty alone,


## p. 576 (#608) ############################################

676 Pepin [751
there glimmers already another purpose. But not Pepin himself, even
after his brother's abdication left him sole ruler, and when, all tur-
bulence subdued, two years eventless in the annals had confirmed his
sway, ventured the final step of revolution without a sanction from a
higher power.
To one reared, like Pepin, by the monks of St Denis, and to the
prelates who were his advisers, it could hardly be doubtful where such a
sanction should be sought. Whatever veneration still attached to ancient
blood or custom, Jesus Christ was now the national god of the Franks.
"Long live Christ, who loves the Franks," ran the prologue of their
Salic Law; "may he guard their realm and fill their princes with the
light of his grace. 11 And, if the public law of the Franks knew no pro-
cedure for a change of dynasty, the story of another chosen people,
grown more familiar than the sagas of German or Roman or Trojan
ancestors, told how, when a king once proved unworthy, the God of
heaven himself sent his prophet to anoint with oil the subject who should
take his throne. Nor could any Frank be at a loss whither to look for
such a message from the skies. From the days of Clovis the glory of
the Franks had been their Catholic orthodoxy; and to Catholic ortho-
doxy the mouthpiece of heaven, the vicar of Christ on earth, was the
successor of Peter, the bishop of Rome. Since the time when Pope
Gregory the Great had by his letters guided the religious policy of
Brunhild and her wards there had come, it is true, long interruption to
the intimacy of Frankish rulers with the Roman bishop; but, with the
rise of the mayors of the palace of the pious line of Arnulf, that in-
timacy had been resumed. Already to Charles Martel the Pope could
plead the gifts of his ancestors and his own to Roman altars; and it
was that rude warrior, however unchurchly at times his use of church
preferment and church property, who had made possible a reform of the
Frankish Church through which it was now, beyond even the dreams of a
Gregory the Great, becoming a province of Rome. What, backed by
his strong arm, the English zeal of the papal legate Boniface had
begun, the sons of Charles had made their personal task. From the
first they had turned for guidance to the Pope himself; and when, in
747, Carloman, the elder, laying down all earthly rule for the loftier
service of heaven, had with lavish gifts betaken him to the tomb of
Peter and under its shadow had chosen for his monastic home the cave
which once had sheltered that saintly Pope to whom the despairing
Constantine, as men believed, had turned for healing and for baptism,
the Frankish pilgrims whose multitude disturbed his peace must have
learned afresh the proper oracle for princes in doubt.
It can never be quite certain, indeed, so close were now the relations
of the Franks with Rome, that the scruple of conscience which in the
autumn of 751 two envoys of Pepin laid before Pope Zacharias—the
question whether it were good or no that one man should bear the name


## p. 577 (#609) ############################################

751] The Pope's position 577
of king while another really ruled—was not of Roman suggestion, or
that the answer had not, in any case, been made sure in advance.
But there were reasons enough why, without prearrangement, the papal
verdict might be safely guessed. It was not Pepin the Frank alone
who ruled while another reigned. For a century that had been as true
of the bishop of Rome; and the Pope not less than the mayor of the
palace needed an ally. Though the nominal sovereign at Rome was
still the Byzantine monarch who called himself Emperor of the Romans,
and though from Constantinople still came imperial edicts and imperial
messengers, the actual control, now that the Lombards had narrowed to
a thread the road from the Exarchate by the Adriatic to the Roman
Duchy by the Mediterranean and now that the Saracens were not only
tasking all the Empire's resources in the East but making hazardous the
sea route to the West, had passed ever more and more into the hands of
the Roman bishop. Even under the law of the Empire his civil functions
were large—the nomination of local officers, the care of public works,
the oversight of administration and of justice, the protection of the poor
and the weak—and what survives of his official correspondence shews how
vigorously these functions were exercised. But the growing poverty of
the public purse, drained by the needs of the imperial court or the greed
of the imperial agents, and on the other hand the vast estates of the
Roman Church, scattered throughout Italy and beyond, whose revenues
made the Roman bishop the richest proprietor in all the West, had
little by little turned his oversight into control. From his own resources
he at need had filled the storehouses, repaired the aqueducts, rebuilt the
walls, salaried the magistrates, paid off the soldiery. At his own instance
he had provisioned the people, ransomed captives, levied troops, bought
off invaders, negotiated with the encroaching Lombards.
This beneficent activity the imperial government had welcomed.
Making the Pope its own banker, it had formally entrusted him with
the supply of the city, with the maintenance of the militia. To him,
as to a Roman magistrate, it addressed its instructions. Meanwhile
the needless civil magnates gradually vanished or became his creatures.
The Roman senate quietly ceased to exist or existed so obscurely that
for a century and a half it ceases to be heard of. The praefect of the
city was the bishop's nominee. Even the military hierarchy, which
elsewhere in Italy was now supplanting the civil, at Rome grew sub-
ordinate. The city and its district, separating from the Exarchate, had
indeed become a duchy, and a duke still led its army; but before the
middle of the eighth century the duke was taking his cue, if not his
orders, from the Pope. So long as there remained that slender thread
of road connecting Rome with Ravenna, the Exarch, as imperial
governor of Italy, asserted a shadowy authority over both duke and
Pope; but year by year the Exarch's Adriatic lands narrowed before the
Lombards, and with them his resources and prestige. In 751, a few
C. MED. H. VOL. U. CB. XVIII. 37


## p. 578 (#610) ############################################

578 Breach between Pope and Emperor [725-751
months earlier than Pepin's embassy, the Lombards occupied Ravenna
itself, and the Exarch was no more. The Roman pontiff was now the
unquestioned head of what remained to the Empire in Italy.
Why should there be any question? Who could serve the Empire
better than this unsalaried functionary whose duties to heaven seemed
an abiding guarantee against the ambitions of earth? And what could
the vicar of Peter more desire than thus unhampered to administer his
province on behalf of that imperial Rome whose eternal dominion he so
often had proclaimed? But imperial Rome did not leave unhampered
that spiritual headship for whose sake he had proclaimed her eternal
dominion. Neither the rising prestige of the Roman see nor the waning
of imperial resources had restrained the emperors from asserting in the
West that authority over religious belief and religious practice which
they exercised unquestioned in the East. Upon the Roman bishop they
had heaped honours and privileges, they had even recognised his primacy
in the Church; yet at their will they still convened councils and promul-
gated or proscribed dogmas, and, when the bishop of Rome presumed to
discredit what they declared orthodox, they did not scruple, while their
power was adequate, to arrest and depose him or to drag him off to
Constantinople for trial and punishment. Their purpose may have been
the political one of silencing religious dissension and so ending the
quarrels which hazarded the unity of the Empire; but to the successor
of Peter the peace and unity of the Empire had worth only for the
maintenance and the diffusion of that divinely revealed truth whose
responsible custodian he knew himself to be.
When, therefore, in the year 725, the Emperor Leo, having beaten
off the besieging Saracens and restored order in his realm, addressed him-
self to religious reform, and, waiting for no consultation of the Church,
forbade the use in worship of pictures and images of the Christ, the
Virgin, and the saints—nay, began at once on their destruction—Pope
Gregory the Second not only refused obedience, but rallied Italy to
his defence against what he proclaimed to Christendom the Emperor's
impiety and heresy. And now, after a quarter of a century, though
Gregory the Second had been followed in 731 by Gregory the Third,
and ten years later he by Zacharias, while on Leo's throne since 740
sat Constantine the Fifth, his son, the schism was still unhealed. The
Emperor, after the shipwreck of a fleet sent for the humbling of
the rebels, had indeed contented himself with the transfer of Sicily and
southern Italy from the jurisdiction of the Pope to that of the Patriarch
of Constantinople; and, having thus begun that severance of the Greek
south from the Latin north which (helped soon by the unintended
flooding of south Italy with religious fugitives from the East) was to
endure for centuries, he did not disturb the authority of Rome in the
rest of the peninsula. The Pope, on his side, though he laid all Icono-
clasts under the Church's ban, opposed the treasonous design to put


## p. 579 (#611) ############################################

Italian Feeling 579
a rival emperor on the throne, and scrupulously continued to date all
his official acts by the sovereign's regnal years. But clearly this was no
more than armed neutrality. No emperor could feel safe while religious
rebellion had such an example and such a nucleus; and the Pope well
knew that it was all over with his own safety and that of Roman
orthodoxy the moment they could be attacked without danger of the
loss of Italy.
Italian loyalty to Roman leadership there was no room to doubt.
The alienation of the Latins from their Byzantine master had grounds
older and deeper than their veneration for the pictures of the saints.
Their consciousness of different blood and speech had for ages been
increased by administrative separateness and by the favoured place of
Italy in the imperial system; and, when division of the Empire had
brought to her Hellenic neighbours equality of privilege and of prestige,
there still remained to Italy the headship of the West. She had
welcomed those who in the honoured name of Rome freed her from the
Ostrogoth barbarians and heretics; but, when in their hands she found
herself sunk to a mere frontier province, the officials of her absentee
ruler had soon become unpopular. The growing extortion of the tax-
gatherer was sweetened by no pride in the splendours it nourished. The
one public boast of Italy, her one surviving claim to leadership, was now
the religious pre-eminence of her Roman bishop. His patriarchate over
all the West made Rome and Italy still a capital of nations. His
primacy, if realised, meant for her a wider queenship. To Italy he was
a natural leader. Directly or through her other bishops—nearly all
confirmed and consecrated by him and bound to him by oaths of ortho-
doxy and of loyalty—he was the patron of all municipal liberties, the
defender against all fiscal oppression. And when the imperial court, in
its militant Hellenism, used its political power to dictate religious inno-
vation, the Roman pontiff became yet more popular as the spokesman of
Western conservatism. More than once before the iconoclastic schism
had the sympathies of the Italians ranged themselves on the side of the
Pope against the Emperor. When that quarrel came it found Italy
already in a ferment. Imperial officials on every hand were driven out
or put to death, and—what was more significant—their places filled by
popular election.
But if, thus sure of popular support, Pope Gregory the Third, as
there is reason to believe, already harboured the thought of breaking
with the Byzantine authority, a nearer danger stared him in the face.
The Empire's Italy was, in fact, but a precarious remnant. There were
the Lombards. Already masters of most of the peninsula, they were
clearly minded to be masters of it all. The Lombards, of course, were
Christians. They had long ceased to be heretics. Against the Icono-
clasts they had even lent the Pope their aid. For the vicar of Peter
they professed the deepest respect, and their bishops were suffragans of
ch. xvui. 37—2


## p. 580 (#612) ############################################

580 Pope and Lombards [730-751
his see. There was no reason to suppose, should they even occupy
Rome itself, that they would hamper or abridge the ecclesiastical
functions of the Pope. But the Pope well knew what difference lay
between a mere Lombard bishop, however venerated, and the all but
independent sovereign of the capital of the Christian world. Already
the temporal power had cast its spell. . Should the Lombard king win
(Rome, there was much reason to fear that he would make ft Tils own
/ capital. Though orthodox now and deferential, he might not always be
/ ^deferential or orthodox; and how short the step was from a deferential
^* protector to a dictatorial master papal experience had amply shewn.
At Constantinople such a master was quite near enough. The Pope
had no mind to exchange King Log for King Stork.
Against the Lombards, therefore, Pope and Emperor made common
cause. The Emperor, needing every soldier against his Eastern foes,
was only too glad to make the Pope his envoy. The Pope, needing
every plea against the eager Lombard, was only too glad to urge the
claims of the Empire. But, in spite of papal pleading and imperial
claims, the Lombards took town after town. The desperate Pope
intrigued with Lombard dukes against the Lombard king. Liutprand
turned his arms on Rome itself. Then it was, in 739, that Gregory
appealed to Charles the Frank.
It was by no means the first time the Frankish champions of
orthodoxy had been called to the aid of Italy against the barbarian; not
the first time a Pope was their petitioner. As sons of the Church and
allies of the Empire they had crossed the Alps in the sixth century and
in the seventh to fight Ostrogoth and Lombard. But the appeal of
Gregory was couched in novel terms. Not for the Empire nor for the
faith did he now implore protection, but for " the Church of St Peter"
and "us his peculiar people11; and as return the Frankish chroniclers
record that puzzling offer of allegiance.
The great Frankish "under-king "—so the Pope entitled him—did
not lead his host against the Lombard king, his kinsman and ally; but
he answered courteously by embassy and gift, he treasured carefully
the papal letters, the earliest in that precious file preserved us by his
grandson, and it is not impossible that he interceded with the Lombards.