No More Learning

It seems also clear that few of the rank and file cared much by whom
they were ruled, as long as they ran no risk of losing the fertile lands
won by their fathers forty years before. Land-hunger had brought the
vikings to England, not desire for national expansion, and so their ideal
was peace, plenty and opportunities for trading, and not political indepen-
dence. It is well also to remember that at the very moment when
Aethelfleda succeeded her husband, the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte provided
a congenial asylum for the more ambitious and wilder spirits, so that
from 911 onwards there was a constant drift of English Danes to Nor-
mandy, eager to take service under Rollo in the new Frankish Danelaw.
A noticeable example of this movement is on record in the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, which tells how Thurkytel, jarl of Bedford, made peace
in 914, but a year or two later, with Edward's assistance, “fared over
sea with such men as would follow him. ” This trend of events evidently
was not overlooked by Edward, and fairly accounts for the confident
way in which he kept pushing forward. Having reached the Humber
and Mersey, he might well have paused for a year or two to consolidate
what he had won. On the contrary, in the next year he is found
advancing as steadily as ever, bent on regaining for Mercia the northern
half of the ancient Westerna, the land “betwixt the Mersey and the
Ribble," and, in order to control the road from Chester to York,
building a fort at Manchester, well within the borders of the Danes of
Yorkshire. These Danes had long been a prey to internal dissensions,
the old curse of Northumbria, as it were, resting upon them, but they
had recently accepted a new king in the person of Regnald of
Waterford, an Irish viking, who had first got a footing in Cumberland
and then spent most of his time in ravaging the territories of Ealdred,
the high reeve of Bamborough, and of Constantine III, King of the
Scots (900–942). Edward's bold advance justified itself more rapidly
than he could have hoped. In 920, while building a borough at
Bakewell in Peakland, he received the homage of all who dwelt in
Northumbria, both English and Danes, that is to say of both Regnald
and Ealdred of Bamborough. Nor was this all. According to the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle there also appeared an embassy from Donald of
Strathclyde and from Constantine, saying that the whole nation of the
Scots was prepared to take the West Saxon for their “ father and
lord. ” Patriotic Scots have mostly challenged the credibility of the
annal which makes this assertion, especially as it later became the basis
of the claim put forward by the Plantagenet kings of England to
suzerainty over Scotland. It seems probable, however, that the embassy
really did come to Bakewell, but meant no more than that Constantine
and his neighbours wished to offer Edward their congratulations and
pave the way for an alliance. It is quite gratuitous to suppose that
they held themselves to be in any way submitting to him as vassals in
CH. XIV.


## p. 366 (#412) ############################################

366
Reign of Aethelstan. Battle of Brunanburh
was
>
the feudal sense. In fact, even as regards the Yorkshire Danes, it need
not be held that more meant than that Regnald for the
moment wished for peace; and so things remained as long as Edward
lived. He died on 17 July 925 having reigned 26 years.
Edward was succeeded by his son Aethelstan, an equally great
organizer and soldier, who ruled for fourteen years (925-939). The most
striking military achievements of his reign were: the actual annexation
of the kingdom of York in 926 on the death of Sihtric, Regnald's
brother, an expedition beyond the Forth in 933 to chastise King
Constantine for taking up the cause of Anlaf Cuaran, Sihtric's son, and
the crowning battle of Brunanburh in 937, to be located it would seem
at Birrenswark, an old Roman camp in Annandale nine miles north of
the Solway. By this latter victory he broke up a great league of Scots,
Strathclyde Britons, Irish vikings, and Danes from Cumberland and
Yorkshire, which Constantine had laboriously built up in order to avenge
his own wrongs and re-establish a buffer state at York. These triumphs
completely cowed Aethelstan's enemies, and for the moment justified him
in assuming the vaunting title of “Rex totius Britanniae” which is
found on his coinage. They also brought him very great renown on the
Continent, so that contemporary sovereigns eagerly sought the hands of
his sisters, one of them having married Charles the Simple, King of the
West Franks, another marrying Hugh the Great, Count of Paris, the
father of Hugh Capet, and a third Otto the Saxon, son of Henry the
Fowler, who in due time was to found a new line of Roman Emperors.
Meagre as are the annals devoted to Aethelstan's reign in the
Chronicle, we can also detect that he applied himself with energy to
the work of adapting the institutions, which had hitherto served for
the government of Wessex and Mercia, to the conditions of his greatly
enlarged realm. In particular he set about establishing new local
machinery in the districts between the Thames and Welland which had
longest resisted his father's arms. Here he adopted the borough system
invented by the Danes as the basis of a number of new shires, which are
marked off from the older West Saxon shires by being named from a
central fortress. He also in all probability planned a new scheme of
hidage for these shires, and further subdivided them for
purposes
of
taxation, police and justice into a number of smaller divisions of varying
size, called “hundreds," which continued in use till the nineteenth
century. No absolute proof can be given of this inference; but if the
hundreds are counted shire by shire, it will be found that they are
artificially arranged so as to form a neatly balanced scheme, in all con-
taining 120 hundreds, and this is only likely to have been introduced in
some period of resettlement after a crisis such as followed on Aethelstan's
accession. The term “hundred moreover soon afterwards appears in
the laws. A table will best shew how the hundreds were distributed,
a
а
99
viz. :


## p. 367 (#413) ############################################

Aethelstan organises the midland shires
367
.
12
. . .
Oxfordshire
Buckinghamshire
18 }40)
-60
Bedfordshire
-20
Huntingdonshire (4 double hundreds) 8
Northamptonshire
30
Cambridgeshire (excluding the Isle of Ely) 15 460
Hertfordshire
Middlesex
5
595
Total 120
. . .
. . .
33}15
97
)
Similar reorganisation was also carried through further east ; for in
East Anglia and Essex we can also trace artificial hundred schemes,
Essex in 1066 having twenty hundreds and East Anglia sixty, dis-
tributed in the proportion of 36:24 between Norfolk and Suffolk. In
Essex, it would seem, there was also a new assessment of hidage, but not
in East Anglia, perhaps because that province had not been actually
conquered by force.
Another side of government, to which Aethelstan gave much careful
attention, was the better maintenance of the peace as inculcated in his
father's dooms. His laws on this head in fact, for their date, are very
comprehensive, and it is interesting to find him relying on the feudal
relation of lord and man as one means of securing good behaviour. He
laid it down, for example, that all lordless men were to be compelled by
their kinsmen to find themselves lords, and that the lords were to be
responsible for producing their men, if charges were preferred against
them. As one doom expressed it, every lord was to keep his men in his
suretyship ( fidejussio) to prevent thieving; and if he had a considerable
number of vassals, he was ordered to appoint a reeve ( praepositus) in each
township to look after their behaviour. Another device adopted in
Aethelstan's day with the same object was the so-called “ frithgild," or
peace association. This system was set up in the Chilterns and Essex by
the advice of the bishops of London and Dorchester and the reeves in
those dioceses, but it was also used in other parts. It consisted in
grouping men together by tens and hundreds, the members of each
group or frithborh being mutually responsible for each other's acts, and
liable to be fined collectively if one of the group committed a wrong
and defaulted. The importance of these new expedients is evident, but
it must not be supposed that any attempt was made to apply them
uniformly all over the realm. One law indeed was published prescribing
a uniform coinage and fixing the number of moneyers for various
towns; but it is clear that in the Five Boroughs and in the north
Aethelstan as a rule let things alone, and was content to act mainly
through the leading Danes who naturally maintained their own customs.
For example, in spite of the fact that much of the king's time was
devoted to organising shires and hundreds in the south, the more
northern Danish provinces preserved their own analogous organisation
into “ ridings” (i. e. “ third parts ") and “wapentakes,” their reckoning
CH. XIV.


## p. 368 (#414) ############################################

368
Reign of Edmund. Archbishop Oda
of money in “ marks” and “ores," and their reckoning of land by
“ mantals. ” The term “hundred” indeed was used in the north, but in
quite different ways from its uses in Mercia and Wessex. Beyond the
Welland it either denoted a sum of 120 ores, and was used as an
elliptical expression for 8 pounds of silver or 12 marks, the ore being
a sum of 16d. , or else it was used as a term of land measurement and
denoted 120 mantals, the mantal being a unit of cultivation about half
the size of the English “yardland," ten of them making a ploughland
or “tenmannetale. " Similarly the Northern Danes preserved their own
tariff of wergelds, which they stated in "thrymsas” or units of 3d. ,
the hold's wergild being 4000 thrymsas, the jarl's 8000, and an
aetheling's 15,000.
Aethelstan's successor was his half-brother Edmund, a youth
eighteen, who had fought at Brunanburh. His accession in October
939 was the signal for a tardy attempt to regain independence on the
part of the Yorkshire Danes. Led by Wulfstan, whom Aethelstan had
made Archbishop of York, they set up Anlaf Guthfrithson, the King of
Dublin, as their ruler. By themselves the men of Yorkshire were perhaps
no longer formidable; but the revolt quickly spread to the Five Boroughs,
and this enabled Anlaf to cross the Welland and attack Northampton.
There he was beaten off; but he soon afterwards stormed Tamworth.
He was then himself in turn besieged by Edmund at Leicester. The
upshot was a truce, by which Edmund acknowledged the Watling Street
as his frontier. This was a great loss; but on Anlaf meeting his death
in Bernicia in 941, Edmund at once fell on Anlaf Cuaran, Guthfrithson's
cousin and successor ; and in 942 he regained the ancient Mercian frontier,
which ran from Dore near Sheffield eastwards to Whitwell near Worksop
and so to the Humber. Two years later Anlaf Cuaran fled back to
Dublin, and Edmund re-entered York, but feeling himself unequal to
maintaining control over the whole of Aethelstan's realm, handed over
Cumberland in 945 to Malcolm, King of Scots (942-952), on the
condition “that he should be his fellow-worker by land and sea," and
keep in control the unruly colony of Norwegians, who by this time had
firmly seated themselves round Carlisle.
When not fighting Edmund seems to have been much under the in-
fluence of churchmen, especially of Oda, a remarkable Dane whom he pro-
moted to the see of Canterbury, and of Dunstan, a Somersetshire noble
a trifle younger than himself, whom he made Abbot of Glastonbury
probably in 943. It is to Oda and other bishops, rather than to the king
himself, that we must ascribe a measure, of considerable importance for the
growth of civilisation, which is found in Edmund's dooms. This is an
ordinance which declared that for the future a manslayer's kinsmen,
provided they lent the culprit no support after the deed, were not to be
held liable to make any amends to the slain man's kin, and conversely
that the maegth or kindred of the slain man were only to take their
ܪ


## p. 369 (#415) ############################################

Reorganisation of the dukedoms.
The shire-reeves 369
vengeance on the slayer himself, who was to be treated by every one as.
an outlaw and to forfeit all he possessed. Here we have the first
recorded attempt in England to put down the time-honoured institution
of the blood feud, and to make each man responsible only for his
own acts, and to break up the solidarity of the powerful family groups,
whose feeling of cousinship often reduced the authority of the state to a
shadow. Needless to say the good old custom of following up feuds
relentlessly, generation after generation, was at first little
abated by
this well-meant edict. Its promulgation however marks the spread
of a civilising movement which was ultimately to make away with the
whole system of private war and wergilds.
Another movement, which was also making gradual progress at this
time, and may perhaps therefore be best mentioned here, though it had
begun before Edmund's day and was not completed in his reign,
concerns the position and functions of the magnates in charge of the
shires. All through the centuries of the Heptarchy and down to
Alfred's death, each shire, so far as our information goes, had been ruled
by its own “scirman," called indifferently either duke, prefector
alderman, most of whom were of royal descent. As soon however as
England began to be unified, a demand for wider jurisdictions arose.
A shire apiece had been all that the magnates could expect, so long as
their king himself ruled only Wessex or Mercia, but their ambitions
naturally expanded in proportion with the growth of the kingdom.
As the tenth century advanced they accordingly pressed Edward the
Elder and his sons more and more to abandon the old scheme of one
duke to one shire, and gradually succeeded in getting a new system
introduced under which the shires were grouped three or four together
with a duke over each group. It must have been a protracted process
changing from one system to the other, but the results as they stood in
Edmund's day are clear enough, and may be inferred from the lists of
magnates who are found attesting his numerous charters. If these be
analysed, it is seen that, apart from "jarls” with Danish names, who
still ruled districts in the Five Boroughs and beyond the Humber, the
total number of dukes attesting at one time is never more than eight, and
these can be distributed with moderate certainty over Southern England
in the proportion of three to the counties south of the Thames and five
to the Midlands and East Angliał. This change, moreover, carried with
it another. The new type of dukes could not always be present to preside
in the shire-moots. Hence there arose the need for local officials of a
lower grade intermediate between the port-reeves and the dukes, a class
who seem to be referred to for the first time in the laws of Aethelstan
and who ultimately came to be entitled “ scirgerefan” or shire-reeves'.
1 Chadwick, Studies in Anglo-Saxon Institutions, p. 188.
? The origin of the sheriffs is by no means clear. The term “scirgerefa” is
not found in the laws of any of the Anglo-Saxon kings.
a
C. MED, H, VOL. JT
CH. XIV
24


## p. 370 (#416) ############################################

370 Reign of Eadred. Final submission of the North
• This gradual evolution, it need hardly be pointed out, was not altogether
in the best interests of the monarchy; for the new dukes had to be given
very considerable estates to support their authority, and this meant that
the Crown was unable to retain in its own hands sufficient of the newly-
won territories to guarantee itself the same territorial superiority over
the dukes, as it had formerly possessed in Wessex. Statistics of course
cannot be produced to shew the precise distribution of territorial influence,
but all indications lead to the conclusion that, everywhere north of the
Thames, the Crown had to content itself with a comparatively weak posi-
tion, especially in East and Middle Anglia, which from 930 onwards were
placed in the hands of an aetheling enjoying such a regal endowment that
he came to be familiarly known as Aethelstan Half-king.
Responsibility for this development in the direction of feudalism
should probably be laid on Aethelstan's shoulders rather than on
Edmund's; for Edmund had little opportunity of reconsidering his
brother's policy, his career being cut short by assassination when he was
still under twenty-five. He left two sons, Eadwig and Edgar, but as these
were mere children, the crown was passed on to their uncle Eadred, the
youngest son of Edward the Elder. This prince was also short-lived,
but his reign of nine years (946–955) remains a landmark, because it
witnessed the last attempt made by the men north of the Humber to
re-assert their lost independence. In this rising the Danes were led at
first by Anlaf Cuaran, their former king, and finally by a viking called
Eric, probably Eric Blood-axe, son of Harold Fairhair the unifier of
Norway. They also had the support of Archbishop Wulfstan, Edmund's
shifty opponent, whom the West Saxon house had vainly tried to bind to
their cause by a grant of Amounderness (central Lancashire). The
chief incidents of the struggle are reported to have been the deposition
and imprisonment of Wulfstan, the burning of Ripon and sundry en-
counters near Tanshelf, now better known as Pontefract, to secure the
ford over the river Aire. In the end however Eric abandoned the
struggle, and in 954 Eadred took final possession of Yorkshire and com-
mitted it to Oswulf, the high reeve of Bamborough, to hold as a “jarl-
dom. ” Thus was completed the long process of welding England into
.
a single kingdom with continuous territories stretching from the Forth
to the English Channel.


## p. 371 (#417) ############################################

371
CHAPTER XV.
ENGLAND FROM A. D. 954 TO THE
DEATH OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
a
The task which Alfred's descendants had undertaken of creating an
English nation was by no means accomplished in 954. The conquest of
the Yorkshire Danes by Eadred and the final expulsion of Eric in that
year completed the territorial development of the kingdom, but there
still remained the harder tasks of creating a national feeling and a
common law; and even a hundred years later only slight progress can
be discerned in either of these important matters. For the moment
however the inhabitants of England might fairly congratulate them-
selves on what had been achieved by the last two generations, and the
prospects for the future seemed bright enough. War and the danger of
war were over at least for a time; the country had become consolidated as
never before, and the only trouble, which seemed at all threatening, was
a certain want of robustness, which was beginning to manifest itself in
the royal house. Of this weakness Eadred, despite his energy, was an
unmistakeable example. By all accounts he must have been, even from
boyhood, a chronic invalid, and his health grew worse as he grew older.
It was but little of a surprise then to his subjects that he lived to be only
thirty-one, dying at Frome in Somerset somewhat suddenly in 955 while
still unmarried.
Eadred's premature death opened the succession to his nephew
Eadwig, the son of Edmund, who had been passed over in 946 as too
young to rule, and even now was little more than fifteen. From the
very first this youth seems to have had an aversion to most of the
advisers, who had surrounded his father and uncle, and to have been
under the control of a party among the nobles of Wessex who resented
the influence which had been exercised at court by Dunstan, the Abbot
of Glastonbury, and Eadgifu the young king's grandmother. The
result was that quarrels broke out even at the king's coronation, and
within a year Dunstan was banished from England and driven to take
refuge at Ghent in the abbey of Blandinium. The treatment meted
out to Dunstan, together with an unwise marriage made by the king,
led to a revolt breaking out in 957, apparently organised by the
CH. XV.
24-2


## p. 372 (#418) ############################################

372
Death of Eadwig. Accession of Edgar
a
leading men of the Midlands. These rebels at once recalled Dunstan,
and, supported by Aethelstan Half-king, the great duke of East Anglia,
set up Edgar, Eadwig's younger brother, as a rival king. For a time it
а
seemed as if the unity of England was once more in jeopardy. Eadwig
retained the support of Oda, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and still
controlled Wessex ; but the boy Edgar was recognised as king north of
the Thames, and in 958 found himself strong enough to secure the
bishopric of Worcester for Dunstan, and a little later the bishopric of
London as well. Most fortunately, however, open war was avoided, and
in 959 Eadwig died, whereupon Oda abandoned his hostility and Edgar,
who was now sixteen, succeeded to the undivided sovereignty.
Edgar's reign, though a period of almost profound peace and
therefore dull from the narrative point of view, forms a notable epoch.
It lasted some sixteen years (959–975), and is memorable not only for a
considerable body of secular legislation but as a period, during which
churchmen held the reins of power, and used their influence over the king
and the leading nobles to promote a much needed ecclesiastical reform.
This reform, whether they deliberately designed it or not, so increased
the prestige and popularity of their order that, by the end of the reign,
the political power and landed endowments of the English Church were
not far from doubled. Ever since the coming of the vikings, notwith-
standing Alfred's remarkable efforts to provide a remedy, the English
clergy, both the regulars and the seculars, had remained sunk in a
deplorable condition of ignorance and lack of discipline. Whatever
statesmanship had manifested itself under Alfred's successors, had come
almost wholly from the warrior and princely classes. In spite of all their
energy in securing the payment of tithes and church dues, few of the
bishops or parish clergy had followed high ideals or set any worthy
standard before their flocks. Lax conditions prevailed also among the
regular clergy. Many monasteries had lost their endowments by lay en-
croachments, and stood practically empty and ruined, while the majority
of the foundations which had survived were no longer tenanted by monks
living in strict isolation from the world, but by colleges of clerks' living
under customs which were of varying strictness, but all involving very
little of the monk's rigorous discipline. In monasteries, such as these,
the obligations of celibacy, poverty, and the common life prescribed by
the Rule of St Benedict were by no means insisted on; and the clerks who
enjoyed the endowments were as often as not married men living with
their families in their own houses and dispensing hospitality to their friends
with considerable display and luxury. No doubt there were some devout
1 The English do not seem as yet to have adopted the continental term "cano-
nicus” to distinguish clerks living in communities from the ordinary clergy. Some
term however was clearly needed, and “canon” gradually became current. A clause
in Aethelred's Laws for example, issued c. 1008, prescribes specially for “canonicas. ”
Liebermann's Gesetze, p. 238.


## p. 373 (#419) ############################################

Monastic Reform. Oda and Aelfheah
373
men among them; but in general their zeal in attending services in their
minster churches left much to be desired, and it was difficult to get them
even to reside continuously in the neighbourhood of their duties, as they
found hunting and travelling about far more to their taste than the
solemn chanting of the "canonical hours” for the public weal some six
to nine times a day.
Before Edmund's reign few protests had been raised in England over
the practical disappearance of strict monasticism. St Oswald's Abbey at
Gloucester, founded by Duke Aethelred and the Lady Aethelfleda in 909,
the New Minster at Winchester, founded by Edward the Elder as Alfred's
memorial, and Milton Abbey in Dorset, founded by Aethelstan, had all
been organised as a matter of course as colleges of clerks; while Edmund
himself in 944 made a home at Bath for fugitive clerks from Flanders
who had been expelled from St Bertin's Abbey at St Omer for refusing
to accept reforms. Within the English Church the first men to realise
that reform was desirable seem to have been the Danish Archbishop
Oda and Aelfheah, who occupied the see of Winchester from 934 to 951.
Both these churchmen had relations with the Continent and through
them became imbued with the stricter ideas as to clerical and monastic
life, which in Aethelstan's time had taken hold of Western Frankland.
These ideas in the first instance had emanated either from the famous
abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, whence they had spread to Fleury (St Benoît-
sur-Loire), regarded in the tenth century as the leading monastery in
Neustria, or from Brogne near Namur, whence came St Gerard, who
between 939 and 944 reformed the monasteries of Flanders. Several
incidents in Oda's career shew that he favoured the new ideas, and wished
to spread them in England”. In 942 for instance, when appointed arch-
bishop, he decided that he ought himself to become a monk, and sent
to Fleury to obtain the monastic habit. Nor was it long before he issued
new constitutions for his province, and among them was one insisting that
all ordained persons, whether men or women, should observe the rule of
chastity. Again a few years later, when his nephew Oswald decided to
become a monk, Oda advised him to go and study at Fleury, as the best
house in which to prepare himself for his vocation. Bishop Aelfheah's pre-
ference for strict monasticism can be traced back still earlier, for we find
him already in Aethelstan's reign persuading Dunstan, who was his
kinsman, to abandon the idea of marriage and devote himself to a life of
asceticism and study. The result was that Dunstan, on his appointment to
be abbot of Glastonbury by Edmund, had at once set zealously to work to
convert the clerks, over whom he was called to rule, into a more disciplined
society by making them share a common dormitory and refectory and
1 The parts played by the chief leaders of the monastic reform in England have
been much debated. The views here presented adopt in the main the conclusions
reached by Dr J. Armitage Robinson in his two valuable papers, entitled The
Saxon Bishops of Wells and St Oswald and the Church of Worcester.
CH. XV.


## p. 374 (#420) ############################################

374
Dunstan, Aethelwold and Oswald as Reformers
by refusing to admit any more married men to the community. Glaston-
bury thus led the way in reform in England, and became a school of
piety and learning in which many men were trained who were to make
their mark in the future. The most remarkable of these was Aethel-
wold, a native of Winchester. He, like Dunstan, had come as a youth
under the influence of Bishop Aelfheah. At Glastonbury he rose to be
“dean” and Dunstan's right-hand man, and about 950 by the influence of
Eadgifu, the queen mother, he was selected by Eadred to take charge of
Abingdon in Berkshire, one of Ine's foundations, which had become
almost desolate. Very enthusiastic by nature, Aethelwold had hardly
been satisfied with the amount of discipline enforced at Glastonbury.
His first act accordingly, on reaching Abingdon, was to dispatch his
friend Osgar, another of Dunstan's pupils, to Fleury, so that he might
be furnished with first-hand knowledge of what was being done on the
Continent, and then make his abbey a model for England. Backed
by Eadred's patronage Abingdon soon grew to be a large and well
endowed foundation, observing the rule of St Benedict in its most
stringent form. Nor was its progress hindered under Eadwig, who went on
showering benefactions on it notwithstanding Aethelwold's connexion with
Dunstan and the curtailment of his own resources by the revolt of Mercia.
The acceptance of Edgar by the West Saxons gave the advocates of
reform a much freer hand, as the young king from the first relied on
Dunstan as his principal adviser. In 960 he promoted him to the see of
Canterbury, and shortly afterwards proclaimed himself definitely one of
the reforming party by appointing Oswald, Oda's nephew, to the see of
Worcester and Aethelwold to that of Winchester. Though all three
prelates were equally pledged to reform, they set about it in different
ways. Dunstan, though he had a hand in the reform of Westminster
and Malmesbury and perhaps of Bath, thought most of raising the tone
of the laity and the parish priests, and consequently spent much of
his energy in warring against drunkenness and immorality. Aethelwold
on the other hand, holding that the state of the monasteries was the most
crying evil, did little for the laity, and pressed on with a ruthless crusade
throughout Wessex, beginning with Chertsey and the two minsters at
Winchester, by which he hoped to set monks in the shoes of the collegiate
clergy. He seems to have offered the clerks, whether married or not, only
two alternatives, either complete acceptance of a most stringent monastic
vow or instant expulsion, and at the old Minster, when argument proved
of no avail, he actually resorted to violence, calling in lay assistance to
expropriate his opponents from their property. In the Severn valley,
the course pursued by Oswald was more tactful. Relying on example, he
left the clerks of Worcester and Gloucester undisturbed, and merely
established a small house for monks near Bristol at Westbury-on-Trym.
Meanwhile the king started a movement in the Danelaw to refound some
of the great abbeys which had been destroyed in the Danish wars and
a


## p. 375 (#421) ############################################

Oswald's Land Loans. Drift towards Feudalism 375
which still lay in ruins. The chief of these were Ely, Medeshamstede
and Thorney. Thanks to Aethelwold, these were all re-established and
filled with monks, Medeshamstede taking the name of Peterborough. A
new model abbey also arose at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire about 969.
This was the joint work of Bishop Oswald and Duke Aethelwin of East
Anglia, a son of Aethelstan Half-king; and it was from Ramsey a few
years later that Oswald brought monks first to Winchcombe and ulti-
mately to his cathedral church at Worcester, establishing them in his
“familia” side by side with the clerks, whose life interests he respected.
Finally, to set the seal on these activities, Aethelwold at Edgar's request
translated the Rule of St Benedict into English for the benefit of those
who were weak in Latin. He also, with the object of introducing uni-
formity of practice into the daily life of the monasteries, composed a new
rule for English monks, known as the “Regularis Concordia Anglicae
Nationis,” founded partly on the custom of Fleury and Ghent and partly
on the “Capitula” issued in 817 by Benedict of Aniane.
Another side of the ecclesiastical awakening which characterised
Edgar's reign is seen in the care with which the reforming prelates set
about developing and managing the estates which the laity, encouraged
by the king, on all sides pressed upon them. The best evidence of this
is found at Worcester, where a number of records still survive shewing
how Bishop Oswald personally superintended the administration of the
demesnes belonging to his church. Among them are some seventy deeds
in which the bishop is seen granting out portions of the episcopal lands
to persons whom he describes as his thegns, knights or milites on condition
of faithful service, and side by side with these is preserved a letter,
addressed by the bishop to King Edgar, in which he reports in explicit
terms exactly what the nature of the bargain was and what were the services
which the tenants were to render for their holdings. For the most part
these leases, or “land-loans” as they are called, were for the period of three
lives, that is to say they were roughly tantamount to ninety-nine year
leases, the first tenant having the right to name two successors, after
which the land was to revert to the church ; but in the meantime the
tenants were to pay yearly church-scots, at the rate of a horse-load of
corn for each hide of land which they held, to pay toll to the bishop
when they bought or sold, to render pannage for their pigs when feeding
in the bishop's woods and help their lord in his hunting, to ride on the
lord's errands and fulfil all the duties of a knight or, as the letter
expresses it, fulfil the “lex equitandi quae ad equites pertinet. ” What
makes these curious records particularly interesting is the clear impli-
cation, which they convey, that already the estates of the great English
ecclesiastics were taking very much the shape of the baronies of a later
day, and that we can discern in these “knights,” though they cannot yet
be called military tenants, a class who held by a tenure which was almost
feudal, and which would easily become “tenure in chivalry” as soon as
CH. XV.


## p. 376 (#422) ############################################

376
Edgar's administrative measures
the tactics of war changed and the time-honoured method of fighting on
foot was replaced by reliance on heavy cavalry. These documents in fact
shew us how in Edgar's day, side by side with the religious reform, there
developed a further drift towards feudalism, an effect of the steady
accumulation of land into greater and greater estates. They shew also
how prominent a part in this economic evolution may be assigned to the
churchmen, for though no other records of estate management have
survived, as detailed as those of Worcester, there are plenty of indications
that all the ecclesiastical corporations were acting in these matters more
or less on uniform lines.
Though the social and religious movements are clearly the most
important things that happened in Edgar's reign, it must not be thought
that the king remained all his life a mere tool in the hands of the
ecclesiastics and had no policy of his own. Like most of his immediate
predecessors, he evidently, on coming to manhood, had closely at heart the
due maintenance of order in all parts of his realm, and kept constantly
amending and sharpening the machinery for enforcing the peace and
dispensing justice. His laws no doubt shew the influence of Dunstan in
the minuteness with which they deal with tithe and the observance of
fasts and festivals, but they are also remarkable for their precise rules as
to buying and selling and the pursuit of thieves, as to the maintenance
of the suretyship system of frithborhs and as to the periods when the
various courts were to be held. Specially famous is his ordinance as to
the local courts, which contains the first clear proof of a regular division
of the shires for judicial purposes into moderate sized units called
"hundreds," each with its own tribunal sitting every four weeks. A
further step of somewhat doubtful wisdom, as it tended to undermine
the royal authority, was to place some of the hundreds, so far as the
administration of justice was concerned, under the control of the re-
formed monasteries. Considerable districts thereby acquired the status
of ecclesiastical franchises, in which the local courts were no longer held
in the king's name, and in which the profits of justice went into the
coffers of some minster church and not into the king's treasury. The
first monastic houses to acquire these franchises, or "sokes” as they were
termed in the vernacular (from sócne, the Anglo-Saxon term for juris-
diction), were Peterborough and Ely; and there seems no reason to
doubt the local traditions, which tell us that they obtained them from
Edgar on their first foundation at the instance of Bishop Aethelwold.
No formal Latin charters from the king have come down to us attesting
these grants, but in either case there are some curious Anglo-Saxon
records? still existing which more or less explain their nature. From
these we can see that Peterborough obtained judicial control over a
block of eight hundreds in Northamptonshire, having Oundle as their
1 For Peterborough cf. Birch, Cart. Sax. No. 1130 and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E,
963. For Ely cf. Birch, Cart. Sax. No. 1267.


## p. 377 (#423) ############################################

Rise of ecclesiastical franchises
377
chief town, while Ely obtained similar control not only over the two
hundreds lying round the monastery, which made up the Isle of Ely,
but also over a district of five hundreds in East Suffolk, known as
“Wichlawa,” having Woodbridge on the Deben as its centre and also
comprising Sudbourne with the port of Orford, an estate which Edgar
had granted to Aethelwold as a reward for translating the Rule of
St Benedict into English. In the "sokes” thus created the essential
novelty was not merely the transfer of the king's rights to the monks,
but the fact that by the transfer great numbers of men, both small and
great, who were in no way the tenants of the monks or under their
patronage by “commendation,” nevertheless came thus to be subjected to
them for police and judicial purposes, and had, if charged with any
crime, to appear before officials appointed by them, and became liable
to pay to the monks fines whenever they were unfortunate enough to be
convicted. In other words the creation of the sokes also created a new
kind of lordship, so that the freemen of these districts for the future all had,
as it were, three lords over them; first their immediate personal lord, to
whom they were tied by commendation; secondly the lord of the hundred,
to whom they owed" soke"; and thirdly the king or supreme lord,
to whom they owed military service, and to whom they could still appeal
as a last resort in judicial matters if the lord of the hundred persistently
refused to do them adequate justice.
Here we see no small step taken, at the instance of the ecclesiastics,
in the direction of feudalism, one too which was certain to be regarded
by the lay magnates as a precedent justifying them in seeking similar
franchises for themselves. As yet, however, we have no reason to suppose
that Edgar had favoured any laymen in this way; and the only other
notable franchise which we can ascribe to him is one which was set up
in Worcestershire in favour of Oswald, but which differed from those
granted to Aethelwold's foundations in extending only to estates which
were already in the bishop's ownership, and to men who were under his
lordship as tenants of the see of Worcester. Here again we can produce
no genuine Latin charter in witness of Edgar's grant; but none the less
we may accept as credible the traditions enshrined in the celebrated but
suspect landbook known as Altitonantis, and vouched for in the main by
the account of Worcestershire given in the Domesday Survey? These
authorities, if read together, tell us that Oswald was given a seignorial
jurisdiction over about a third of the lands of his see, comprising 300 hides
lying scattered in various parts in the valleys of the Severn and the Avon,
and that he was further permitted to organise this special area into three
new hundreds, which together came to be known as the triple hundred of
“Oswaldeslau. ” The creation of this soke, though in extent of juris-
diction a much narrower one than those given to Peterborough and Ely,
1 Cf. Birch, Cart. Sax. No. 1135; Domesday Book, 1. 172 b. , and Maitland, Domes-
day Book und Beyond, pp. 267–269.
CH, XV.


## p. 378 (#424) ############################################

378
Reign of Edward the Martyr
had a very disturbing effect on the local organisation of Worcestershire;
for the new hundreds had little geographical coherence and were in every
case merely artificial aggregates of land, pieces of them lying inter-
spersed among estates belonging to other lords, and pieces of them being
even quite outside the proper bounds of the county and forming detached
islands in Gloucestershire. The net result, therefore, was that the hundreds
of Worcestershire became a sort of patchwork, and the respective juris-
dictions of the king and the bishop remained ever afterwards most
awkwardly intermixed. These administrative and legal changes, as well
as the general character of his dooms, plainly shew that Edgar was
an active ruler, and there can be little doubt that he deserves to
share with Dunstan the credit for the peacefulness and increase of
civilisation, which marked his reign and made such an impression
on his contemporaries. We cannot, however, altogether commend his
policy in the matter of the sokes which he created in favour of
Aethelwold and Oswald; for he thereby initiated a process which could
not fail in the long run to diminish the effectiveness of the central
government.
Edgar died in 975, prematurely like so many of his race, being not yet
thirty-three, and was buried by Dunstan at Glastonbury, He was twice
married and left two sons, Edward a boy of thirteen born of his first wife,
and Aethelred aged seven, the child of his second wife Aelfthryth'. This
Devonshire lady, the sister of the founder of Tavistock Abbey, was filled
with ambition for her family, and would not acquiesce in the kingdom
passing whole to her stepson, and helped by a party among the Mercian
nobility who still cherished a resentment for the hard treatment
that had been meted out to the clerks, attempted to obtain recognition
for Aethelred. Dunstan, however, with the help of Oswald, who had
become Archbishop of York in 971, though still retaining the see of
Worcester, supported Edward and caused him to be elected by a witan
and crowned at Kingston in Surrey. If the unity of England was be
maintained, this settlement was obviously a wise one, but it only drove
the discontented party into more violent action, led by Aelfhere, the
duke who had been placed in Edgar's day in control of the Severn valley.
Aelfhere probably was opposed to Dunstan's continued control of the
king, but his particular grievances seem to have been against Oswald,
who had handed over Winchcombe Abbey to Germanus, a monk from
Ramsey, and had also tried to displace the clerks from Pershore, a foun-
dation connected with Aelfhere's house. High-born canons, friends and
kinsmen of Aelfhere, had thereby lost their incomes and were clamouring
for restitution. In judging this movement no reliance can be placed on
the accounts of it which have survived, for they originate without
exception from the side of the monks and depict all sympathisers with
1 Aelfthryth had been previously married to the eldest son of Aethelstan Half-king.
Edgar probably improved his territorial position in East Anglia by marrying her.


## p. 379 (#425) ############################################

Minority of Aethelred the Unready
379
the clerks as the blackest scoundrels. The only point that stands out
clearly is that Aelfhere and his friends were strong enough to drive
out the monks from Evesham and replace their rivals in several of the
Worcestershire and Gloucestershire foundations. Meantime a somewhat
similar movement had developed in the eastern Midlands in connexion
with the lands that had been acquired by Ramsey, Ely and Peterborough.
It was alleged that many of them had been taken unjustly from their
former owners. Flushed by his successes in the west, Aelfhere came
over to support the malcontents, but the fenland abbeys had powerful
defenders in Aethelwin, who had founded Ramsey, and in Brihtnoth, the
duke of the East Saxons, who had been a liberal benefactor to Ely.
These nobles raised armed forces to defend the estates of the monasteries,
and eventually Aelfhere and his partisans had to retire discomfited,
Aethelwin being ever afterwards styled among the monks in gratitude
for his services “the Friend of God. ” These disputes exhibit Dunstan
as no longer equal to the task of maintaining order and were followed
almost immediately by his downfall from power. This was brought
about in 978 by the murder of the young Edward, a deed done in cold
blood at Corfe in Dorset, apparently at the instigation of the ambitious
Aelfthryth. If Dunstan had still retained his earlier vigour, he would
have promptly taken steps to punish the conspirators ; but the murder
went unavenged, and Aethelred, though only ten years old, commenced
unchallenged a reign which was fated to last for thirty-seven years (978–
1016) and bring England untold disasters.
Aethelred's minority was necessarily a long one, but so far as we
know without any striking incidents. The leaders of Edgar's time were
all ageing and one by one passing into the background. Dunstan lived till
988, but withdrew from court in 980 and spent the rest of his days in
dignified retirement, busied with ecclesiastical duties,
The rivalry
between the monks and clerks cooled down with the deaths of
Bishop Aethelwold and Duke Aelfhere some four years later, nor did
Oswald or Aethelwin again play parts of importance, although they
survived till 992. The ecclesiastical fight ended in a drawn battle, for the
canons retained possession of Canterbury and York, of London, Dor-
chester and Lichfield, of Bury St Edmunds, St Albans and Beverley,
and even in Wessex kept some important churches such as Wells and
Chichester. As to the king we hear that he was involved in a dispute
with Aelfhere's heir, but we do not even know who took charge of his
education. His minority in fact would be almost a blank, were it not for
some entries in the Chronicle which speak of renewed viking incursions.
These began in 980, when raiders made descents on Chester, Thanet and
Southampton. The first batch no doubt came from Ireland or Man, the
others more probably from Scandinavia ; but no one thought them
dangerous, even though they were followed by further raids in 982 on
Devon and Cornwall. In reality they were the opening of another
CH. XV.


## p. 380 (#426) ############################################

380
Renewal of Scandinavian Invasions
period of trial for England, and foreshadowed Danish and Norwegian
attacks not less dangerous to the security and freedom of Englishmen
than those captained by Ingwar and Guthrum in the ninth century.
The position of England about the year 990, when Aethelred attained
his majority, might seem at first sight less vulnerable than in Alfred's
day. The land was no longer split into rival kingdoms; it had fortresses
and ships and the confidence born of former victories. But this impression
of unity and strength is misleading. In reality, the West Saxon dynasty
had not succeeded in assimilating its conquests further north thạn the
river Welland. In the “Five Boroughs" and in Yorkshire, and still more
beyond the Tees, it was from every point of view extremely weak. There
is no evidence for example that Edgar, for all his popularity, ever
shewed his face in these parts, or that he had estates there bringing in
any appreciable revenue, or that he appointed any reeves. Jarls of Danish
descent ruled, quite uncontrolled, the half-Danish population in accord-
ance with Danish laws and customs, and only gave their allegiance to the
king because they were left alone. Even the Church had failed to
reassert itself among the “holds” and “socmen. " The sees of York,
Lincoln and Leicester were still, as it were, only appendages of Worcester
and Dorchester, rarely visited by their bishops, badly endowed and
honeycombed with heathen practices only thinly veiled. Nor beyond
the Welland had any attempt been made to found any monasteries of the
reformed pattern. Little reliance then could be placed on the patriotism
of these regions, for should Danish invaders once more get a foothold in
the country, the chief land-owners would have much in common with the
enemy, and might easily be enticed into joining them.
At the same time it must be remembered that the Scandinavian lands
had made in the last century even greater strides towards consolidation
than England. Norway under Harold Fairhair (850-933) and his
descendants had ceased to be a mere collection of warring chieftaincies,
while Denmark under Harold Bluetooth (950-986) had grown into a
fairly compact state, and imposed its sway on its neighbours. As stated
in the runic inscription on the Jellinge Stone, the famous monument in
Jutland which Harold erected in honour of his parents, Gorm and
Thyra, he had “won all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes
Christians. " He had made the “Wick" and the south of Norway a com-
ponent part of his realm; he had planted Danish outposts in Pomerania
and Prussia, he had founded the great stronghold of Jómsborg in Wendland,
and he had forced Hákon the Bad to hold northern Norway and the
Throndlaw as his vassal. More than this, by his successes he had
awakened again the old viking spirit, and set the dragon ships as of old
sailing the seas in search of adventure. His closing years were not so
successful as his prime. In 975 Hákon had revolted, and in 986 the
old king was himself slain fighting against his son Svein, who had thrown
off Christianity. His death, however, did not make the Danish power


## p. 381 (#427) ############################################

Olaf Tryggvason. The Massacre of St Brice's Day 381
less formidable. The undutiful Svein, Svein Forkbeard, as he was
nicknamed, was as able as his father, and bent on reconquering Norway,
or failing that extending his realm elsewhere. He had sailed all the seas
as a viking and already had his eye on England. There were plenty of
reasons then about 990 why Englishmen, had they been well informed
about the outside world, should have had forebodings as to the future,
and be wondering what manner of leader they had in the young
Aethelred.
The first raids, sufficiently serious to test Aethelred's capacity, began
in 991, when Olaf Tryggvason, a famous Norwegian exile, who had claims
on the throne of Norway, burned Ipswich and defeated and slew Brihtnoth,
the duke of the East Saxons, at Maldon. Instead of hastening with all
speed to avenge this disaster, Aethelred could think of no better counsel
than to bribe the invaders to depart by an offer of £10,000. This
was done with the advice of Sigeric, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
other magnates, and precedents could be found for it in Alfred's reign.
None the less it was a most unwise expedient, as it gave the raiders the
impression that the king was a weakling and that Englishmen were afraid
of fighting. Two years later Olaf went harrying along the coasts of
Northumberland and Lindsey, and in 994 was joined by Svein, who for
the moment had been driven from Denmark by Eric, the King of Sweden.
Their design was to pillage London. The citizens, however, put up such
a stout defence that the allied princes abandoned the enterprise and
betook themselves to Sussex and Hampshire. There they obtained
horses and ravaged far and wide. Again Aethelred and the witan
thought only of buying a respite, this time with £16,000 and an offer to
supply provisions. Having accepted these terms, Olaf came to Andover
on a visit to Aethelred in order to be baptised a Christian, and soon
afterwards sailed away to claim the throne of Norway. Successful in
this adventure, he never afterwards had leisure to trouble England.
Not so King Svein. He too sailed away to deal with the Swedes, and for
some years was busied in securing his power in Denmark ; but he still
kept England in mind, and was only biding his opportunity.
Meantime lesser men continued to make yearly attacks on the coasts
of Wessex, and always with such success owing to the quarrels and
incompetence of the English leaders that at last Aethelred in despair
determined to take some of the vikings into his pay to keep off the
remainder. The chief of these was Pallig, a high-born Danish jarl, who
had married Svein's sister, Gunnhild. The immediate result, it would
seem, was satisfactory, for we hear in the year 1000 of an expedition
being led by Aethelred against the Norsemen of Cumberland and the
Isle of Man, who had for years been a menace to Yorkshire and the land
betwixt the Mersey and the Ribble. The experiment nevertheless was a
very risky one, and a year later proved quite ineffective to stop a fresh
force of vikings landing in Devon, which ultimately was only bought
CH. XV.


## p. 382 (#428) ############################################

382
Svein of Denmark. Thorkil the Tall
off with a promise of £24,000 after a triumphant march from Teignton
and Exmouth through Somerset and Wiltshire to Southampton Water.
Instead of fighting this force Pallig actually joined it with all the ships
he could lay hold of, a piece of treachery which enraged Aethelred to
such a degree that he lost control of himself and planned a general
massacre of the Danes in his service and even of their families. This
utterly barbarous and unwise piece of retaliation was carried out on St
Brice's day 1002 to the shame of all chivalrous Englishmen, and among
the victims was not only Pallig and his son but his wife Gunnhild,
Svein's sister, whom Aethelred was holding as a hostage.
The tragedy of Gunnhild's death marks the turning point in
Aethelred's reign; for it naturally bred in Svein a desire for vengeance
which was only to be satisfied after ten long years of warfare ending in
the conquest of England. Of this struggle the Chronicle gives a minute
account, but often in such hysterical tones that it is difficult to make
out what really happened. Nor can space be given here to unravel its
meaning. The bare outlines however are somewhat as follows. In 1003
Svein burnt Exeter, Wilton and Salisbury. In 1004 he sacked Norwich
and Thetford, and had some hard tussles with Ulfkytel, the chief Danish
jarl in East Anglia. In 1006 he ravaged East Kent, and next spring
.
after wintering in the Isle of Wight plundered right and left through
Hampshire and Berkshire. Aethelred meantime had apparently done
nothing but hide in Shropshire in the company of a west-country
magnate, one Eadric, nicknamed “Streona” or “the Grasper,” an evil
councillor of whom the Chronicle can hardly speak with patience. As
ever Aethelred's one idea was to offer the enemy a ransom.
He accord
ingly patched up a truce, and persuaded Svein to take his forces back to
Denmark in return for a tribute of £36,000. At the same time he
placed Eadric in possession of the great estates formerly possessed by
Aelfhere in the Severn valley, and made him duke of Western Mercia.
After this there seems to have been a lull for two years, in which some
efforts were made to organise a large naval force for the defence of the
country by requiring ships to be furnished from every 300 hides of land;
but when this feet assembled at Sandwich in 1009, the quarrels between
its leaders, Brihtric, a brother of Eadric, and Wulfnoth the Child, a
powerful Sussex magnate, completely wrecked its utility. In 1010 the
Danish fleets were back again, this time led not by Svein in person but by
one of his great men, Thorkil the Tall, a famous jarl from Jómsborg. He
attacked Ulfkytel, and having defeated him at Ringmere near Thetford
harried all the south-east Midlands, penetrating westwards as far as
Oxfordshire, and burning in turn Cambridge, Bedford and Northampton.
These inland districts, which had not before suffered from the raiders,
seem to have been utterly dazed. No leaders could be found to captain
the local levies and no shire would help another. The inhabitants
simply clamoured for peace on any terms, and so in 1011 a witan


## p. 383 (#429) ############################################

Flight of Aethelred. Death of Svein
383
advised Aethelred to offer a still larger ransom, this time no less than
£48,000. It proved difficult, however, to raise so great a tribute. The
disappointed vikings therefore went on ravaging, and a little later
betook themselves to Kent, where they sacked Canterbury, owing to
treachery on the part of the abbot of St Augustine's, and captured the
Archbishop, Aelfheah (Alphege). For some months they held the primate
to ransom, only to murder him in a drunken riot at Greenwich early in
1012. When at last the tribute was got together, the Danish forces
broke up and some went back to Denmark; but Thorkil himself with
a fleet of forty-five ships remained in England and took service with
Aethelred. The plan of setting a thief to catch a thief was evidently to
be tried again; but it met with no more success than in the case of
Pallig, for the news, that Thorkil was obtaining power in England,
immediately brought his overlord Svein upon the scene, bent upon con-
quering the whole country and outshining his lieutenant.
The plan of attack in 1013 was quite different to the methods hitherto
adopted. Instead of raiding Wessex or East Anglia, Svein directed his
fleet to the Humber, evidently counting on a friendly reception from the
men of the Danelaw. Nor was he disappointed. As soon as he landed
with his son Knut at Gainsborough on the Trent, Uhtred, a son of
Waltheof of Bamborough, who had distinguished himself against the Scots
and become jarl of the Yorkshire Danes, offered him his allegiance, and
shortly afterwards all the men of the Five Boroughs submitted and gave him
hostages
. A good base being thus secured, where he could leave his ships
in his son's guardianship, he next marched through Leicestershire across
the Watling Street into Eadric's dukedom and so south to Oxford and
Winchester. Both these boroughs submitted as soon as he appeared,
and it was not till he turned eastwards to London, where Aethelred lay
with Thorkil, that we hear of any resistance. There was a fight, it would
seem, for the possession of London Bridge in which Svein's men were
unsuccessful. Checked for the moment in the east, and uncertain how best
to deal with Thorkil, Svein next proceeded to Bath to secure control of
Western Wessex. A hundred and forty years before this district had been
the scene of Alfred's heroic defence, but its old spirit had long departed.
In a few days it submitted, after which we are told “all the people held
Svein for full king. " These sweeping desertions made Aethelred realise
that England as a whole was resolved not to fight for him, and that
Thorkil's forces were hardly likely for long to save him from Svein's
vengeance. He accordingly took ship and sought a refuge in Normandy
at the court of Duke Richard the Good, the brother of his second wife
Emma, whom he had married eleven years before on the very eve of the
fateful massacre of 1002.
Svein's triumph, complete as it seemed, was destined to be only
momentary. He retired to his base on the Trent to keep the Yule-tide
feast with his son Knut, and had the satisfaction of receiving hostages
CH. XV.


## p. 384 (#430) ############################################

384
Restoration of Aethelred. Invasion of Knut
from the Londoners, but died suddenly in February 1014, before he could
be crowned King of England. His death threw the whole Scandinavian
world into confusion. The fleet at Gainsborough chose the youthful Knut,
though only eighteen, to be king; but he was not Svein's eldest son, and
Denmark passed to his brother Harold, while the Norwegians favoured
the claims of Olaf the Stout, a cousin of Olaf Tryggvason's, who had been
fighting in England with Thorkil, to rule those parts of Norway which
had acknowledged Svein's supremacy. In these circumstances it is not
surprising to hear that Aethelred was called back to England, and that
the jarls who stood round Knut advised a return of the fleet to Scan-
dinavia to enable each man to look after his home interests. Knut there-
fore sailed away from the Humber, and for a year was occupied in Denmark
making terms with his brother.
Meantime a new force arose in England in Edmund, Aethelred's eldest
son by his first marriage. Aethelred on his return gave his confidence
again to Eadric, and on his advice took steps to punish the men of the Five
Boroughs for offering their allegiance to Svein. In pursuit of this object he
put to death Sigeferth and Morkere, two of the leading magnates north of
the Welland, and added their estates to Eadric's territories. . This was just
one of those outrages which gained Aethelred the title of the “Redeless”
or the “Badly counselled. ” All additions to the Grasper's power were
bitterly resented, and by none more than by Edmund, the heir to the
throne. To check Eadric became the fixed purpose of the young prince.
He accordingly seized and married Sigeferth's widow, and then marched
to the Five Boroughs as the avenger of the lady's wrongs and made him-
self master of all the lands which Eadric had coveted. This stroke was so
popular in the Danelaw, that Edmund at once became a power in the land,
but only at the cost of earning the undying hatred of Eadric. What this
would entail was seen a few months later when Knut once more appeared
in the Channel with a large fleet partly furnished by his brother. This
picked force, “which contained neither thrall nor freedman," landed at
Wareham without opposition from Aethelred, who was lying ill near
Portsmouth, and ravaged at will through Dorset and Somerset. To meet
it Edmund and Eadric both gathered forces; but when they came face to
face with the enemy in Wiltshire, Eadric promptly went over to Knut.
Edmund therefore had to retire over the Thames without fighting, and
the whole of Wessex submitted. In the spring of 1016 much the same
happened in Mercia. Knut and Eadric came leagued together into
Warwickshire, and Edmund in despair was forced to abandon the defence
of Middle Anglia. The most he could do was to appeal for assistance to
Uhtred, who had his own grievances against Eadric. This caused a
momentary diversion; for Uhtred marched through Cheshire to attack
Eadric in Staffordshire and Shropshire. But Knut meantime overran
the valley of the Ouse, then went unchecked all up the east side of
England to the Humber, and eventually appeared before York. When


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Edmund Ironside. Battle of Ashington
385
Uhtred heard of this rapid advance, he turned back from Mercia to repeat
the submission which he had formerly made to Svein. Knut, however,
instigated by Eadric, connived at his murder by some private enemies,
and appointed his own brother-in-law Eric, who had been ruler of part of
Norway, to be jarl of Yorkshire in his place. By April the position of
affairs was almost the same as it had been before Svein's death. Thanks
to Eadric's treachery, all England save East Anglia and the districts im-
mediately round London were in the hands of the invaders. It would
seem also that Thorkil had gone over to his countrymen, and so Edmund
and Ulfkytel were the only important leaders with whom Knut had
still to reckon. It was at this critical juncture that Aethelred died,
and Englishmen had to decide whether they would abandon the struggle
or choose Edmund as their king in the hope that he might prove a second
Alfred and retrieve the national fortunes even at the eleventh hour.