No More Learning

With Aethelred's accession we enter the
most stormy period of the ninth century. Fresh swarms of allied sea
kings then arrived determined to find homes in England. Our primary
authority, the West Saxon Chronicle, is silent as to the names of the
leaders, but according to later traditions they were Ingwar, Ubba and
Halfdene, three brothers who are regarded by the Scandinavian saga
writers as sons of the half mythical Ragnarr Loðbrók, in legendary song
the greatest of all sea rovers. These chiefs landed first in East Anglia,
then ruled by a prince called Edmund. Their immediate object,
however, was not to overthrow this king but to obtain horses. In this
they succeeded and then, either in 866 or 867, rode round the fens and
north across Lindsey to attack Deira, where the usual civil war was in
progress between Aelle and Osbeorht, two rival claimants for the
Northumbrian throne. Legend tells us that they came to avenge the
death of Ragnarr Loðbrók, who is said to have been killed in an earlier
raid in Northumbria, but probably they chose Northumbria for attack
because its dissensions made it an easy prey. York was quickly taken,


## p. 351 (#397) ############################################

Ingwar conquers Northumbria and East Anglia 351
and in 867 both Aelle and Osbeorht were killed in a joint attempt to
regain it. With their deaths the independence of Deira came to an end;
but it would appear that the comparatively unfertile districts of Bernicia
did not much attract the invaders, with the result that the country from
the Tees northwards to the Scotch boundary remained subject to English
princes, seated at Bamborough. These rulers retained for their diminished
territories the name of Northumberland, which after this gradually
ceases to be applied to the Yorkshire districts actually adjoining the
Humber. Their small principality, however, could hardly be regarded
as a kingdom, and so they soon dropped the title of king and came
to be styled either dukes or later still “ high-reeves of Bamborough. ”
Having secured their footing in the vale of York, the Danes next
marched south along the Trent to Nottingham to see whether they could
not also establish themselves in the ancient Mercian homeland. Attacked
thus in the very heart of his kingdom, Burhred invoked help from the
West Saxons; but though Aethelred, who was Burhred's brother-in-law,
willingly came to his aid, the allied kings apparently dared not risk a
pitched battle, and in 868 the Mercians were reduced to buying a truce
by offers of tribute. For the moment this satisfied the Vikings, who
withdrew once more to Deira. There they stayed quiet for a year,
but
in the autumn of 869 they again rode south, perhaps to meet fresh re-
inforcements, and after harrying Eastern Mercia from the Humber to
the Ouse determined to try their luck against Edmund of East Anglia,
whose territories they had spared on landing. Details of their march
southwards are missing ; but it was doubtless then that the fenland
monasteries of Bardney, Medeshamstede, Crowland and Ely, after
Worcester the chief centres of Mercian learning and civilisation, were
destroyed, and much of Lindsey and Middle Anglia given over again
to heathendom. Burhred made no efforts, it would seem, to organise
defensive measures for these districts, but a much stouter resistance
awaited the Viking forces at Thetford, where they proposed to take up
their winter quarters. Again details are very confused and scanty, but
it is clear that the English forces were decisively beaten, and we are told
that Edmund himself was captured by Ingwar and Ubba and put to
death on November 20 at Hoxne in Suffolk by their orders because he
refused to abjure Christianity. In the spring of 870 all East Anglia sub-
mitted, and there, too, heathendom and the worship of Thor and Woden
was partially re-introduced, but their fallen king's memory was so cherished
by the vanquished East Anglians that he soon came to be regarded as a
saint and martyr, and a generation later the site of his tomb at Bead-
ricesworth had grown to be a new Christian centre, which in a short time
became famous under the name of St Edmund's Bury.
What became of Ingwar after Edmund's death is not known. It is
possible that he returned to Deira to secure his first conquests and went
thence to Scotland to assist the Irish Vikings, who, led by Olaf the
CH. XIV.


## p. 352 (#398) ############################################

352 Halfdene attacks Wessex. Accession of Alfred
a
White, the Norse king of Dublin, were about this time attacking the
Strathclyde Britons. He may even be the Ivarr whose death is reported
in the Annals of Ulster as occurring in 872. In England, at any rate, he
ceases to be heard of, and his place as leader of the Danish army fell to
Halfdene, represented as his brother, and to another sea king called
Bagseng. These chiefs, by no means satisfied with the territories and
booty already won, determined next to invade Wessex and surprise its
king by a winter attack. They accordingly set out in the autumn to
march by land into the Thames valley, and neglecting London descended
late in December on Reading, in Berkshire. Here they set up a fortified
camp at the point where the river Kennet joins the Thames. In de-
scribing the measures taken to repel this invasion, the West Saxon
Chronicle suddenly becomes much more detailed, and so it is possible to
follow the numerous engagements of the next few weeks with considerable
minuteness, and even to gain some idea of the tactics employed. The
most favourable encounter to the West Saxons was a fight which took
place in January 871 to the west of Reading on the slopes of Ashdown.
In this Aethelred fought in person and with the aid of his brother
Alfred slew Bagseag and several other Danish leaders. But this success
was counterbalanced by a defeat at Basing in Hampshire only a fort-
night later, and by yet another disaster in March at a hamlet called
Marton on the outskirts of Savernake Forest in Wiltshire,
Amid all this gloom Aethelred's reign terminated. He died about
Easter, leaving only infant children, and was buried at Wimborne,
one of Ine's foundations in Dorset. Aethelred's death was no real
disaster for the West Saxons, for it opened the succession to his brother
Alfred, who, in a reign of twenty-eight and a half years (871-899) was
destined to prove himself one of the most remarkable characters known
to history. Born at Wantage, in Berkshire, the youngest of Aethelwulf's
sons by his first wife Osburh, Alfred was a married man just turned
twenty-three when he was acclaimed king by the West Saxon magnates.
His wife was Ealhswith, daughter of Aethelred Mucel, a leading Mercian
duke, who witnesses many of Burhred's landbooks. Before his election
Alfred was already known as a prince of courage and energy, who,
according to his biographer Asser, had shewn in boyhood a taste for
learning, which unfortunately had not been gratified, as he could get no
proper masters. His health, however, had never been robust, and he
must have taken up his task with many misgivings, having the disasters
of eastern England before his eyes. The fate of central Wessex, indeed,
seemed hanging by a thread a month later, when the Danes gained
another well-contested battle at Wilton ; but as it turned out Alfred
was to have a four years' respite. After nine costly encounters, none of
which had been at all decisive, the Danes began to think that the
conquest of Wessex was too difficult and that Mercia would prove a
more remunerative prey. Both sides, therefore, as at Nottingham three


## p. 353 (#399) ############################################

Burhred of Mercia. Collapse of Mercia
353
a
years before, found themselves anxious to treat, and a peace was patched
up on the understanding that the Viking army should abandon its hold
on Berkshire and withdraw across the Thames.
This peace shews well the complete want of national feeling in
ninth-century England. It was now the turn of the Midlands to feel
the fury of the “army”; but just
army "; but just as Burhred, entangled it would
appear in a conflict with the Welsh, had not come forward to help his
brother-in-law, Aethelred, in his peril, so now Alfred pledged himself to
inactivity while the Vikings laid their plans for the final ruin of Mercia.
Their first move was from Reading to London, where they spent the
spring of 872, watched by the West Saxons from across the Thames,
until Burhred agreed to ransom the town and its dependent districts by
the payment of a heavy tribute. Worcestershire documents which
allude to this levy, or geld as the Saxons called it, still exist, and also
pennies minted by Halfdene at London. The promise to evacuate
south-eastern Mercia was redeemed by the army transferring itself once
again to Deira, but it soon came back to Lindsey and encamped for
the winter at Torksey on Trent in the immediate vicinity of Lincoln.
From this base it could ravage at leisure all the country watered by
the tributaries of the Middle Trent, and by the end of 873 it had
pushed so far into Mercia that it was able to winter at Repton, revered
as the burying place of the Mercian dynasty, only a few miles from
Tamworth and Lichfield. One would like to know details of this cam-
paign and hear more of the fate that overtook Leicester and Nottingham,
but unfortunately no native chronicle exists to give vividness to the
death struggle of Mercia. All we know comes from the West Saxon
account, which merely states that Burhred's spirit was so entirely broken
that in 874 he abandoned his kingdom and fled abroad, dying at
Rome shortly afterwards. His vacant throne was promptly filled by
one Ceolwulf, “ an unwise king's thegn,” but this ruler was little more
than a puppet set up with Halfdene's connivance, a semivir, as William
of Malmesbury terms him, who was forced by the Danes to swear that
he would hold his kingdom for the behoof of the army and deliver it up
whenever required. This transaction is pretty good evidence that the
Danes had overrun more territory than they could hope to hold, but
that their leaders were expecting reinforcements, and anticipated in the
near future a need for additional settlements. The “ army” accordingly
retired from Repton, and not being united on a common plan broke up
into two sections, one of which withdrew to Deira under Halfdene, while
the other, under Guthrum, Oscytel and Anwind, sea kings not hitherto
mentioned, went to Cambridge.
Halfdene's plan was apparently to regain for York its former depend-
encies. He established his base for the winter on the Tyne, and from
thence in 875 organised savage raids into every corner of Bernicia, then
ruled by Ricsig, and also into the territories of the Picts and Strathclyde
a
C. MED. H. VOL. III. CH, XIV.
23


## p. 354 (#400) ############################################

354 Danes settle in Northumbria and the Five Boroughs
>
Britons. Nothing permanent was achieved by these devastations, but
they have some importance in church history, because they led Bishop
Eardulf, who had charge of the shrines of St Aidan and St Cuthbert, to
abandon his see at Lindisfarne, so long the spiritual capital of the
North, and to set out on an eight years' pilgrimage through the moors
of Cumberland and the coasts of Solway in search of a more secure
asylum.
And now at last we reach the stage of real colonisation. In 876
Halfdene returned to York and “dealt out" Deira to his followers,
“who thenceforward continued ploughing and tilling it. " No Danish
Domesday Book tells how the allotment of estates was carried out, or
what proportion of the English owners preserved their lands, but it
must in the main have been a process of imposing Danish warriors on
English cultivators, very similar to the settlement of Normans, carried
out 200 years later by William the Conqueror, except that the Danish
armies contained a large class of freedmen, the so-called liesings or “men
loosened from bondage," to whom no exact counterpart can be found in
the later invasion. This half-free class had to be accommodated with
land as well as the fully-free classes, the holds and bonde who formed the
upper and middle grades of Viking society', but they were not of suffi-
cient social standing to become independent landowners, being often of
alien race and descended from prisoners of war, slaves and bankrupts.
How exactly they were dealt with can only be guessed, but it seems not
unlikely that they received holdings in the villages similar to those of
the English corls, only that they held them by a distinctly freer tenure
as members of the conquering armies. Nor is it fanciful to recognise their
descendants later on in the peasant class known as sochemanni, who held
a position in the society of the eleventh century just above the villani or
ordinary cultivators, and who are found in very considerable numbers in
just those parts of England where the Danes are known to have settled,
but not at all or only in triling numbers elsewhere.
A year later portions of Mercia were similarly colonised.
harvest,” so runs a laconic entry in the Wessex Chronicle," the army
went into Mercia, and some part of it they apportioned, and some they
delivered to Ceolwulf. ” No clue is vouchsafed as to the identity of the
army concerned, and no names are mentioned either of the leaders or the
districts implicated. It is clear, however, from subsequent events that the
districts left to Ceolwulf comprised all western Mercia from the Mersey
to the Thames, and that the boundary fixed upon ran north and south
from near the Peak in Derbyshire to a point just east of Tamworth on
the Watling Street, and then along that high-way south-eastwards to
the headwaters of the Worcestershire Avon and the Welland and perhaps
even further, past Towcester to Stony Stratford on the Ouse. To the
east of this boundary Danish customs and law were imposed upon the
1 Cf. Seebohm, Tribal Custom, pp. 240-276.
6 After


## p. 355 (#401) ############################################

Guthrum renews the attack on Wessex
355
Mercian villages, and Danish political terminology introduced instead of
English. Politically also there was a considerable re-organisation, the
land being divided into five districts, each with its own “army” under
an independent jarl, and each having for its centre a fortified camp,
which the settlers could garrison in times of stress. The five centres
selected were Lincoln, Stamford, Nottingham, Derby and Leicester, and
as the term burh at this date still had the meaning of “a fortified place,"
they soon came to be specially known as the “Five Boroughs. "
Meantime in East Anglia and south-east Mercia affairs did not
progress so swiftly towards a settlement. The rank and file of the
army, which encamped in Cambridge in 875, would doubtless have been
well content to form “borough districts" between the Thames and the
Welland similar to those which were being set up between the Welland
and the Humber, but their leader, Guthrum, coveted Alfred's dominions
as well, and when he heard that fresh fleets were in the English Channel
attacking the southern coasts of Wessex, he could not resist joining in
the enterprise. Already in 875 there is mention of Alfred fighting the
Vikings at sea. The next year a fleet appeared off the coast of Dorset
over a hundred strong. The chronicler, Aethelweard, alludes to it as a
western army. ” The bulk of it therefore doubtless came from Ireland,
but help reached it from Guthrum. Landing near Poole harbour, the
allied vikings proceeded to harry the surrounding districts, and then
seized Wareham after out-manoeuvring Alfred's forces. When winter
approached, Alfred thought it best to offer terms. The vikings however
treacherously deceived him, and, having accepted a sum of money on
the condition that they would decamp, slipped out of Wareham
suddenly and made a dash for Exeter, with the intention of using it as a
base from which to ravage Devon. In 877 the luck turned. While
Alfred kept the viking land-force shut up in Exeter, their fleet came to
grief in a storm off Swanage. This disaster placed the marauders in a
precarious position. Before the end of the year they had to capitulate,
and if Aethelweard's account is to be believed, retired to Gloucester.
Once more Wessex appeared to be saved. In reality the worst crisis of
all was at hand. About midwinter Guthrum threw his whole army
unexpectedly upon Wessex, and almost surprised Alfred at Chippenham
where he was keeping Christmas. At the same moment Halfdene's
brother Ubba, sailing from Dyfed, invaded North Devon. The brunt
of Guthrum's invasion fell upon Wiltshire, but other shires also suffered
severely, and so great was the general terror that many of the West
Saxon leaders fled over sea.
Alfred however never despaired ; getting
away with difficulty from Chippenham, he retired into the marshlands
of Somerset and stockaded himself with Aethelnoth, the alderman of the
district, in the island of Athelney at the junction of the Tone and
Parret. There he remained on the defensive till the news came that the
men of Devon, led by their alderman Odda, had defeated Halfdene's
a
CH. XIV.
23–2


## p. 356 (#402) ############################################

356 Battle of Edington. West Mercia submits to Alfred
9
brother. The king then put himself once more at the head of the levies
of central Wessex, his men meeting him early in May 878 on the
borders of Wiltshire just to the east of Selwood Forest. Two days
later he fell upon Guthrum's army at Edington (Ethandun) near
Westbury, and so utterly defeated it that a fortnight later at Chippenham
a peace was agreed to. The terms arranged were remarkable; for
Guthrum not only promised that he would withdraw his army from
Wessex, but also that he would accept baptism. The ceremony was
accordingly performed in June at Aller near Athelney, the chrism-
loosing taking place at Wedmore, a village near Glastonbury. The
departure of the Danes from Wessex was carried out before long. In
879 we find them at Cirencester, and from that time forward the West
Saxons were never again in any serious danger of being conquered by
the Northmen.
To the Mercians, in the yet unravaged valley of the Severn, the
peace made at Chippenham, often inaccurately called the “Peace of
Wedmore," only meant an increase of danger. The move to Cirencester
seemed clearly to portend that Guthrum hoped to find satisfaction in
Gloucestershire and Worcestershire for his failure in Wessex, and the danger
seemed all the greater when it became known, in the summer of 879, that
a new fleet of vikings had arrived in the Thames and landed at Fulham.
In this predicament the magnates of the Hwicce decided to take an impor-
tant step. To depend on the puppet king Ceolwulf for defence was
clearly useless. They accordingly turned to the victor of Edington, and
led by Aethelred of Gloucester their foremost duke, and by Werfrith,
the Bishop of Worcester, offered Alfred their allegiance. How many of
the leading Mercians supported Aethelred in this submission to Wessex
is not recorded. All that can be said is that we find Aethelred after
this treated by Alfred to some extent as a vassal and given in charters
the title of “Duke of the Mercians. " Thus ended the independent
kingdom of Mercia.
On the Danes the effect of this politic stroke was immediate. In
880 the province of the Hwicce was evacuated without any fighting, and
Guthrum withdrew from Cirencester and marched his army back into
East Anglia, while the Fulham fleet returned to Flanders. Next there
followed the apportionment of Hendrica, Essex and East Anglia among
Guthrum's followers, while in Middle Anglia a second series of boroughs
were set up, at Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge and Bedford, each
ruled by a more or less independent jarl and each with its dependent
territory defended by its own “ army. " Guthrum's own sphere was large
enough to be regarded as a kingdom. It had Norwich, Thetford,
Ipswich, Colchester and London for head centres, and when first
established stretched westwards over half the district of the Ciltern-
saete. We may guess in fact that it was the creation of Guthrum's new
Danish kingdom which first brought about the division of this old


## p. 357 (#403) ############################################

Alfred's reforms. The Boroughs of Wessex
357
province into the two portions known to us to-day as Oxfordshire and
Buckinghamshire; for the former, when we get information about it in
the eleventh century, shews no signs of Danish colonisation and was
regarded as subject to Mercian law, whereas the latter was then peopled
to a considerable extent by sochemanni and was held to be a portion of
the Danelaw,
The followers of Halfdene and Guthrum when once settled proved
fairly peaceable neighbours to Wessex and her Mercian ally, and in the
next two decades only gave trouble on one or two occasions when roused
by the appearance of fresh fleets from abroad. This furnished Alfred
with a much needed opportunity for re-organising his realm, and it is his
great glory that he not only took up the task with patient doggedness,
but shewed himself if possible even more capable as a reformer in peace
than as a leader in war. It is impossible for want of space to follow his
reforms in detail, but a few of the more noteworthy developments due
to his constructive statesmanship may be glanced at. First we may
take his military reforms. These comprised the improvement of his naval
force by the enlistment of Frisians, and the division of the fyrd, or
national levy, into two parts, the one to be available as a relief to the
other at convenient intervals, so that the peasant soldiers might have
proper opportunities of attending to the needs of their farms and therefore
less excuse for deserting in the middle of a campaign. But more impor-
tant than either of these was the gradual creation in all parts of his
kingdom of fortified strongholds, defended by earthworks and palisades
of timber, in imitation of the Danish “boroughs,” and the subdivision of
the ancient West Saxon shires into smaller districts of varying size, each
charged with the upkeep of one or more forts. The evidence for this is
found in the many references to the “men of the boroughs” that begin
to appear in the chronicle as the reign proceeds and even in the land-
books, such as the Worcester charter), which sets forth how Aethelred,
with Alfred's consent, “worked " a borough at Worcester for the pro-
tection of the bishop and monks and granted them the right to take a
scot (burh-wealles-scaeting) for its maintenance. This, of course, is a
Mercian instance, but a list of the boroughs of Wessex and of the
hidages assessed on their appendant districts has also chanced to be
preserved, which cannot be of a date much after Alfred's death, and this
mentions some twenty-fivestrongholds scattered up and down his kingdom.
Of these, the more important along the south coast were Hastings, Lewes,
Chichester, Porchester, Southampton, Wareham, Bridport and Exeter;
and along the north frontier, Barnstaple, Watchet, Axbridge, Bath,
Malmesbury, Cricklade, Wallingford and Southwark (Suthringa geweorc).
It seems also likely that the scheme of hidage recorded in this document
1 Birch, Cart. Sax. , No. 579.
? Ibid. , No. 1335. Maitland treats of this list under the title “The Burghal
Hidage. ' Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 502–4.
a
CH, XIV.


## p. 358 (#404) ############################################

358
Alfred's laws and literary activity
Own.
was of Alfred's devising ; for the figures run smaller than in the eighth
century Mercian scheme, though still based on a unit of 1200 hides,
and we know of no other occasion so likely to have required a reform
of fiscal arrangements as the creation of the borough districts.
Passing to civil reforms the most arduous of all perhaps was the com-
pilation of a fresh edition of the West Saxon laws. For this purpose
Alfred examined and sifted not only Ine's earlier dooms but also the laws
published by Offa, which unfortunately have not survived to us, and
those issued by the Kentish kings. From these he selected what seemed
to him to be the most useful, only adding a few new ordinances of his
There is also good evidence that he took great pains to secure
justice for his subjects, and that he was most careful in husbanding and
increasing the royal revenue. Most noteworthy, however, of all his
reforms was his attempt to revive religion and learning, which had been
almost crushed out by the Danish inroads. For this purpose he not
only set to work to educate himself in reading and translating Latin,
but collected at his court a band of scholars who should give him advice
and act as teachers in the schools which he instituted. Some of these
he obtained from West Mercia which had not suffered so much as
Wessex, some from Wales and Ireland, and some from the Continent.
Among them were Werfrith, the Bishop of Worcester, who had helped
to bring about the alliance with Aethelred ; Plegmund, a Mercian, who,
in 890, was chosen Archbishop of Canterbury ; Grimbald, a Flemish
monk from St Bertin's; John the Old Saxon from Corvey, who became
abbot of a monastery founded by Alfred at Athelney; and Asser, a
Welsh monk from St David's, who ultimately became Bishop of Sherborne
and wrote Alfred's biography. With these men Alfred was on the
most intimate terms, and with their help he not only set on foot the
celebrated Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to record the deeds of his house
and nation but also undertook a notable series of translations from
Latin into English, in order to place the best authorities on different
branches of knowledge within the reach of his subjects. Among the
works he selected for this purpose were Bede's Ecclesiastical History,
Gregory's Pastoral Care, Orosius's History of the World, and Boethius's
De Consolatione Philosophiae. All these by good fortune have come
down to us, though Alfred's own Handbook is lost, in which he noted
down what pleased him most in his reading. Many glimpses however
are to be had of the king's own personal views in these works, for the
translation is always free ; and in them and the Chronicle we have the
real starting point of English prose.
Alfred's peaceful reforms were twice interrupted by spells of war. In
885 a viking force attacked Rochester, and this induced Guthrum to
break the peace ; whereupon the West Saxon fyrd proceeded to besiege
London. The upshot was the recapture of that important centre, and
such an overthrow of Guthrum's forces that he had to cede the western-


## p. 359 (#405) ############################################

Alfred and Guthrum's Peace. Hasting's raids
359
most portion of his kingdom to the English. The new frontier agreed
upon is preserved for us in a document known as “ Alfred and Guthrum's
Peace. ” It went from the Thames east of London “up the river Lea
to its source near Luton, then across country to Bedford, and from there
up the river Ouse to the Watling Street. " In other words the Danes
ceded their portion of the Chilterns and the south-west half of Hendrica
including St Albans, and these Alfred handed over to Duke Aethelred as
being parts of Mercia. At the same time Aethelred married Aethelfleda,
Alfred's eldest child, who was now about sixteen, and so still further
cemented the bond between Mercia and Wessex. A further clause in
the treaty which deserves notice, is the provision for equating the various
grades of Englishmen and Danes, should legal questions arise in the ceded
district involving a determination of their wergelds. As to this the treaty
laid down the rule that the Danish bonde, though in his home across the
North Sea only the equal of a ceorl, should, in disputes between Saxons and
Danes, be regarded as the equal of the Mercian “twelve-hynd man,” the
thegn, as he had come to be called by Alfred's day, while the Mercian ceorl,
or“ twy-hynd man,” was only to be regarded as the equal of the half-free
liesing. In the case of the bonde and the thegn the wer was to be eight
half marks of gold, equivalent, as the ratio of gold to silver was 9:1, to
L24, and this in live stock meant 240 cows, the cow by Mercian law
being valued at 24d. In the case of the liesing and the ceorl on the
other hand the wer was to be two hundred Mercian shillings, that is to
say 960d. or £4, the hundred in this case being the long hundred of six
score, and the Mercian shilling being equivalent to 4d. The wer of the
peasant classes therefore amounted in live stock to 40 cows, or the
sixth part of the wer of the dear-born military class. All this, when
properly understood, is of considerable interest ; for it enables us to see
how greatly Danish society had been modified by the conquest of Eastern
England, and how seriously in the Danelaw the Saxon peasants had been
depressed by the national defeat, even after some of their disasters had
been retrieved and their prestige partially regained.
In 892 a far more dangerous crisis had to be faced when defeats in
East Frankland drove another great fleet, led by a chief called Hasting,
across the channel to seek lands in England. Over 800 ships, we are
told, set sail from Boulogne and coming to Kent effected lodgements at
Appledore near Romney and at Milton near Sheppey, and later on at
Benfleet in Essex. With all his experience Alfred could hardly cope
with the emergency, and for three years midland England was in a turmoil.
It soon appeared that the aim of the invaders was to get possession of the
Severn valley, still the least ravaged part of England, and in pursuit of
this object they over and over again dashed across England from their
base on the east coast and ravaged Aethelred's dukedom from end to
end, one year wintering at Bridgnorth and another at Chester. In the
end, however, Hasting was foiled in all his efforts by the steady co-
CH. XIV.


## p. 360 (#406) ############################################

360
Death of Alfred. Edward the Elder
operation of the West Saxon and Mercian fyrds, and finding in 896 that
no real help was to be obtained either from the North Welsh or from
the Northumbrian or Midland Danes, he gave up the contest and went
back to Frankland. After this Alfred had peace for the rest of his days.
He lived a few years longer, but died on 26 October 899, when still
only fifty-one years old.
The fifty years following the death of Alfred are the time when the
kingdom of England was really established. Alfred's great work had
been to save Wessex from foreign invaders, and then to re-organise what
he had saved ; but he had never aimed at conquests beyond his borders.
Even over Mercia he had exercised no real sovereignty, and still less
over the chieftains of Glamorgan and Gwent, Brecknock and Dyfed, who
had sought his protection; and so he was in no sense king of England
or even of half England. When he died, the territories over which he
ruled, and where his laws held good, were confined to the shires south of
the Thames, and in the rest of England there were a far greater number
of independent principalities than there had been a century earlier.
When therefore his eldest son, generally called Edward the Elder to
distinguish him from later kings of the same name, was elected to succeed
him, it was only the West Saxon magnates who took part in the
ceremony, and no one could have predicted that a union of the petty
English states would soon be brought about by the West Saxon dynasty.
Edward, however, unlike his father, within a few years adopted a policy
of expansion in imitation of the earlier Bretwaldas, and fortune so
aided him and the three capable sons who afterwards succeeded him
in turn, that by 954 the house of Ecgbert had not merely acquired an
overlordship of the old pattern but had completely ousted all the other
ruling families, whether English or Danish, so that, formally at any
rate, there was only one recognised king left in all England.
The events, which produced this far-reaching change, are clear enough
in their main outlines, but it is very difficult to arrange them in their
proper sequence, as no dates in Edward's reign (899-925) can be fixed
with any certainty owing to discrepancies in chronology between the
English, Welsh and Irish annals, discrepancies which later historians
have attempted to get over by dovetailing the various accounts one into
the other, and therefore duplicating not a few of the incidents of the
story. All the sources however agree in stating that Edward's first
difficulties arose with his cousin Aethelwald, the younger of the sons of
King Aethelred, Alfred's elder brother. This prince, Aethelhelm his
elder brother, and a third aetheling, called Osferth, had under Alfred's
will divided between them the royal booklands in Sussex and Surrey.
Aethelwald's share comprised Guildford, Godalming and Steyning, all
1 The length of the reigns of Alfred, Edward the Elder and Aethelstan are
matters of controversy; for a recent discussion of the difficulties see M. L. R. Beavan,
Eng. Hist. Rev. 1917, Vol. xxxII. 517–531.
a


## p. 361 (#407) ############################################

Edward attacks the Danelaw. Battle of Holme
361
a
extensive estates, but this endowment by no means satisfied him, and
at the very opening of the new reign he took forcible possession of the
newly-built borough of Twyneham, now Christchurch in Hampshire,
and also of an old British fortress, which may still be seen, at Badbury
Rings near Wimborne. Driven out of these by Edward, he fled to the
Yorkshire Danes, who received him as if he were a dispossessed king and
offered him their allegiance, being at the moment themselves without a
ruler. This led a little later to an alliance between Aethelwald and
Eric, King of East Anglia, who had succeeded Guthrum in 890, and the
two together, imitating the strategy of Halfdene thirty years before,
marched their forces across the Chiltern country to Cricklade on the
Upper Thames with the intention of raiding Wiltshire. This invasion
met with little effective opposition from Duke Aethelred of Mercia
through whose territories it passed, but Edward replied by a bold
counterstroke, sending a force from Kent to join the Mercians of London
with orders to attack the Danish districts between the river Lee and
the river Ouse. The news that the ealdormen of East and West Kent,
Sigwulf and Sighelm, were ravaging between the Ouse and the well-
known dykes which form such a feature in East Cambridgeshire, soon
compelled Aethelwald and Eric to retrace their steps, and this led to a
fierce encounter between the two armies at Holme, a hamlet of Biggles-
wade in Bedfordshire! The English accounts admit that the Danes
won the day, but their victory was a hollow one. Both Aethelwald and
Eric were killed, and another Guthrum became king of East Anglia, who
almost immediately afterwards made a peace? at Yttingaford, in the
township of Linslade in Buckinghamshire, on the terms that the old
treaty between Alfred and Guthrum of 886 should be reconfirmed and
that the Danes, in the dioceses of London and Dorchester, should abjure
heathendom and pay tithes and other church dues to the bishops.
This campaign not only rid Wessex of a dangerous aetheling but
convinced the Danes that Edward and Aethelred were firm in their
alliance, and that it was no safe matter to attack them. The result was
a period of peace for Wessex, during which Edward shewed himself no
unworthy follower of Alfred as a civil ruler. His first care was to finish
his father's new minster at Winchester, known in later days as the Abbey
of Hyde, and organise it as a college of clerks; and thither, as
soon as the church was finished, he removed Alfred's tomb. Much
more important however was a scheme, pressed upon him by Archbishop
Plegmund, for increasing the number of the West Saxon sees. This
was ultimately carried through in 909 on the deaths of Denewulf and
The site of this battle has not hitherto been identified, though the hamlet of
Holme figures in Domesday Book in seven entries and lies just in the required
position on the old North Road.
2 Liebermann, Gesetze der Angelsachsen, pp. 128-135. This undated document
is not the actual treaty, but seems to embody its provisions.
CH, XIV.


## p. 362 (#408) ############################################

362
Edward's reforms. Battle of Tettenhall
66
Asser, the Bishops of Winchester and Sherborne, Plegmund having
journeyed to Rome the year before to obtain the sanction of Pope
Sergius III. By it the two ancient dioceses of Winchester and Sher-
borne were replaced by five smaller ones, the bishops' seats being fixed
at Winchester for Surrey and Hampshire, at Ramsbury near Marlborough
for Berkshire and North Wiltshire, at Sherborne for South Wiltshire
and Dorset, at Wells for Somerset and at Crediton for Devon and
Cornwall. These ecclesiastical reforms would by themselves be note-
worthy and a credit to Edward. They stand, however, by no means
alone, his efforts to put down theft and to improve justice and trade being
equally remarkable. For these we must turn to his laws', especially
to the dooms issued at Exeter which instructed the witan to search out
better devices for maintaining the peace than had hitherto been employed,
and to those ordering the king's “reeves” to hold “moots” every four
weeks and to see that every man was • worthy of folkright. ” This
allusion to the moots held by the king's reeves is the first definite indica-
tion in the Anglo-Saxon laws of the existence, in Wessex or elsewhere,
of
any comprehensive system of local courts for areas smaller than the
shires. It does not follow from this that Edward need be regarded as
the inventor of these courts, but it shews at any rate that he was active
in developing them, a conclusion further borne out by another of his
dooms which directs that all buying and selling must take place before a
“port-reeve" in a “port. ” Here also we have a novel provision notable
for its ultimate effects ; for a “port” or urban centre practically meant
in most cases a “borough,” and so this rule set going a movement which
in the end destroyed the military character of the boroughs and con-
verted them into centres of trade and industry.
That Wessex could devote itself for a time to internal reform was
largely due to the fact that its boundaries nowhere marched with the
Danelaw, but for Mercia as a buffer state the conditions were just the
opposite. There, all round the frontiers there was chronic unrest, so
that its duke was kept constantly busy with defensive measures. In 907
for example he fortified Chester to guard against the Welsh and raiders
from Ireland, while in 910-11 he had to meet an invasion of Danes from
Yorkshire and the Midlands. These bands seem to have ravaged all
over the dukedom, one force penetrating to the Bristol Avon, and another
across the Severn into Herefordshire. In this emergency Aethelred
naturally turned to his brother-in-law for help, and there followed a
pitched battle near Tettenhall in Staffordshire in which Edward's forces
took a prominent part. The result was a great defeat for the Danes, no
a
1 Liebermann, op. cit. pp. 138-145. One of these dooms (I Edw. cap 2) deserves
special remark, as it contains the only mention of “folcland” to be found in the
Anglo-Saxon Laws. Elsewhere the term only occurs twice, in two land books, dated
858 and 880 (Birch, Cart. Sax. , Nos. 496, 558), dealing with estates in Kent and Surrey.


## p. 363 (#409) ############################################

Aethelfteda, the Lady of the Mercians
363
fewer than three kings, two jarls and seven holds being slain. In fact
this victory marks the beginning of the reconquest of the Danelaw.
Shortly after Duke Aethelred died, leaving only a daughter to carry
on his line. At the moment his decease made little difference, for his
widow Aethelfleda took up the reins of government without opposition,
and for nearly eight years (912-919) led the Mercian forces with a skill
and energy which few women rulers have ever equalled. In the scanty
annals of these years, which speak of her regularly as “the Lady of the
Mercians,” she is always described as the directing mind, and we
are not told the names of the men who assisted her, but one cannot
help suspecting that at her right hand there really stood her nephew
Aethelstan, the heir to the throne of Wessex, who is known to have been
fostered and trained in the arts of ruling by Aethelred. For if this
supposition may be hazarded, it will account for the ease with which the
Mercian heiress was set aside after Aethelfleda's death, and also for the
fact that, when Aethelstan came to be king, he seems to have been as
much at home in Mercia as in his ancestral dominions. At any rate
throughout Aethelfleda's period of power there was complete accord
between herself and her brother, and her first step was to arrange
that
Edward should take over the defence of the districts that owed obedience
to London and Oxford, these being much more easily protected from
Wessex than from the Severn Valley. And then began a long-sustained
campaign, carried on over several years by the sister and brother in con-
junction, with the avowed object of expanding their territories, Edward
acting against the Danes from the south and Aethelfeda from the west.
Their plan evidently was to keep cautiously moving forward on
regular system, erecting “boroughs" as they went along their frontiers, as
Alfred had done in Wessex, to secure their base should they at any
moment be forced to draw back. In 913 for example Aethelfleda pre-
pared for an advance in the Trent Valley by erecting boroughs at
Stafford and Tamworth, and Edward for an advance in Essex by building
two others at Hertford and Witham. In 914 the Danes retaliated by a
raid on Luton and a foray into Mercian Cilternsaete as far as Hook
Norton, both of which were easily repulsed by Edward, while further
north Aethelfleda fortified Warwick in ancient Mercia and Eddisbury in
Westerna. In 915 the appearance of a force of vikings from Brittany in
the Severn mouth caused some diversion, but Buckingham in Danish
Cilternsaete was fortified none the less, and this led next year to the flight
of Thurkytel, jarl of Bedford and the capture of his borough.
During these events, some of Aethelfleda's energy was being expended
on her Welsh frontiers. We hear of a borough which she built at
Chirbury in Shropshire and of an expedition into Brecknock; but in
917 she returned to the prosecution of the main scheme and got
possession of Derby. This meant that the armies of Northampton and
Leicester were placed between two fires, and it convinced their jarls that
a
CH. XIV.


## p. 364 (#410) ############################################

364 East Anglia and East Mercia submit to Edward
the jarl
something must be done. Accordingly they in 918 stirred
up
of Huntingdon to move his army across the Ouse and entrench himself at
Tempsford in the neighbourhood of Holme in the hope of regaining
Hendrica. At the same time they organised attacks on two new boroughs
which Edward had just erected, one at Towcester in Middle Anglia
and the other probably at Wing near Aylesbury. Neither operation
was however successful, and even the arrival of the king of East
Anglia with considerable reinforcements for the men of Huntingdon
failed to make any difference. Guthrum's intervention on the contrary
proved his ruin, for Edward made an assault on Tempsford and there
slew Guthrum and two of his jarls called Toglos and Mann. This
crushing disaster seems to have taken all the fight out of the Danish
leaders. We hear of one or two more encounters in Essex in connexion
with Colchester and Maldon ; and then the Danish resistance collapsed,
and the various armies, as it were, tumbled over each other in their
haste to make terms with the victorious English. The first chief to come
in was Thurferth, the jarl of Northampton, and he was quickly followed
by the captains commanding the armies of Huntingdon, Cambridge and
East Anglia. All alike agreed to submit without further fighting, and
took Edward for their protector and lord on the condition that they
and their men should retain their estates and enjoy their national
customs. At the same time the army of Leicester without further
fighting submitted to Aethelfleda.
Great must have been the rejoicings throughout Wessex and Mercia
at the triumphs of 918, but the next year had even greater events in
store. It was opened by Edward marching to Stamford and there
receiving the submission of the Danes of Kesteven and Holland. ' There
too in June he received the news that Aethelfleda had died at Tamworth.
At this juncture a less confident man might have hesitated what step to
take. Not so Edward. Without loss of time he marched straight to
Tamworth, claiming to be his sister's successor. And thereupon the
Mercians also agreed to take him as their lord. This settled, he set out
for Nottingham and took possession of it, and a little later he received
the submission of the men of Lindsey. Finally embassies arrived from
the chief princes of Wales, from Idwal of Gwynedd and Hywel of
Deheubarth, the grandsons of Rhodri Mawr, tendering their alliance.
Rarely indeed have events moved so quickly. At the beginning of 918
Edward was only one among a great number of princes claiming rule
in England; at the close of 919 he was unquestioned superior of all men
south of the Humber as well Danish as English.
It is natural to ask why the resistance of the Danes in central and
eastern England broke down so rapidly after 911. Many causes may
be assigned to account for it, the more obvious being their total lack
of cohesion (no jarl helped another until it was too late) and the
1 Wigingamere ; cf. Domesday Book, 1. 146 a. Witehunge.


## p. 365 (#411) ############################################

Edward and the Danes of Yorkshire
365
softening of their manners as Christianity made headway among them.
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.