The History of England, Volume I From Egbert through Edward the Martyr Ethelwolf
by David Hume
This prince had neither the abilities nor the vigour of his father;
and was better qualified for governing a convent than a kingdom [n].
He began his reign with making a partition of his dominions, and
delivering over to his eldest son, Athelstan, the new-conquered
provinces of Essex, Kent, and Sussex. But no inconveniences seem to
have risen from this partition, as the continual terror of the Danish
invasions prevented all domestic dissension. A fleet of these
ravagers, consisting of thirty-three sail, appeared at Southampton,
but were repulsed with loss by Wolfhere, governor of the neighbouring
county [o]. The same year, Aethelhelm, governor of Dorsetshire,
routed another band which had disembarked at Portsmouth, but he
obtained the victory after a furious engagement, and he bought it with
the loss of his life [p]. Next year the Danes made several inroads
into England, and fought battles, or rather skirmishes, in East Anglia
and Lindesey and Kent, where, though they were sometimes repulsed and
defeated, they always obtained their end of committing spoil upon the
country, and carrying off their booty. They avoided coming to a
general engagement, which was not suited to their plan of operations.
Their vessels were small, and ran easily up the creeks and rivers,
where they drew them ashore, and having formed an entrenchment round
them, which they guarded with part of their number, the remainder
scattered themselves every where, and carrying off the inhabitants and
cattle and goods, they hastened to their ships and quickly
disappeared. If the military force of the county were assembled, (for
there was no time for troops to march from a distance,) the Danes
either were able to repulse them, and to continue their ravages with
impunity, or they betook themselves to their vessels, and setting
sail, suddenly invaded some distant quarter, which was not prepared
for their reception. Every part of England was held in continual
alarm, and the inhabitants of one county durst not give assistance to
those of another, lest their own families and property should in the
mean time be exposed by their absence to the fury of these barbarous
ravagers [q]. All orders of men were involved in this calamity, and
the priests and monks, who had been commonly spared in the domestic
quarrels of the Heptarchy, were the chief objects on which the Danish
idolators exercised their rage and animosity. Every season of the
year was dangerous, and the absence of the enemy was no reason why any
man could esteem himself a moment in safety.
[ [n] Wm. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 2. [o] Chron. Sax. p. 73.
Ethelward, lib. 3. [p] Chron. Sax. p. 73. H. Hunting. lib. 5. [q]
Alured. Beverl. p. 108.]
[MN 851.]
These incursions had now become almost annual, when the Danes,
encouraged by their successes against France as well as England, (for
both kingdoms were alike exposed to this dreadful calamity,) invaded
the last in so numerous a body, as seemed to threaten it with
universal subjection. But the English, more military than the
Britons, whom a few centuries before they had treated with like
violence, roused themselves with a vigour proportioned to the
exigency. Ceorle, governor of Devonshire, fought a battle with one
body of the Danes at Wiganburgh [r], and put them to rout with great
slaughter. King Athelstan attacked another at sea near Sandwich, sunk
nine of their ships, and put the rest to flight [s]. A body of them,
however, ventured, for the first time, to take up winter quarters in
England; and receiving in the spring a strong reinforcement of their
countrymen in 350 vessels, they advanced from the Isle of Thanet,
where they had stationed themselves, burnt the cities of London and
Canterbury, and having put to flight Brichtric, who now governed
Mercia under the title of king, they marched into the heart of Surrey,
and laid every place waste around them. Ethelwolf, impelled by the
urgency of the danger, marched against them at the head of the West
Saxons, and carrying with him his second son, Ethelbald, gave them
battle at Okely, and gained a bloody victory over them. This
advantage procured but a short respite to the English. The Danes
still maintained their settlement in the Isle of Thanet, and being
attacked by Ealher and Huda, governors of Kent and Surrey, though
defeated in the beginning of the action, they finally repulsed the
assailants [MN 853.], and killed both the governors. They removed
thence to the Isle of Shepey; where they took up their winter
quarters, that they might farther extend their devastation and
ravages.
[ [r] H. Hunt. lib. 5 Ethelward, lib. 3. cap. 3. Simeon Dunelm. p.
120. [s] Chron. Sax. p. 74. Asserius, p. 2.]
This unsettled state of England hindered not Ethelwolf from making a
pilgrimage to Rome, whither he carried his fourth and favourite son,
Alfred, then only six years of age [t]. He passed there a twelvemonth
in exercises of devotion, and failed not in that most essential part
of devotion, liberality to the church of Rome. Besides giving
presents to the more distinguished ecclesiastics, he made a perpetual
grant of three hundred mancuses [u] a year to that see; one-third to
support the lamps of St. Peter’s, another those of St. Paul’s, a third
to the pope himself [w]. In his return home he married Judith,
daughter of the emperor, Charles the Bald, but on his landing in
England, he met with an opposition which he little looked for.
[ [t] Asserius, p. 2. Chron. Sax. 76. Hunt. lib. 5. [u] A mancus
was about the weight of our present half-crown: see Spellman’s
Glossary, IN VERBO Mancus. [w] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap 2.]
His eldest son, Athelstan, being dead, Ethelbald, his second, who had
assumed the government, formed, in concert with many of the nobles,
the project of excluding his father from a throne, which his weakness
and superstition seemed to have rendered him so ill-qualified to fill.
The people were divided between the two princes, and a bloody civil
war, joined to all the other calamities under which the English
laboured, appeared inevitable, when Ethelwolf had the facility to
yield to the greater part of his son’s pretensions. He made with him
a partition of the kingdom, and taking to himself the eastern part,
which was always at that time esteemed the least considerable, as well
as the most exposed [x], he delivered over to Ethelbald the
sovereignty of the western. Immediately after, he summoned the states
of the whole kingdom, and with the same facility conferred a perpetual
and important donation on the church.
[ [x] Asserius, p. 3. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 2. Matth. West. p.
1, 8.]
The ecclesiastics, in those days of ignorance, made rapid advances in
the acquisition of power and grandeur; and inculcating the most absurd
and most interested doctrines, though they sometimes met, from the
contrary interests of the laity, with an opposition which it required
time and address to overcome, they found no obstacle in their reason
or understanding. Not content with the donations of land made them by
the Saxon princes and nobles, and with temporary oblations, from the
devotion of the people, they had cast a wishful eye on a vast revenue,
which they claimed as belonging to them by a sacred and indefeasible
title. However little versed in the Scriptures, they had been able to
discover that, under the Jewish law, a tenth of all the produce of
land was conferred on the priesthood; and forgetting, what they
themselves taught, that the moral part only of that law was obligatory
on Christians, they insisted that this donation conveyed a perpetual
property, inherent by divine right in those who officiated at the
altar. During some centuries, the whole scope of sermons and homilies
was directed to this purpose, and one would have imagined, from the
general tenor of these discourses, that all the practical parts of
Christianity were comprised in the exact and faithful payment of
tithes to the clergy [y]. Encouraged by their success in inculcating
these doctrines, they ventured farther than they were warranted even
by the Levitical law, and pretended to draw the tenth of all industry,
merchandise, wages of labourers, and pay of soldiers [z]; nay, some
canonists went so far as to affirm, that the clergy were entitled to
the tithe of the profits made by courtesans in the exercise of their
profession [a]. Though parishes had been instituted in England by
Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, near two centuries before [b], the
ecclesiastics had never yet been able to get possession of the tithes;
they therefore seized the present favourable opportunity of making
that acquisition, when a weak, superstitious prince filled the throne,
and when the people, discouraged by their losses from the Danes, and
terrified with the fear of future invasions, were susceptible of any
impression which bore the appearance of religion [c]. So meritorious
was this concession deemed by the English, that trusting entirely to
supernatural assistance, they neglected the ordinary means of safety,
and agreed, even in the present desperate extremity, that the revenues
of the church should be exempted from all burthens, though imposed for
national defence and security [d].
[ [y] Padre Paolo, sopra beneficii ecclesiastici, p. 51, 52. edit.
Colon. 1675 [z] Spell. Conc. vol. i. p. 268. [a] Padre Paolo, p.
132. [b] Parker, p. 77. [c] lngulph. p. 862. Selden’s Hist. of
Tithes, c. 8. [d] Asserius, p. 2. Chron. Sax. p. 76. W. Malmes.
lib. 2. cap. 2. Ethelward, lib. 3. cap. 3. M. West. p. 158.
Ingulph. p. 17. Alur. Beverl. p. 95]