Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain The Consolidation Of The Kingdoms byAllen, Grant (B.A.)
With the final triumph of Christianity, all the formative elements of
Anglo-Saxon Britain are complete. We see it, a rough conglomeration of
loosely-aggregated principalities, composed of a fighting aristocracy
and a body of unvalued serfs; while interspersed through its parts are
the bishops, monks, and clergy, centres of nascent civilisation for the
seething mass of noble barbarism. The country is divided into
agricultural colonies, and its only industry is agriculture, its only
wealth, land. We want but one more conspicuous change to make it into
the England of the Augustan Anglo-Saxon age—the reign of Eadgar—and
that one change is the consolidation of the discordant kingdoms under a
single loose over-lordship. To understand this final step, we must
glance briefly at the dull record of the political history.
Under Æthelfrith, Eadwine, and Oswiu, Northumbria had been the chief
power in England. But the eighth century is taken up with the greatness
of Mercia. Ecgfrith, the last great king of Northumbria, whose
over-lordship extended over the Picts of Galloway and the Cumbrians of
Strathclyde, endeavoured to carry his conquests beyond the Forth, and
annex the free land lying to the north of the old Roman line. He was
defeated and slain, and with him fell the supremacy of Northumbria.
Mercia, which already, under Penda and Wulfhere, had risen to the second
place, now assumed the first position among the Teutonic kingdoms.
Unfortunately we know little of the period of Mercian supremacy. The
West Saxon chronicle contains few notices of the rival state, and we are
thrown for information chiefly on the second-hand Latin historians of
the twelfth century. Æthelbald, the first powerful Mercian king
(716-755), "ravaged the land of the Northumbrians," and made Wessex
acknowledge his supremacy. By this time all the minor kingdoms had
practically become subject to the three great powers, though still
retaining their native princes: and Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria
shared between them, as suzerains, the whole of Teutonic Britain. The
meagre annals of the Chronicle, upon which alone (with the Charters and
Latin writers of later date) we rest after the death of Bæda, show us a
chaotic list of wars and battles between these three great powers
themselves, or between them and their vassals, or with the Welsh and
Devonians. Æthelbald was succeeded, after a short interval, by Offa,
whose reign of nearly forty years (758-796), is the first settled period
in English history. Offa ruled over the subject princes with rigour, and
seems to have made his power really felt. He drove the Prince of Powys
from Shrewsbury, and carried his ravages into the heart of Wales. He
conquered the land between the Severn and the Wye, and his dyke from
the Dee to the Severn, and the Wye, marked the new limits of the Welsh
and English borders; while his laws codified the customs of Mercia, as
those of Æthelberht and Ine had done with the customs of Kent and
Wessex. He set up for awhile an archbishopric at Lichfield, which seems
to mark his determination to erect Mercia into a sovereign power. He
also founded the great monastery of St. Alban's, and is said to have
established the English college at Rome, though another account
attributes it to Ine, the West Saxon. East Anglia, Kent, Essex, and
Sussex all acknowledged his supremacy. Karl the Great was then reviving
the Roman Empire in its Germanic form, and Offa ventured to correspond
with the Frank emperor as an equal. The possession of London, now a
Mercian city, gave Offa an interest in continental affairs; and the
growth of trade is marked by the fact that when a quarrel arose between
them, they formally closed the ports of their respective kingdoms
against each other's subjects.
Nevertheless, English kingship still remained a mere military office,
and consolidation, in our modern sense, was clearly impossible. Local
jealousies divided all the little kingdoms and their component
principalities; and any real subordination was impracticable amongst a
purely agricultural and warlike people, with no regular army, and
governed only by their own anarchic desires. Like the Afghans of the
present time, the early English were incapable of union, except in a
temporary way under the strong hand of a single warlike leader against a
common foe. As soon as that was removed, they fell asunder at once into
their original separateness. Hence the chaotic nature of our early
annals, in which it is impossible to discover any real order underlying
the perpetual flux of states and princes.
A single story from the Chronicle will sufficiently illustrate the type
of men whose actions make up the history of these predatory times. In
754, King Cuthred of the West Saxons died. His kinsman, Sigeberht,
succeeded him. One year later, however, Cynewulf and the witan deprived
Sigeberht of his kingdom, making over to him only the petty principality
of Hampshire, while Cynewulf himself reigned in his stead. After a time
Sigeberht murdered an ealdorman of his suite named Cymbra; whereupon
Cynewulf deprived him of his remaining territory and drove him forth
into the forest of the Weald. There he lived a wild life till a herdsman
met him in the forest and stabbed him, to avenge the death of his
master, Cymbra. Cynewulf, in turn, after spending his days in fighting
the Welsh, lost his life in a quarrel with Cyneheard, brother of the
outlawed Sigeberht. He had endeavoured to drive out the ætheling; but
Cyneheard surprised him at Merton, and slew him with all his thegns,
except one Welsh hostage. Next day, the king's friends, headed by the
ealdorman Osric, fell upon the ætheling, and killed him with all his
followers. In the very same year, Æthelbald of Mercia was killed
fighting at Seckington; and Offa drove out his successor, Beornred. Of
such murders, wars, surprises, and dynastic quarrels, the history of
the eighth century is full. But no modern reader need know more of them
than the fact that they existed, and that they prove the wholly
ungoverned and ungovernable nature of the early English temper.
Until the Danish invasions of the ninth century, the tribal kingdoms
still remained practically separate, and such cohesion as existed was
only secured for the purpose of temporary defence or aggression. Essex
kept its own kings under Æthelberht of Kent; Huiccia retained its royal
house under Æthelred of Mercia; and later on, Mercia itself had its
ealdormen, after the conquest by Ecgberht of Wessex. Each royal line
reigned under the supreme power until it died out naturally, like our
own great feudatories in India at the present day. "When Wessex and
Mercia have worked their way to the rival hegemonies," says Canon
Stubbs, "Sussex and Essex do not cease to be numbered among the
kingdoms, until their royal houses are extinct. When Wessex has
conquered Mercia and brought Northumbria on its knees, there are still
kings in both Northumbria and Mercia. The royal house of Kent dies out,
but the title of King of Kent is bestowed on an ætheling, first of the
Mercian, then of the West Saxon house. Until the Danish conquest, the
dependant royalties seem to have been spared; and even afterwards
organic union can scarcely be said to exist."
The final supremacy of the West Saxons was mainly brought about by the
Danish invasion. But the man who laid the foundation of the West Saxon
power was Ecgberht, the so-called first king of all England. Banished
from Wessex during his youth by one of the constant dynastic quarrels,
through the enmity of Offa, the young ætheling had taken refuge with
Karl the Great, at the court of Aachen, and there had learnt to
understand the rising statesmanship of the Frankish race and of the
restored Roman empire. The death of his enemy Beorhtric, in 802, left
the kingdom open to him: but the very day of his accession showed him
the character of the people whom he had come to rule. The men of
Worcester celebrated his arrival by a raid on the men of Wilts. "On that
ilk day," says the Chronicle, "rode Æthelhund, ealdorman of the Huiccias
[who were Mercians], over at Cynemæres ford; and there Weohstan the
ealdorman met him with the Wilts men [who were West Saxons:] and there
was a muckle fight, and both ealdormen were slain, and the Wilts men won
the day." For twenty years, Ecgberht was engaged in consolidating his
ancestral dominions: but at the end of that time, he found himself able
to attack the Mercians, who had lost Offa six years before Ecgberht's
return. In 825, the West Saxons met the Mercian host at Ellandun, "and
Ecgberht gained the day, and there was muckle slaughter." Therefore all
the Saxon name, held tributary by the Mercians, gathered about the Saxon
champion. "The Kentish folk, and they of Surrey, and the South Saxons,
and the East Saxons turned to him." In the same year, the East Anglians,
anxious to avoid the power of Mercia, "sought Ecgberht for peace and for
aid." Beornwulf, the Mercian king, marched against his revolted
tributaries: but the East Anglians fought him stoutly, and slew him and
his successor in two battles. Ecgberht followed up this step by annexing
Mercia in 829: after which he marched northward against the
Northumbrians, who at once "offered him obedience and peace; and they
thereupon parted." One year later, Ecgberht led an army against the
northern Welsh, and "reduced them to humble obedience." Thus the West
Saxon kingdom absorbed all the others, at least so far as a loose
over-lordship was concerned. Ecgberht had rivalled his master Karl by
founding, after a fashion, the empire of the English. But all the local
jealousies smouldered on as fiercely as ever, the under-kings retained
their several dominions, and Ecgberht's supremacy was merely one of
superior force, unconnected with any real organic unity of the kingdom
as a whole. Ecgberht himself generally bore the title of King of the
West Saxons, like his ancestors: and though in dealing with his Anglian
subjects he styled himself Rex Anglorum, that title perhaps means little
more than the humbler one of Rex Gewissorum, which he used in addressing
his people of the lesser principality. The real kingdom of the English
never existed before the days of Eadward the Elder, and scarcely before
the days of William the Norman and Henry the Angevin. As to the kingdom
of England, that was a far later invention of the feudal lawyers.
