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History of the English People - Book I Early England, 449-1071
Feudalism and the Monarchy - 954-1071
by Green, John Richard (M.A.)
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Absorption of the Northmen
The fierceness of the northman's onset had hidden the real character of
his attack. To the men who first fronted the pirates it seemed as though
the story of the world had gone back to the days when the German
barbarians first broke in upon the civilized world. It was so above all
in Britain. All that tradition told of the Englishmen's own attack on the
island was seen in the northmen's attack on it. Boats of marauders from
the northern seas again swarmed off the British coast; church and town
were again the special object of attack; the invaders again settled on
the conquered soil; heathendom again proved stronger than the faith of
Christ. But the issues of the two attacks showed the mighty difference
between them. When the English ceased from their onset upon Roman
Britain, Roman Britain had disappeared, and a new people of conquerors
stood alone on the conquered land. The Northern storm on the other hand
left land, people, government unchanged. England remained a country of
Englishmen. The conquerors sank into the mass of the conquered, and Woden
yielded without a struggle to Christ. The strife between Briton and
Englishman was in fact a strife between men of different races, while the
strife between northman and Englishman was a strife between men whose
race was the same. The followers of Hengest or of Ida were men utterly
alien from the life of Britain, strange to its arts, its culture, its
wealth, as they were strange to the social degradation which Rome had
brought on its province. But the northman was little more than an
Englishman bringing back to an England which had drifted far from its
origin the barbaric life of its earliest forefathers. Nowhere throughout
Europe was the fight so fierce, because nowhere else were the fighters
men of one blood and one speech. But just for this reason the union of
the combatants was nowhere so peaceful or so complete. The victory of the
house of Ælfred only hastened a process of fusion which was already going
on. From the first moment of his settlement in the Danelaw the northman
had been passing into an Englishman. The settlers were few; they were
scattered among a large population; in tongue, in manner, in institutions
there was little to distinguish them from the men among whom they dwelt.
Moreover their national temper helped on the process of assimilation.
Even in France, where difference of language and difference of custom
seemed to interpose an impassable barrier between the northman settled in
Normandy and his neighbours, he was fast becoming a Frenchman. In
England, where no such barriers existed, the assimilation was even
quicker. The two peoples soon became confounded. In a few years a
northman in blood was Archbishop of Canterbury and another northman in
blood was Archbishop of York.
Top
The three Northern Kingdoms
The fusion might have been delayed if not wholly averted by continued
descents from the Scandinavian homeland. But with Eadred's reign the long
attack which the northman had directed against western Christendom came,
for a while at least, to an end. On the world which it assailed its
results had been immense. It had utterly changed the face of the west.
The empire of Ecgberht, the empire of Charles the Great, had been alike
dashed to pieces. But break and change as it might, Christendom had held
the northmen at bay. The Scandinavian power which had grown up on the
western seas had disappeared like a dream. In Ireland the northman's rule
had dwindled to the holding of a few coast towns. In France his
settlements had shrunk to the one settlement of Normandy. In England
every northman was a subject of the English King. Even the empire of the
seas had passed from the sea-kings' hands. It was an English and not a
Scandinavian fleet that for fifty years to come held mastery in the
English and the Irish Channels. With Eadred's victory in fact the
struggle seemed to have reached its close. Stray pirate boats still hung
off headland and coast; stray wikings still shoved out in springtide to
gather booty. But for nearly half-a-century to come no great pirate fleet
made its way to the west, or landed on the shores of Britain. The
energies of the northmen were in fact absorbed through these years in the
political changes of Scandinavia itself. The old isolation of fiord from
fiord and dale from dale was breaking down. The little commonwealths
which had held so jealously aloof from each other were being drawn
together whether they would or no. In each of the three regions of the
north great kingdoms were growing up. In Sweden King Eric made himself
lord of the petty states about him. In Denmark King Gorm built up in the
same way a monarchy of the Danes. Norway itself was the first to become a
single monarchy. Legend told how one of its many rulers, Harald of
Westfold, sent his men to bring him Gytha of Hordaland, a girl he had
chosen for wife, and how Gytha sent his men back again with taunts at his
petty realm. The taunts went home, and Harald vowed never to clip or comb
his hair till he had made all Norway his own. So every springtide came
war and hosting, harrying and burning, till a great fight at Hafursfiord
settled the matter, and Harald "Ugly-Head," as men called him while the
strife lasted, was free to shear his locks again and became Harald
"Fair-Hair." The Northmen loved no master, and a great multitude fled out
of the country, some pushing as far as Iceland and colonizing it, some
swarming to the Orkneys and Hebrides till Harald harried them out again
and the sea-kings sailed southward to join Guthrum's host in the Rhine
country or follow Hrolf to his fights on the Seine. But little by little
the land settled down into order, and the three Scandinavian realms
gathered strength for new efforts which were to leave their mark on our
after history.
Top
England and its King
But of the new danger which threatened it in this union of the north
England knew little. The storm seemed to have drifted utterly away; and
the land passed from a hundred years of ceaseless conflict into a time of
peace. Here as elsewhere the northman had failed in his purpose of
conquest; but here as elsewhere he had done a mighty work. In shattering
the empire of Charles the Great he had given birth to the nations of
modern Europe. In his long strife with Englishmen he had created an
English people. The national union which had been brought about for a
moment by the sword of Ecgberht was a union of sheer force which broke
down at the first blow of the sea-robbers. The black boats of the
northmen were so many wedges that split up the fabric of the
roughly-built realm. But the very agency which destroyed the new England
was destined to bring it back again, and to breathe into it a life that
made its union real. The peoples who had so long looked on each other as
enemies found themselves fronted by a common foe. They were thrown
together by a common danger and the need of a common defence. Their
common faith grew into a national bond as religion struggled hand in hand
with England itself against the heathen of the north. They recognized a
common king as a common struggle changed Ælfred and his sons from mere
leaders of West-Saxons into leaders of all Englishmen in their fight with
the stranger. And when the work which Ælfred set his house to do was
done, when the yoke of the northman was lifted from the last of his
conquests, Engle and Saxon, Northumbrian and Mercian, spent with the
battle for a common freedom and a common country, knew themselves in the
hour of their deliverance as an English people.
The new people found its centre in the King. The heightening of the royal
power was a direct outcome of the war. The dying out of other royal
stocks left the house of Cerdic the one line of hereditary kingship. But
it was the war with the northmen that raised Ælfred and his sons from
tribal leaders into national kings. The long series of triumphs which
wrested the land from the stranger begot a new and universal loyalty;
while the wider dominion which their success bequeathed removed the kings
further and further from their people, lifted them higher and higher
above the nobles, and clothed them more and more with a mysterious
dignity. Above all the religious character of the war against the
northmen gave a religious character to the sovereigns who waged it. The
king, if he was no longer sacred as the son of Woden, became yet more
sacred as "the Lord's Anointed." By the very fact of his consecration he
was pledged to a religious rule, to justice, mercy, and good government;
but his "hallowing" invested him also with a power drawn not from the
will of man or the assent of his subjects but from the will of God, and
treason against him became the worst of crimes. Every reign lifted the
sovereign higher in the social scale. The bishop, once ranked equal with
him in value of life, sank to the level of the ealdorman. The ealdorman
himself, once the hereditary ruler of a smaller state, became a mere
delegate of the national king, with an authority curtailed in every shire
by that of the royal shire-reeves, officers charged with levying the
royal revenues and destined ultimately to absorb judicial authority.
Among the later nobility of the thegns personal service with such a lord
was held not to degrade but to ennoble. "Horse-thegn," and "cup-thegn,"
and "border," the constable, butler, and treasurer, found themselves
officers of state; and the developement of politics, the wider extension
of home and foreign affairs were already transforming these royal
officers into a standing council or ministry for the transaction of the
ordinary administrative business and the reception of judicial appeals.
Such a ministry, composed of thegns or prelates nominated by the king,
and constituting in itself a large part of the Witenagemot when that
assembly was gathered for legislative purposes, drew the actual control
of affairs more and more into the hands of the sovereign himself.
Top
Growth of Feudalism
But the king's power was still a personal power. He had to be everywhere
and to see for himself that everything he willed was done. The royal
claims lay still far ahead of the real strength of the Crown. There was a
want of administrative machinery in actual connexion with the government,
responsible to it, drawing its force directly from it, and working
automatically in its name even in moments when the royal power was itself
weak or wavering. The Crown was strong under a king who was strong, whose
personal action was felt everywhere throughout the realm, whose dread lay
on every reeve and ealdorman. But with a weak king the Crown was weak.
Ealdor-men, provincial witenagemots, local jurisdictions, ceased to move
at the royal bidding the moment the direct royal pressure was loosened or
removed. Enfeebled as they were, the old provincial jealousies, the old
tendency to severance and isolation lingered on and woke afresh when the
crown fell to a nerveless ruler or to a child. And at the moment we have
reached the royal power and the national union it embodied had to battle
with fresh tendencies towards national disintegration which sprang like
itself from the struggle with the northman. The tendency towards personal
dependence and towards a social organization based on personal dependence
received an overpowering impulse from the strife. The long insecurity of
a century of warfare drove the ceorl, the free tiller of the soil, to
seek protection more and more from the thegn beside him. The freeman
"commended" himself to a lord who promised aid, and as the price of this
shelter he surrendered his freehold to receive it back as a fief laden
with conditions of military service. The principle of personal allegiance
which was embodied in the very notion of thegnhood, itself tended to
widen into a theory of general dependence. From Ælfred's day it was
assumed that no man could exist without a lord. The "lordless man" became
a sort of outlaw in the realm. The free man, the very base of the older
English constitution, died down more and more into the "villein," the man
who did suit and service to a master, who followed him to the field, who
looked to his court for justice, who rendered days of service in his
demesne. The same tendencies drew the lesser thegns around the greater
nobles, and these around the provincial ealdormen. The ealdormen had
hardly been dwarfed into lieutenants of the national sovereign before
they again began to rise into petty kings, and in the century which
follows we see Mercian or Northumbrian thegns following a Mercian or
Northumbrian ealdorman to the field though it were against the lord of
the land. Even the constitutional forms which sprang from the old English
freedom tended to invest the higher nobles with a commanding power. In
the "great meeting" of the Witenagemot or Assembly of the Wise lay the
rule of the realm. It represented the whole English people, as the
wise-moots of each kingdom represented the separate peoples of each; and
its powers were as supreme in the wider field as theirs in the narrower.
It could elect or depose the King. To it belonged the higher justice, the
imposition of taxes, the making of laws, the conclusion of treaties, the
control of wars, the disposal of public lands, the appointment of great
officers of state. But such a meeting necessarily differed greatly in
constitution from the Witan of the lesser kingdoms. The individual
freeman, save when the host was gathered together, could hardly take part
in its deliberations. The only relic of its popular character lay at last
in the ring of citizens who gathered round the Wise Men at London or
Winchester, and shouted their "aye" or "nay" at the election of a king.
Distance and the hardships of travel made the presence of the lesser
thegns as rare as that of the freemen; and the national council
practically shrank into a gathering of the ealdormen, the bishops, and
the officers of the crown.
Top
Feudalism and the Monarchy
The old English democracy had thus all but passed into an oligarchy of
the narrowest kind. The feudal movement which in other lands was breaking
up every nation into a mass of loosely-knit states with nobles at their
head who owned little save a nominal allegiance to their king threatened
to break up England itself. What hindered its triumph was the power of
the Crown, and it is the story of this struggle between the monarchy and
these tendencies to feudal isolation which fills the period between the
death of Eadred and the conquest of the Norman. It was a struggle which
England shared with the rest of the western world, but its issue here was
a peculiar one. In other countries feudalism won an easy victory over the
central government. In England alone the monarchy was strong enough to
hold feudalism at bay. Powerful as he might be, the English ealdorman
never succeeded in becoming really hereditary or independent of the
Crown. Kings as weak as Æthelred could drive ealdormen into exile and
could replace them by fresh nominees. If the Witenagemot enabled the
great nobles to bring their power to bear directly on the Crown, it
preserved at any rate a feeling of national unity and was forced to back
the Crown against individual revolt. The Church too never became
feudalized. The bishop clung to the Crown, and the bishop remained a
great social and political power. As local in area as the ealdorman, for
the province was his diocese and he sat by his side in the local
Witenagemot, he furnished a standing check on the independence of the
great nobles. But if feudalism proved too weak to conquer the monarchy,
it was strong enough to paralyze its action. Neither of the two forces
could master the other, but each could weaken the other, and throughout
the whole period of their conflict England lay a prey to disorder within
and to insult from without.
The first sign of these troubles was seen when the death of Eadred in 955
handed over the realm to a child king, his nephew Eadwig. Eadwig was
swayed by a woman of high lineage, Æthelgifu; and the quarrel between her
and the older counsellors of Eadred broke into open strife at the
coronation feast. On the young king's insolent withdrawal to her chamber
Dunstan, at the bidding of the Witan, drew him roughly back to his seat.
But the feast was no sooner ended than a sentence of outlawry drove the
abbot over sea, while the triumph of Æthelgifu was crowned in 957 by the
marriage of her daughter to the king and the spoliation of the
monasteries which Dunstan had befriended. As the new queen was Eadwig's
kinswoman the religious opinion of the day regarded his marriage as
incestuous, and it was followed by a revolution. At the opening of 958
Archbishop Odo parted the King from his wife by solemn sentence; while
the Mercians and Northumbrians rose in revolt, proclaimed Eadwig's
brother Eadgar their king, and recalled Dunstan. The death of Eadwig a
few months later restored the unity of the realm; but his successor
Eadgar was only a boy of sixteen and at the outset of his reign the
direction of affairs must have lain in the hands of Dunstan, whose
elevation to the see of Canterbury set him at the head of the Church as
of the State. The noblest tribute to his rule lies in the silence of our
chroniclers. His work indeed was a work of settlement, and such a work
was best done by the simple enforcement of peace. During the years of
rest in which King and Primate enforced justice and order northman and
Englishman drew together into a single people. Their union was the result
of no direct policy of fusion; on the contrary Dunstan's policy preserved
to the conquered Danelaw its local rights and local usages. But he
recognized the men of the Danelaw as Englishmen, he employed northmen in
the royal service, and promoted them to high posts in Church and State.
For the rest he trusted to time, and time justified his trust. The fusion
was marked by a memorable change in the name of the land. Slowly as the
conquering tribes had learned to know themselves, by the one national
name of Englishmen, they learned yet more slowly to stamp their name on
the land they had won. It was not till Eadgar's day that the name of
Britain passed into the name of Engla-land, the land of Englishmen,
England. The same vigorous rule which secured rest for the country during
these years of national union told on the growth of material prosperity.
Commerce sprang into a wider life. Its extension is seen in the complaint
that men learned fierceness from the Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from
the Fleming, and drunkenness from the Dane. The laws of Æthelred which
provide for the protection and regulation of foreign trade only recognize
a state of things which grew up under Eadgar. "Men of the Empire,"
traders of Lower Lorraine and the Rhine-land, "Men of Rouen," traders
from the new Norman duchy of the Seine, were seen in the streets of
London. It was in Eadgar's day indeed that London rose to the commercial
greatness it has held ever since.
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Eadward the Martyr
Though Eadgar reigned for sixteen years, he was still in the prime of
manhood when he died in 975. His death gave a fresh opening to the great
nobles. He had bequeathed the crown to his elder son Eadward; but the
ealdorman of East-Anglia, Æthelwine, rose at once to set a younger child,
Æthelred, on the throne. But the two primates of Canterbury and York who
had joined in setting the crown on the head of Eadgar now joined in
setting it on the head of Eadward, and Dunstan remained as before master
of the realm. The boy's reign however was troubled by strife between the
monastic party and their opponents till in 979 the quarrel was cut short
by his murder at Corfe, and with the accession of Æthelred, the power of
Dunstan made way for that of ealdorman Æthelwine and the queen-mother.
Some years of tranquillity followed this victory; but though Æthelwine
preserved order at home he showed little sense of the danger which
threatened from abroad. The North was girding itself for a fresh, onset
on England. The Scandinavian peoples had drawn together into their
kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; and it was no longer in isolated
bands but in national hosts that they were about to seek conquests in the
South. As Æthelred drew to manhood some chance descents on the coast told
of this fresh stir in the North, and the usual result of the northman's
presence was seen in new risings among the Welsh.
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Æthelred
In 991 ealdorman Brihtnoth of East-Anglia fell in battle with a Norwegian
force at Maldon, and the withdrawal of the pirates had to be bought by
money. Æthelwine too died at this moment, and the death of the two
ealdormen left Æthelred free to act as King. But his aim was rather to
save the Crown from his nobles than England from the northmen. Handsome
and pleasant of address, the young King's pride showed itself in a string
of imperial titles, and his restless and self-confident temper drove him
to push the pretensions of the Crown to their furthest extent. His aim
throughout his reign was to free himself from the dictation of the great
nobles, and it was his indifference to their "rede" or counsel that won
him the name of "Æthelred the Redeless." From the first he struck boldly
at his foes, and Ælfric, the ealdorman of Central Wessex, whom the death
of his rival Æthelwine left supreme in the realm, was driven possibly by
fear to desert to a Danish force which he was sent in 992 to drive from
the coast. Æthelred turned from his triumph at home to meet the forces of
the Danish and Norwegian kings, Swein and Olaf, which anchored off London
in 994. His policy through-out was a policy of diplomacy rather than of
arms, and a treaty of subsidy gave time for intrigues which parted the
invaders till troubles at home drew both again to the North. Æthelrod
took quick advantage of his success at home and abroad; the place of the
great ealdormen in the royal councils was taken by court-thegns, in whom
we see the rudiments of a ministry, while the king's fleet attacked the
pirates' haunts in Cumberland and the Cotentin. But in spite of all this
activity the news of a fresh invasion found England more weak and broken
than ever. The rise of the "new men" only widened the breach between the
court and the great nobles, and their resentment showed itself in delays
which foiled every attempt of Æthelred to meet the pirate-bands who still
clung to the coast.
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Swein
They came probably from the other side of the Channel, and it was to
clear them away as well as secure himself against Swein's threatened
descent that Æthelred took a step which brought England in contact with a
land over-sea. Normandy, where the northmen had settled a hundred years
before, was now growing into a great power, and it was to win the
friendship of Normandy and to close its harbours against Swein that
Æthelred in 1002 took the Norman Duke's daughter, Emma, to wife. The same
dread of invasion gave birth to a panic of treason from the northern
mercenaries whom the king had drawn to settle in the land as a fighting
force against their brethren; and an order of Æthelred brought about a
general massacre of them on St. Brice's day. Wedding and murder however
proved feeble defences against Swein. His fleet reached the coast in
1003, and for four years he marched through the length and breadth of
southern and eastern England, "lighting his war-beacons as he went" in
blazing homestead and town. Then for a heavy bribe he withdrew, to
prepare for a later and more terrible onset. But there was no rest for
the realm. The fiercest of the Norwegian jarls took his place, and from
Wessex the war extended over Mercia and East-Anglia. In 1012 Canterbury
was taken and sacked, Æltheah the Archbishop dragged to Greenwich, and
there in default of ransom brutally slain. The Danes set him in the midst
of their husting, pelting him with bones and skulls of oxen, till one
more pitiful than the rest clove his head with an axe. Meanwhile the
court was torn with intrigue and strife, with quarrels between the
court-thegns in their greed of power and yet fiercer quarrels between
these favourites and the nobles whom they superseded in the royal
councils. The King's policy of finding aid among his new ministers broke
down when these became themselves ealdormen. With their local position
they took up the feudal claims of independence; and Eadric, whom Æthelred
raised to be ealdorman of Mercia, became a power that overawed the Crown.
In this paralysis of the central authority all organization and union was
lost. "Shire would not help other" when Swein returned in 1013. The war
was terrible but short. Everywhere the country was pitilessly harried,
churches plundered, men slaughtered. But, with the one exception of
London, there was no attempt at resistance. Oxford and Winchester flung
open their gates. The thegns of Wessex submitted to the northmen at Bath.
Even London was forced at last to give way, and Æthelred fled over-sea to
a refuge in Normandy.
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Cnut
He was soon called back again. In the opening of 1014 Swein died suddenly
at Gainsborough; and the spell of terror was broken. The Witan recalled
"their own born lord," and Æthelred returned to see the Danish fleet
under Swein's son, Cnut, sail away to the North. It was but to plan a
more terrible return. Youth of nineteen as he was, Cnut showed from the
first the vigour of his temper. Setting aside his brother he made himself
king of Denmark; and at once gathered a splendid fleet for a fresh attack
on England, whose king and nobles were again at strife, and where a
bitter quarrel between ealdorman Eadric of Mercia and Æthelred's son
Eadmund Ironside broke the strength of the realm. The desertion of Eadric
to Cnut as soon as he appeared off the coast threw open England to his
arms; Wessex and Mercia submitted to him; and though the loyalty of
London enabled Eadmund, when his father's death raised him in 1016 to the
throne, to struggle bravely for a few months against the Danes, a
decisive overthrow at Assandun and a treaty of partition which this
wrested from him at Olney were soon followed by the young king's death.
Cnut was left master of the realm. His first acts of government showed
little but the temper of the mere northman, passionate, revengeful,
uniting the guile of the savage with his thirst for blood. Eadric of
Mercia, whose aid had given him the Crown, was felled by an axe-blow at
the king's signal; a murder removed Eadwig, the brother of Eadmund
Ironside, while the children of Eadmund were hunted even into Hungary by
his ruthless hate. But from a savage such as this the young conqueror
rose abruptly into a wise and temperate king. His aim during twenty years
seems to have been to obliterate from men's minds the foreign character
of his rule and the bloodshed in which it had begun.
Conqueror indeed as he was, the Dane was no foreigner in the sense that
the Norman was a foreigner after him. His language differed little from
the English tongue. He brought in no new system of tenure or government.
Cnut ruled in fact not as a foreign conqueror but as a native king. He
dismissed his Danish host, and retaining only a trained band of household
troops or "hus-carls" to serve as a body-guard relied boldly for support
within his realm on the justice and good government he secured it. He
fell back on "Eadgar's Law," on the old constitution of the realm, for
his rule of government; and owned no difference between Dane and
Englishman among his subjects. He identified himself even with the
patriotism which had withstood the stranger. The Church had been the
centre of the national resistance; Archbishop Ælfheah had been slain by
Danish hands. But Cnut sought the friendship of the Church; he translated
Ælfheah's body with great pomp to Canterbury; he atoned for his father's
ravages by gifts to the religious houses; he protected English pilgrims
even against the robber-lords of the Alps. His love for monks broke out
in a song which he composed as he listened to their chaunt at Ely.
"Merrily sang the monks of Ely when Cnut King rowed by" across the vast
fen-waters that surrounded their abbey. "Row, boatmen, near the land, and
hear we these monks sing." A letter which Cnut wrote after twelve years
of rule to his English subjects marks the grandeur of his character and
the noble conception he had formed of kingship. "I have vowed to God to
lead a right life in all things," wrote the king, "to rule justly and
piously my realms and subjects, and to administer just judgement to all.
If heretofore I have done aught beyond what was just, through headiness
or negligence of youth, I am ready, with God's help, to amend it
utterly." No royal officer, either for fear of the king or for favour of
any, is to consent to injustice, none is to do wrong to rich or poor "as
they would value my friendship and their own well-being." He especially
denounces unfair exactions: "I have no need that money be heaped together
for me by unjust demands." "I have sent this letter before me," Cnut
ends, "that all the people of my realm may rejoice in my well-doing; for
as you yourselves know, never have I spared, nor will I spare, to spend
myself and my toil in what is needful and good for my people."
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Cnut and Scotland
Cnut's greatest gift to his people was that of peace. With him began the
long internal tranquillity which was from this time to be the keynote of
the national history. Without, the Dane was no longer a terror; on the
contrary it was English ships and English soldiers who now appeared in
the North and followed Cnut in his campaigns against Wend or Norwegian.
Within, the exhaustion which follows a long anarchy gave fresh strength
to the Crown, and Cnut's own ruling temper was backed by the force of
hus-carls at his disposal. The four Earls of Northumberland, Mercia,
Wessex, and East-Anglia, whom he set in the place of the older caldormen,
knew themselves to be the creatures of his will; the ablest indeed of
their number, Godwine, earl of Wessex, was the minister or close
counsellor of the King. The troubles along the Northern border were ended
by a memorable act of policy. From Eadgar's day the Scots had pressed
further and further across the Firth of Forth till a victory of their
king Malcolm over Earl Eadwulf at Carham in 1018 made him master of
Northern Northumbria. In 1031 Cnut advanced to the North, but the quarrel
ended in a formal cession of the district between the Forth and the
Tweed, Lothian as it was called, to the Scot-king on his doing homage to
Cnut. The gain told at once on the character of the Northern kingdom. The
kings of the Scots had till now been rulers simply of Gaelic and Celtic
peoples; but from the moment that Lothian with its English farmers and
English seamen became a part of their dominions it became the most
important part. The kings fixed their seat at Edinburgh, and in the midst
of an English population passed from Gaelic chieftains into the Saxon
rulers of a mingled people.
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Cnut's Sons
But the greatness of Cnut's rule hung solely on the greatness of his
temper, and the Danish power was shaken by his death in 1035. The empire
he had built up at once fell to pieces. He had bequeathed both England
and Denmark to his son Harthacnut; but the boy's absence enabled his
brother, Harald Harefoot, to acquire all England save Godwine's earldom
of Wessex, and in the end even Godwine was forced to submit to him.
Harald's death in 1040 averted a conflict between the brothers, and
placed Harthacnut quietly on the throne. But the love which Cnut's
justice had won turned to hatred before the lawlessness of his
successors. The long peace sickened men of their bloodshed and violence.
"Never was a bloodier deed done in the land since the Danes came," ran a
popular song, when Harald's men seized Ælfred, a brother of Eadmund
Ironside, who returned to England from Normandy where he had found a
refuge since his father's flight to its shores. Every tenth man among his
followers was killed, the rest sold for slaves, and Ælfred's eyes torn
out at Ely. Harthacnut, more savage than his predecessor, dug up his
brother's body and flung it into a marsh; while a rising at Worcester
against his hus-carls was punished by the burning of the town and the
pillage of the shire. The young king's death was no less brutal than his
life; in 1042 "he died as he stood at his drink in the house of Osgod
Clapa at Lambeth." England wearied of rulers such as these: but their
crimes helped her to free herself from the impossible dream of Cnut. The
North, still more barbarous than herself, could give her no new element
of progress or civilization. It was the consciousness of this and a
hatred of rulers such as Harald and Harthacnut which co-operated with the
old feeling of reverence for the past in calling back the line of Ælfred
to the throne.
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Eadward the Confessor
It is in such transitional moments of a nation's history that it needs
the cool prudence, the sensitive selfishness, the quick perception of
what is possible, which distinguished the adroit politician whom the
death of Cnut left supreme in England. Originally of obscure origin,
Godwine's ability had raised him high in the royal favour; he was allied
to Cnut by marriage, entrusted by him with the earldom of Wessex, and at
last made the Viceroy or justiciar of the King in the government of the
realm. In the wars of Scandinavia he had shown courage and skill at the
head of a body of English troops, but his true field of action lay at
home. Shrewd, eloquent, an active administrator, Godwine united
vigilance, industry, and caution with a singular dexterity in the
management of men. During the troubled years that followed the death of
Cnut he did his best to continue his master's policy in securing the
internal union of England under a Danish sovereign and in preserving her
connexion with the North. But at the death of Harthacnut Cnut's policy
had become impossible, and abandoning the Danish cause Godwine drifted
with the tide of popular feeling which called Eadward, the one living son
of Æthelred, to the throne. Eadward had lived from his youth in exile at
the court of Normandy. A halo of tenderness spread in after-time round
this last king of the old English stock; legends told of his pious
simplicity, his blitheness and gentleness of mood, the holiness that
gained him his name of "Confessor" and enshrined him as a saint in his
abbey-church at Westminster. Gleemen sang in manlier tones of the long
peace and glories of his reign, how warriors and wise counsellors stood
round his throne, and Welsh and Scot and Briton obeyed him. His was the
one figure that stood out bright against the darkness when England lay
trodden under foot by Norman conquerors; and so dear became his memory
that liberty and independence itself seemed incarnate in his name.
Instead of freedom, the subjects of William or Henry called for the "good
laws of Eadward the Confessor." But it was as a mere shadow of the past
that the exile really returned to the throne of Ælfred; there was
something shadow-like in his thin form, his delicate complexion, his
transparent womanly hands; and it is almost as a shadow that he glides
over the political stage. The work of government was done by sterner
hands.
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Godwine
Throughout his earlier reign, in fact, England lay in the hands of its
three Earls, Siward of Northumbria, Leofric of Mercia, and Godwine of
Wessex, and it seemed as if the feudal tendency to provincial separation
against which Æthelred had struggled was to triumph with the death of
Cnut. What hindered this severance was the greed of Godwine. Siward was
isolated in the North: Leofric's earldom was but a fragment of Mercia.
But the Earl of Wessex, already master of the wealthiest part of England,
seized district after district for his house. His son Swein secured an
earldom in the south-west; his son Harold became earl of East-Anglia; his
nephew Beorn was established in Central England: while the marriage of
his daughter Eadgyth to the king himself gave Godwine a hold upon the
throne. Policy led the earl, as it led his son, rather to aim at winning
England itself than at breaking up England to win a mere fief in it. But
his aim found a sudden check through the lawlessness of his son Swein.
Swein seduced the abbess of Leominster, sent her home again with a yet
more outrageous demand of her hand in marriage, and on the king's refusal
to grant it fled from the realm. Godwine's influence secured his pardon,
but on his very return to seek it Swein murdered his cousin Beorn who had
opposed the reconciliation and again fled to Flanders. A storm of
national indignation followed him over-sea. The meeting of the Wise men
branded him as "nithing," the "utterly worthless," yet in a year his
father wrested a new pardon from the King and restored him to his
earldom. The scandalous inlawing of such a criminal left Godwine alone in
a struggle which soon arose with Eadward himself. The king was a stranger
in his realm, and his sympathies lay naturally with the home and friends
of his youth and exile. He spoke the Norman tongue. He used in Norman
fashion a seal for his charters. He set Norman favourites in the highest
posts of Church and State. Foreigners such as these, though hostile to
the minister, were powerless against Godwine's influence and ability, and
when at a later time they ventured to stand alone against him they fell
without a blow. But the general ill-will at Swein's inlawing enabled them
to stir Eadward to attack the earl, and in 1051 a trivial quarrel brought
the opportunity of a decisive break with him. On his return from a visit
to the court Eustace, Count of Boulogne, the husband of the king's
sister, demanded quarters for his train in Dover. Strife arose, and many
both of the burghers and foreigners were slain. All Godwine's better
nature withstood Eadward when the king angrily bade him exact vengeance
from the town for the affront to his kinsman; and he claimed a fair trial
for the townsmen. But Eadward looked on his refusal as an outrage, and
the quarrel widened into open strife. Godwine at once gathered his forces
and marched upon Gloucester, demanding the expulsion of the foreign
favourites. But even in a just quarrel the country was cold in his
support. The earls of Mercia and Northumberland united their forces to
those of Eadward at Gloucester, and marched with the king to a gathering
of the Witenagemot at London. Godwine again appeared in arms, but Swein's
outlawry was renewed, and the Earl of Wessex, declining with his usual
prudence a useless struggle, withdrew over sea to Flanders.
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Harold
But the wrath of the nation was appeased by his fall. Great as were
Godwine's faults, he was the one man who now stood between England and
the rule of the strangers who flocked to the Court; and a year had hardly
passed when he was strong enough to return. At the appearance of his
fleet in the Thames in 1052 Eadward was once more forced to yield. The
foreign prelates and bishops fled over sea, outlawed by the same meeting
of the Wise men which restored Godwine to his home. But he returned only
to die, and the direction of affairs passed quietly to his son Harold.
Harold came to power unfettered by the obstacles which beset his father,
and for twelve years he was the actual governor of the realm. The
courage, the ability, the genius for administration, the ambition and
subtlety of Godwine were found again in his son. In the internal
government of England he followed out his father's policy while avoiding
its excesses. Peace was preserved, justice administered, and the realm
increased in wealth and prosperity. Its gold work and embroidery became
famous in the markets of Flanders and France. Disturbances from without
were crushed sternly and rapidly; Harold's military talents displayed
themselves in a campaign against Wales, and in the boldness and rapidity
with which, arming his troops with weapons adapted for mountain conflict,
he penetrated to the heart of its fastnesses and reduced the country to
complete submission. With the gift of the Northumbrian earldom on
Siward's death to his brother Tostig all England save a small part of the
older Mercia lay in the hands of the house of Godwine, and as the waning
health of the king, the death of his nephew, the son of Eadmund who had
returned from Hungary as his heir, and the childhood of the Ætheling
Eadgar who stood next in blood, removed obstacle after obstacle to his
plans, Harold patiently but steadily moved forward to the throne.
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Normandy
But his advance was watched by one even more able and ambitious than
himself. For the last half-century England had been drawing nearer to the
Norman land which fronted it across the Channel. As we pass nowadays
through Normandy, it is English history which is round about us. The name
of hamlet after hamlet has memories for English ears; a fragment of
castle wall marks the home of the Bruce, a tiny village preserves the
name of the Percy. The very look of the country and its people seem
familiar to us; the Norman peasant in his cap and blouse recalls the
build and features of the small English farmer; the fields about Caen,
with their dense hedgerows, their elms, their apple-orchards, are the
very picture of an English country-side. Huge cathedrals lift themselves
over the red-tiled roofs of little market towns, the models of stately
fabrics which superseded the lowlier churches of Ælfred or Dunstan, while
the windy heights that look over orchard and meadowland are crowned with
the square grey keeps which Normandy gave to the cliffs of Richmond and
the banks of Thames. It was Hrolf the Ganger, or Walker, a pirate leader
like Guthrum or Hasting, who wrested this land from the French king,
Charles the Simple, in 912, at the moment when Ælfred's children were
beginning their conquest of the English Danelaw. The treaty of
Clair-on-Epte in which France purchased peace by this cession of the
coast was a close imitation of the Peace of Wedmore. Hrolf, like Guthrum,
was baptized, received the king's daughter in marriage, and became his
vassal for the territory which now took the name of "the Northman's land"
or Normandy. But vassalage and the new faith sat lightly on the Dane. No
such ties of blood and speech tended to unite the northman with the
French among whom he settled along the Seine as united him to the
Englishmen among whom he settled along the Humber. William Longsword, the
son of Hrolf, though wavering towards France and Christianity, remained a
northman in heart; he called in a Danish colony to occupy his conquest of
the Cotentin, the peninsula which runs out from St. Michael's Mount to
the cliffs of Cherbourg, and reared his boy among the northmen of Bayeux
where the Danish tongue and fashions most stubbornly held their own. A
heathen reaction followed his death, and the bulk of the Normans, with
the child Duke Richard, fell away for the time from Christianity, while
new pirate-fleets came swarming up the Seine. To the close of the century
the whole people were still "Pirates" to the French around them, their
land the "Pirates' land," their Duke the "Pirates' Duke." Yet in the end
the same forces which merged the Dane in the Englishman told even more
powerfully on the Dane in France. No race has ever shown a greater power
of absorbing all the nobler characteristics of the peoples with whom they
came in contact, or of infusing their own energy into them. During the
long reign of Duke Richard the Fearless, the son of William Longsword, a
reign which lasted from 945 to 996, the heathen Norman pirates became
French Christians and feudal at heart. The old Norse language lived only
at Bayeux and in a few local names. As the old Northern freedom died
silently away, the descendants of the pirates became feudal nobles and
the "Pirates' land" sank into the most loyal of the fiefs of France.
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Duke William
From the moment of their settlement on the Frankish coast, the Normans
had been jealously watched by the English kings; and the anxiety of
Æthelred for their friendship set a Norman woman on the English throne.
The marriage of Emma with Æthelred brought about a close political
connexion between the two countries. It was in Normandy that the King
found a refuge from Swein's invasion, and his younger boys grew up in
exile at the Norman court. Their presence there drew the eyes of every
Norman to the rich land which offered so tempting a prey across the
Channel. The energy which they had shown in winning their land from the
Franks, in absorbing the French civilization and the French religion, was
now showing itself in adventures on far-off shores, in crusades against
the Moslem of Spain or the Arabs of Sicily. It was this spirit of
adventure that roused the Norman Duke Robert to sail against England in
Cnut's day under pretext of setting Æthelred's children on its throne,
but the wreck of his fleet in a storm put an end to a project which might
have anticipated the work of his son. It was that son, William the Great,
as men of his own day styled him, William the Conqueror as he was to
stamp himself by one event on English history, who was now Duke of
Normandy. The full grandeur of his indomitable will, his large and
patient statesmanship, the loftiness of aim which lifts him out of the
petty incidents of his age, were as yet only partly disclosed. But there
never had been a moment from his boyhood when he was not among the
greatest of men. His life from the very first was one long mastering of
difficulty after difficulty. The shame of his birth remained in his name
of "the Bastard." His father Robert had seen Arlotta, a tanner's daughter
of the town, as she washed her linen in a little brook by Falaise; and
loving her he had made her the mother of his boy. The departure of Robert
on a pilgrimage from which he never returned left William a child-ruler
among the most turbulent baronage in Christendom; treason and anarchy
surrounded him as he grew to manhood; and disorder broke at last into
open revolt. But in 1047 a fierce combat of horse on the slopes of
Val-ès-dunes beside Caen left the young Duke master of his duchy and he
soon made his mastery felt. "Normans" said a Norman poet "must be trodden
down and kept under foot, for he only that bridles them may use them at
his need." In the stern order he forced on the land Normandy from this
hour felt the bridle of its Duke.
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William and France
Secure at home, William seized the moment of Godwine's exile to visit
England, and received from his cousin, King Eadward, as he afterwards
asserted, a promise of succession to his throne. Such a promise however,
unconfirmed by the Witenagemot, was valueless; and the return of Godwine
must have at once cut short the young Duke's hopes. He found in fact work
enough to do in his own duchy, for the discontent of his baronage at the
stern justice of his rule found support in the jealousy which his power
raised in the states around him, and it was only after two great
victories at Mortemer and Varaville and six years of hard fighting that
outer and inner foes were alike trodden under foot. In 1060 William stood
first among the princes of France. Maine submitted to his rule. Britanny
was reduced to obedience by a single march. While some of the rebel
barons rotted in the Duke's dungeons and some were driven into exile, the
land settled down into a peace which gave room for a quick upgrowth of
wealth and culture. Learning and education found their centre in the
school of Bec, which the teaching of a Lombard scholar, Lanfranc, raised
in a few years into the most famous school of Christendom. Lanfranc's
first contact with William, if it showed the Duke's imperious temper,
showed too his marvellous insight into men. In a strife with the Papacy
which William provoked by his marriage with Matilda, a daughter of the
Count of Flanders, Lanfranc took the side of Rome. His opposition was met
by a sentence of banishment, and the Prior had hardly set out on a lame
horse, the only one his house could afford, when he was overtaken by the
Duke, impatient that he should quit Normandy. "Give me a better horse and
I shall go the quicker," replied the imperturbable Lombard, and William's
wrath passed into laughter and good will. From that hour Lanfranc became
his minister and counsellor, whether for affairs in the duchy itself or
for the more daring schemes of ambition which opened up across the
Channel.
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William and England
William's hopes of the English crown are said to have been revived by a
storm which threw Harold, while cruising in the Channel, on the coast of
Ponthieu. Its count sold him to the Duke; and as the price of return to
England William forced him to swear on the relics of saints to support
his claim to its throne. But, true or no, the oath told little on
Harold's course. As the childless King drew to his grave one obstacle
after another was cleared from the earl's path. His brother Tostig had
become his most dangerous rival; but a revolt of the Northumbrians drove
Tostig to Flanders, and the earl was able to win over the Mercian house
of Leofric to his cause by owning Morkere, the brother of the Mercian
Earl Eadwine, as his brother's successor. His aim was in fact attained
without a struggle. In the opening of 1066 the nobles and bishops who
gathered round the death-bed of the Confessor passed quietly from it to
the election and coronation of Harold. But at Eouen the news was welcomed
with a burst of furious passion, and the Duke of Normandy at once
prepared to enforce his claim by arms. William did not claim the Crown.
He claimed simply the right which he afterwards used when his sword had
won it of presenting himself for election by the nation, and he believed
himself entitled so to present himself by the direct commendation of the
Confessor. The actual election of Harold which stood in his way, hurried
as it was, he did not recognize as valid. But with this constitutional
claim was inextricably mingled resentment at the private wrong which
Harold had done him, and a resolve to exact vengeance on the man whom he
regarded as untrue to his oath. The difficulties in the way of his
enterprise were indeed enormous. He could reckon on no support within
England itself. At home he had to extort the consent of his own reluctant
baronage; to gather a motley host from every quarter of France and to
keep it together for months; to create a fleet, to cut down the very
trees, to build, to launch, to man the vessels; and to find time amidst
all this for the common business of government, for negotiations with
Denmark and the Empire, with France, Britanny, and Anjou, with Flanders
and with Rome which had been estranged from England by Archbishop
Stigand's acceptance of his pallium from one who was not owned as a
canonical Pope.
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Stamford Bridge
But his rival's difficulties were hardly less than his own. Harold was
threatened with invasion not only by William but by his brother Tostig,
who had taken refuge in Norway and secured the aid of its king, Harald
Hardrada. The fleet and army he had gathered lay watching for months
along the coast. His one standing force was his body of hus-carls, but
their numbers only enabled them to act as the nucleus of an army. On the
other hand the Land-fyrd or general levy of fighting-men was a body easy
to raise for any single encounter but hard to keep together. To assemble
such a force was to bring labour to a standstill. The men gathered under
the King's standard were the farmers and ploughmen of their fields. The
ships were the fishing-vessels of the coast. In September the task of
holding them together became impossible, but their dispersion had hardly
taken place when the two clouds which had so long been gathering burst at
once upon the realm. A change of wind released the landlocked armament of
William; but before changing, the wind which prisoned the Duke brought
the host of Tostig and Harald Hardrada to the coast of Yorkshire. The
King hastened with his household troops to the north and repulsed the
Norwegians in a decisive overthrow at Stamford Bridge, but ere he could
hurry back to London the Norman host had crossed the sea and William, who
had anchored on the twenty-eighth of September off Pevensey, was ravaging
the coast to bring his rival to an engagement. His merciless ravages
succeeded in drawing Harold from London to the south; but the King wisely
refused to attack with the troops he had hastily summoned to his banner.
If he was forced to give battle, he resolved to give it on ground he had
himself chosen, and advancing near enough to the coast to check William's
ravages he entrenched himself on a hill known afterwards as that of
Senlac, a low spur of the Sussex downs near Hastings. His position
covered London and drove William to concentrate his forces. With a host
subsisting by pillage, to concentrate is to starve; and no alternative
was left to the Duke but a decisive victory or ruin.
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Battle of Hastings
On the fourteenth of October William led his men at dawn along the higher
ground that leads from Hastings to the battle-field which Harold had
chosen. From the mound of Telham the Normans saw the host of the English
gathered thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of
Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right; on the left, the most exposed
part of the position, the hus-carls or body-guard of Harold, men in full
armour and wielding huge axes, were grouped round the Golden Dragon of
Wessex and the Standard of the King. The rest of the ground was covered
by thick masses of half-armed rustics who had flocked at Harold's summons
to the fight with the stranger. It was against the centre of this
formidable position that William arrayed his Norman knighthood, while the
mercenary forces he had gathered in France and Britanny were ordered to
attack its flanks. A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle;
in front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and
catching it again while he chaunted the song of Roland. He was the first
of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall. The charge
broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the English warriors
plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of "Out, out," and the repulse of
the Norman footmen was followed by a repulse of the Norman horse. Again
and again the Duke rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. All the
fury of fight that glowed in his Norseman's blood, all the headlong
valour that spurred him over the slopes of Val-ès-dunes, mingled that day
with the coolness of head, the dogged perseverance, the inexhaustible
faculty of resource which shone at Mortemer and Varaville. His Breton
troops, entangled in the marshy ground on his left, broke in disorder,
and as panic spread through the army a cry arose that the Duke was slain.
William tore off his helmet; "I live," he shouted, "and by God's help I
will conquer yet." Maddened by a fresh repulse, the Duke spurred right at
the Standard; unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, the King's
brother; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to the ground an
unmannerly rider who would not lend him his steed. Amidst the roar and
tumult of the battle he turned the flight he had arrested into the means
of victory. Broken as the stockade was by his desperate onset, the
shield-wall of the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay till
William by a feint of flight drew a part of the English force from their
post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly pursuers, the Duke cut them to
pieces, broke through the abandoned line, and made himself master of the
central ground. Meanwhile the French and Bretons made good their ascent
on either flank. At three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still
raged around the Standard where Harold's hus-carls stood stubbornly at
bay on a spot marked afterwards by the high altar of Battle Abbey. An
order from the Duke at last brought his archers to the front. Their
arrow-flight told heavily on the dense masses crowded around the King and
as the sun went down a shaft pierced Harold's right eye. He fell between
the royal ensigns, and the battle closed with a desperate melly over his
corpse.
Night covered the flight of the English army: but William was quick to
reap the advantage of his victory. Securing Romney and Dover, he marched
by Canterbury upon London. Faction and intrigue were doing his work for
him as he advanced; for Harold's brothers had fallen with the King on the
field of Senlac, and there was none of the house of Godwine to contest
the crown. Of the old royal line there remained but a single boy, Eadgar
the Ætheling. He was chosen king; but the choice gave little strength to
the national cause. The widow of the Confessor surrendered Winchester to
the Duke. The bishops gathered at London inclined to submission. The
citizens themselves faltered as William, passing by their walls, gave
Southwark to the flames. The throne of the boy-king really rested for
support on the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, Eadwine and Morkere; and
William, crossing the Thames at Wallingford and marching into
Hertfordshire, threatened to cut them off from their earldoms. The
masterly movement forced the Earls to hurry home, and London gave way at
once. Eadgar himself was at the head of the deputation who came to offer
the crown to the Norman Duke. "They bowed to him," says the English
annalist pathetically, "for need." They bowed to the Norman as they had
bowed to the Dane, and William accepted the crown in the spirit of Cnut.
London indeed was secured by the erection of a fortress which afterwards
grew into the Tower, but William desired to reign not as a Conqueror but
as a lawful king. At Christmas he received the crown at Westminster from
the hands of Archbishop Ealdred amid shouts of "Yea, Yea," from his new
English subjects. Fines from the greater landowners atoned for a
resistance which now counted as rebellion; but with this exception every
measure of the new sovereign showed his desire of ruling as a successor
of Eadward or Ælfred. As yet indeed the greater part of England remained
quietly aloof from him, and he can hardly be said to have been recognized
as king by Northumberland or the greater part of Mercia. But to the east
of a line which stretched from Norwich to Dorsetshire his rule was
unquestioned, and over this portion he ruled as an English king. His
soldiers were kept in strict order. No change was made in law or custom.
The privileges of London were recognized by a royal writ which still
remains, the most venerable of its muniments, among the city's archives.
Peace and order were restored. William even attempted, though in vain, to
learn the English tongue that he might personally administer justice to
the suitors in his court. The kingdom seemed so tranquil that only a few
months had passed after the battle of Senlac when leaving England in
charge of his brother, Odo Bishop of Bayeux, and his minister, William
Fitz-Osbern, the King returned in 1067 for a while to Normandy. The peace
he left was soon indeed disturbed. Bishop Odo's tyranny forced the
Kentishmen to seek aid from Count Eustace of Boulogne; while the Welsh
princes supported a similar rising against Norman oppression in the west.
But as yet the bulk of the land held fairly to the new king. Dover was
saved from Eustace; and the discontented fled over sea to seek refuge in
lands as far off as Constantinople, where Englishmen from this time
formed great part of the body-guard or Varangians of the Eastern
Emperors. William returned to take his place again as an English king. It
was with an English force that he subdued a rising in the south-west with
Exeter at its head, and it was at the head of an English army that he
completed his work by marching to the North. His march brought Eadwine
and Morkere again to submission; a fresh rising ended in the occupation
of York, and England as far as the Tees lay quietly at William's feet.
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The Norman Conquest
It was in fact only the national revolt of 1068 that transformed the King
into a conqueror. The signal for this revolt came from Swein, king of
Denmark, who had for two years past been preparing to dispute England
with the Norman, but on the appearance of his fleet in the Humber all
northern, all western and south-western England rose as one man. Eadgar
the Ætheling with a band of exiles who had found refuge in Scotland took
the head of the Northumbrian revolt; in the south-west the men of Devon,
Somerset, and Dorset gathered to the sieges of Exeter and Montacute;
while a new Norman castle at Shrewsbury alone bridled a rising in the
West. So ably had the revolt been planned that even William was taken by
surprise. The outbreak was heralded by a storm of York and the slaughter
of three thousand Normans who formed its garrison. The news of this
slaughter reached William as he was hunting in the forest of Dean; and in
a wild outburst of wrath he swore "by the splendour of God" to avenge
himself on the North. But wrath went hand in hand with the coolest
statesmanship. The centre of resistance lay in the Danish fleet, and
pushing rapidly to the Humber with a handful of horsemen William bought
at a heavy price its inactivity and withdrawal. Then turning westward
with the troops that gathered round him he swept the Welsh border and
relieved Shrewsbury while William Fitz-Osbern broke the rising around
Exeter. His success set the King free to fulfil his oath of vengeance on
the North. After a long delay before the flooded waters of the Aire he
entered York and ravaged the whole country as far as the Tees. Town and
village were harried and burned, their inhabitants were slain or driven
over the Scottish border. The coast was especially wasted that no hold
might remain for future landings of the Danes. Crops, cattle, the very
implements of husbandry were so mercilessly destroyed that a famine which
followed is said to have swept off more than a hundred thousand victims.
Half a century later indeed the land still lay bare of culture and
deserted of men for sixty miles northward of York. The work of vengeance
once over, William led his army back from the Tees to York, and thence to
Chester and the West. Never had he shown the grandeur of his character so
memorably as in this terrible march. The winter was hard, the roads
choked with snowdrifts or broken by torrents, provisions failed; and his
army, storm-beaten and forced to devour its horses for food, broke out
into mutiny at the order to cross the bleak moorlands that part Yorkshire
from the West. The mercenaries from Anjou and Britanny demanded their
release from service. William granted their prayer with scorn. On foot,
at the head of the troops which still clung to him, he forced his way by
paths inaccessible to horses, often helping the men with his own hands to
clear the road, and as the army descended upon Chester the resistance of
the English died away.
For two years William was able to busy himself in castle-building and in
measures for holding down the conquered land. How effective these were
was seen when the last act of the conquest was reached. All hope of
Danish aid was now gone, but Englishmen still looked for help to Scotland
where Eadgar the Ætheling had again found refuge and where his sister
Margaret had become wife of King Malcolm. It was probably some assurance
of Malcolm's aid which roused the Mercian Earls, Eadwine and Morkere, to
a fresh rising in 1071. But the revolt was at once foiled by the
vigilance of the Conqueror. Eadwine fell in an obscure skirmish, while
Morkere found shelter for a while in the fen country where a desperate
band of patriots gathered round an outlawed leader, Hereward. Nowhere had
William found so stubborn a resistance: but a causeway two miles long was
at last driven across the marshes, and the last hopes of English freedom
died in the surrender of Ely. It was as the unquestioned master of
England that William marched to the North, crossed the Lowlands and the
Forth, and saw Malcolm appear in his camp upon the Tay to swear fealty at
his feet.
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