CHAPTER IV--ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS
CHAPTER IV--ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS
Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded that king. He reignedonly fifteen years; but he remembered the glory of his grandfather, thegreat Alfred, and governed England well. He reduced the turbulent peopleof Wales, and obliged them to pay him a tribute in money, and in cattle,and to send him their best hawks and hounds. He was victorious over theCornish men, who were not yet quite under the Saxon government. Herestored such of the old laws as were good, and had fallen into disuse;made some wise new laws, and took care of the poor and weak. A strongalliance, made against him by ANLAF a Danish prince, CONSTANTINE King ofthe Scots, and the people of North Wales, he broke and defeated in onegreat battle, long famous for the vast numbers slain in it. After that,he had a quiet reign; the lords and ladies about him had leisure tobecome polite and agreeable; and foreign princes were glad (as they havesometimes been since) to come to England on visits to the English court.
When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years old, his brother EDMUND, whowas only eighteen, became king. He was the first of six boy-kings, asyou will presently know.
They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a taste forimprovement and refinement. But he was beset by the Danes, and had ashort and troubled reign, which came to a troubled end. One night, whenhe was feasting in his hall, and had eaten much and drunk deep, he saw,among the company, a noted robber named LEOF, who had been banished fromEngland. Made very angry by the boldness of this man, the King turned tohis cup-bearer, and said, 'There is a robber sitting at the table yonder,who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in the land--a hunted wolf, whose lifeany man may take, at any time. Command that robber to depart!' 'I willnot depart!' said Leof. 'No?' cried the King. 'No, by the Lord!' saidLeof. Upon that the King rose from his seat, and, making passionately atthe robber, and seizing him by his long hair, tried to throw him down.But the robber had a dagger underneath his cloak, and, in the scuffle,stabbed the King to death. That done, he set his back against the wall,and fought so desperately, that although he was soon cut to pieces by theKing's armed men, and the wall and pavement were splashed with his blood,yet it was not before he had killed and wounded many of them. You mayimagine what rough lives the kings of those times led, when one of themcould struggle, half drunk, with a public robber in his own dining-hall,and be stabbed in presence of the company who ate and drank with him.
Then succeeded the boy-king EDRED, who was weak and sickly in body, butof a strong mind. And his armies fought the Northmen, the Danes, andNorwegians, or the Sea-Kings, as they were called, and beat them for thetime. And, in nine years, Edred died, and passed away.
Then came the boy-king EDWY, fifteen years of age; but the real king, whohad the real power, was a monk named DUNSTAN--a clever priest, a littlemad, and not a little proud and cruel.
Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, whither the body of KingEdmund the Magnificent was carried, to be buried. While yet a boy, hehad got out of his bed one night (being then in a fever), and walkedabout Glastonbury Church when it was under repair; and, because he didnot tumble off some scaffolds that were there, and break his neck, it wasreported that he had been shown over the building by an angel. He hadalso made a harp that was said to play of itself--which it very likelydid, as AEolian Harps, which are played by the wind, and are understoodnow, always do. For these wonders he had been once denounced by hisenemies, who were jealous of his favour with the late King Athelstan, asa magician; and he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot, and thrown intoa marsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause a great deal of troubleyet.
The priests of those days were, generally, the only scholars. They werelearned in many things. Having to make their own convents andmonasteries on uncultivated grounds that were granted to them by theCrown, it was necessary that they should be good farmers and goodgardeners, or their lands would have been too poor to support them. Forthe decoration of the chapels where they prayed, and for the comfort ofthe refectories where they ate and drank, it was necessary that thereshould be good carpenters, good smiths, good painters, among them. Fortheir greater safety in sickness and accident, living alone by themselvesin solitary places, it was necessary that they should study the virtuesof plants and herbs, and should know how to dress cuts, burns, scalds,and bruises, and how to set broken limbs. Accordingly, they taughtthemselves, and one another, a great variety of useful arts; and becameskilful in agriculture, medicine, surgery, and handicraft. And when theywanted the aid of any little piece of machinery, which would be simpleenough now, but was marvellous then, to impose a trick upon the poorpeasants, they knew very well how to make it; and _did_ make it many atime and often, I have no doubt.
Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the most sagacious ofthese monks. He was an ingenious smith, and worked at a forge in alittle cell. This cell was made too short to admit of his lying at fulllength when he went to sleep--as if _that_ did any good to anybody!--andhe used to tell the most extraordinary lies about demons and spirits,who, he said, came there to persecute him. For instance, he related thatone day when he was at work, the devil looked in at the little window,and tried to tempt him to lead a life of idle pleasure; whereupon, havinghis pincers in the fire, red hot, he seized the devil by the nose, andput him to such pain, that his bellowings were heard for miles and miles.Some people are inclined to think this nonsense a part of Dunstan'smadness (for his head never quite recovered the fever), but I think not.I observe that it induced the ignorant people to consider him a holy man,and that it made him very powerful. Which was exactly what he alwayswanted.
On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy-king Edwy, it wasremarked by ODO, Archbishop of Canterbury (who was a Dane by birth), thatthe King quietly left the coronation feast, while all the company werethere. Odo, much displeased, sent his friend Dunstan to seek him.Dunstan finding him in the company of his beautiful young wife ELGIVA,and her mother ETHELGIVA, a good and virtuous lady, not only grosslyabused them, but dragged the young King back into the feasting-hall byforce. Some, again, think Dunstan did this because the young King's fairwife was his own cousin, and the monks objected to people marrying theirown cousins; but I believe he did it, because he was an imperious,audacious, ill-conditioned priest, who, having loved a young lady himselfbefore he became a sour monk, hated all love now, and everythingbelonging to it.
The young King was quite old enough to feel this insult. Dunstan hadbeen Treasurer in the last reign, and he soon charged Dunstan with havingtaken some of the last king's money. The Glastonbury Abbot fled toBelgium (very narrowly escaping some pursuers who were sent to put outhis eyes, as you will wish they had, when you read what follows), and hisabbey was given to priests who were married; whom he always, both beforeand afterwards, opposed. But he quickly conspired with his friend, Odothe Dane, to set up the King's young brother, EDGAR, as his rival for thethrone; and, not content with this revenge, he caused the beautiful queenElgiva, though a lovely girl of only seventeen or eighteen, to be stolenfrom one of the Royal Palaces, branded in the cheek with a red-hot iron,and sold into slavery in Ireland. But the Irish people pitied andbefriended her; and they said, 'Let us restore the girl-queen to the boy-king, and make the young lovers happy!' and they cured her of her cruelwound, and sent her home as beautiful as before. But the villainDunstan, and that other villain, Odo, caused her to be waylaid atGloucester as she was joyfully hurrying to join her husband, and to behacked and hewn with swords, and to be barbarously maimed and lamed, andleft to die. When Edwy the Fair (his people called him so, because hewas so young and handsome) heard of her dreadful fate, he died of abroken heart; and so the pitiful story of the poor young wife and husbandends! Ah! Better to be two cottagers in these better times, than kingand queen of England in those bad days, though never so fair!
Then came the boy-king, EDGAR, called the Peaceful, fifteen years old.Dunstan, being still the real king, drove all married priests out of themonasteries and abbeys, and replaced them by solitary monks like himself,of the rigid order called the Benedictines. He made himself Archbishopof Canterbury, for his greater glory; and exercised such power over theneighbouring British princes, and so collected them about the King, thatonce, when the King held his court at Chester, and went on the river Deeto visit the monastery of St. John, the eight oars of his boat werepulled (as the people used to delight in relating in stories and songs)by eight crowned kings, and steered by the King of England. As Edgar wasvery obedient to Dunstan and the monks, they took great pains torepresent him as the best of kings. But he was really profligate,debauched, and vicious. He once forcibly carried off a young lady fromthe convent at Wilton; and Dunstan, pretending to be very much shocked,condemned him not to wear his crown upon his head for seven years--nogreat punishment, I dare say, as it can hardly have been a morecomfortable ornament to wear, than a stewpan without a handle. Hismarriage with his second wife, ELFRIDA, is one of the worst events of hisreign. Hearing of the beauty of this lady, he despatched his favouritecourtier, ATHELWOLD, to her father's castle in Devonshire, to see if shewere really as charming as fame reported. Now, she was so exceedinglybeautiful that Athelwold fell in love with her himself, and married her;but he told the King that she was only rich--not handsome. The King,suspecting the truth when they came home, resolved to pay thenewly-married couple a visit; and, suddenly, told Athelwold to preparefor his immediate coming. Athelwold, terrified, confessed to his youngwife what he had said and done, and implored her to disguise her beautyby some ugly dress or silly manner, that he might be safe from the King'sanger. She promised that she would; but she was a proud woman, who wouldfar rather have been a queen than the wife of a courtier. She dressedherself in her best dress, and adorned herself with her richest jewels;and when the King came, presently, he discovered the cheat. So, hecaused his false friend, Athelwold, to be murdered in a wood, and marriedhis widow, this bad Elfrida. Six or seven years afterwards, he died; andwas buried, as if he had been all that the monks said he was, in theabbey of Glastonbury, which he--or Dunstan for him--had much enriched.
England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by wolves, which,driven out of the open country, hid themselves in the mountains of Waleswhen they were not attacking travellers and animals, that the tributepayable by the Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition of theirproducing, every year, three hundred wolves' heads. And the Welshmenwere so sharp upon the wolves, to save their money, that in four yearsthere was not a wolf left.
Then came the boy-king, EDWARD, called the Martyr, from the manner of hisdeath. Elfrida had a son, named ETHELRED, for whom she claimed thethrone; but Dunstan did not choose to favour him, and he made Edwardking. The boy was hunting, one day, down in Dorsetshire, when he rodenear to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida and Ethelred lived. Wishing to seethem kindly, he rode away from his attendants and galloped to the castlegate, where he arrived at twilight, and blew his hunting-horn. 'You arewelcome, dear King,' said Elfrida, coming out, with her brightest smiles.'Pray you dismount and enter.' 'Not so, dear madam,' said the King. 'Mycompany will miss me, and fear that I have met with some harm. Pleaseyou to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here, in the saddle, toyou and to my little brother, and so ride away with the good speed I havemade in riding here.' Elfrida, going in to bring the wine, whispered anarmed servant, one of her attendants, who stole out of the darkeninggateway, and crept round behind the King's horse. As the King raised thecup to his lips, saying, 'Health!' to the wicked woman who was smiling onhim, and to his innocent brother whose hand she held in hers, and who wasonly ten years old, this armed man made a spring and stabbed him in theback. He dropped the cup and spurred his horse away; but, soon faintingwith loss of blood, dropped from the saddle, and, in his fall, entangledone of his feet in the stirrup. The frightened horse dashed on; trailinghis rider's curls upon the ground; dragging his smooth young face throughruts, and stones, and briers, and fallen leaves, and mud; until thehunters, tracking the animal's course by the King's blood, caught hisbridle, and released the disfigured body.
Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, ETHELRED, whom Elfrida,when he cried out at the sight of his murdered brother riding away fromthe castle gate, unmercifully beat with a torch which she snatched fromone of the attendants. The people so disliked this boy, on account ofhis cruel mother and the murder she had done to promote him, that Dunstanwould not have had him for king, but would have made EDGITHA, thedaughter of the dead King Edgar, and of the lady whom he stole out of theconvent at Wilton, Queen of England, if she would have consented. Butshe knew the stories of the youthful kings too well, and would not bepersuaded from the convent where she lived in peace; so, Dunstan putEthelred on the throne, having no one else to put there, and gave him thenickname of THE UNREADY--knowing that he wanted resolution and firmness.
At first, Elfrida possessed great influence over the young King, but, ashe grew older and came of age, her influence declined. The infamouswoman, not having it in her power to do any more evil, then retired fromcourt, and, according, to the fashion of the time, built churches andmonasteries, to expiate her guilt. As if a church, with a steeplereaching to the very stars, would have been any sign of true repentancefor the blood of the poor boy, whose murdered form was trailed at hishorse's heels! As if she could have buried her wickedness beneath thesenseless stones of the whole world, piled up one upon another, for themonks to live in!
About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, Dunstan died. He wasgrowing old then, but was as stern and artful as ever. Two circumstancesthat happened in connexion with him, in this reign of Ethelred, made agreat noise. Once, he was present at a meeting of the Church, when thequestion was discussed whether priests should have permission to marry;and, as he sat with his head hung down, apparently thinking about it, avoice seemed to come out of a crucifix in the room, and warn the meetingto be of his opinion. This was some juggling of Dunstan's, and wasprobably his own voice disguised. But he played off a worse juggle thanthat, soon afterwards; for, another meeting being held on the samesubject, and he and his supporters being seated on one side of a greatroom, and their opponents on the other, he rose and said, 'To Christhimself, as judge, do I commit this cause!' Immediately on these wordsbeing spoken, the floor where the opposite party sat gave way, and somewere killed and many wounded. You may be pretty sure that it had beenweakened under Dunstan's direction, and that it fell at Dunstan's signal._His_ part of the floor did not go down. No, no. He was too good aworkman for that.
When he died, the monks settled that he was a Saint, and called him SaintDunstan ever afterwards. They might just as well have settled that hewas a coach-horse, and could just as easily have called him one.
Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to be rid of this holysaint; but, left to himself, he was a poor weak king, and his reign was areign of defeat and shame. The restless Danes, led by SWEYN, a son ofthe King of Denmark who had quarrelled with his father and had beenbanished from home, again came into England, and, year after year,attacked and despoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings away, theweak Ethelred paid them money; but, the more money he paid, the moremoney the Danes wanted. At first, he gave them ten thousand pounds; ontheir next invasion, sixteen thousand pounds; on their next invasion,four and twenty thousand pounds: to pay which large sums, the unfortunateEnglish people were heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still came back andwanted more, he thought it would be a good plan to marry into somepowerful foreign family that would help him with soldiers. So, in theyear one thousand and two, he courted and married Emma, the sister ofRichard Duke of Normandy; a lady who was called the Flower of Normandy.
And now, a terrible deed was done in England, the like of which was neverdone on English ground before or since. On the thirteenth of November,in pursuance of secret instructions sent by the King over the wholecountry, the inhabitants of every town and city armed, and murdered allthe Danes who were their neighbours.
Young and old, babies and soldiers, men and women, every Dane was killed.No doubt there were among them many ferocious men who had done theEnglish great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, in swaggering in thehouses of the English and insulting their wives and daughters, had becomeunbearable; but no doubt there were also among them many peacefulChristian Danes who had married English women and become like Englishmen. They were all slain, even to GUNHILDA, the sister of the King ofDenmark, married to an English lord; who was first obliged to see themurder of her husband and her child, and then was killed herself.
When the King of the sea-kings heard of this deed of blood, he swore thathe would have a great revenge. He raised an army, and a mightier fleetof ships than ever yet had sailed to England; and in all his army therewas not a slave or an old man, but every soldier was a free man, and theson of a free man, and in the prime of life, and sworn to be revengedupon the English nation, for the massacre of that dread thirteenth ofNovember, when his countrymen and countrywomen, and the little childrenwhom they loved, were killed with fire and sword. And so, the sea-kingscame to England in many great ships, each bearing the flag of its owncommander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins, beasts of prey,threatened England from the prows of those ships, as they came onwardthrough the water; and were reflected in the shining shields that hungupon their sides. The ship that bore the standard of the King of the sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty serpent; and the King in hisanger prayed that the Gods in whom he trusted might all desert him, ifhis serpent did not strike its fangs into England's heart.
And indeed it did. For, the great army landing from the great fleet,near Exeter, went forward, laying England waste, and striking theirlances in the earth as they advanced, or throwing them into rivers, intoken of their making all the island theirs. In remembrance of the blackNovember night when the Danes were murdered, wheresoever the invaderscame, they made the Saxons prepare and spread for them great feasts; andwhen they had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a curse to England withwild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their Saxonentertainers, and marched on. For six long years they carried on thiswar: burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, granaries; killing thelabourers in the fields; preventing the seed from being sown in theground; causing famine and starvation; leaving only heaps of ruin andsmoking ashes, where they had found rich towns. To crown this misery,English officers and men deserted, and even the favourites of Ethelredthe Unready, becoming traitors, seized many of the English ships, turnedpirates against their own country, and aided by a storm occasioned theloss of nearly the whole English navy.
There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, who was true tohis country and the feeble King. He was a priest, and a brave one. Fortwenty days, the Archbishop of Canterbury defended that city against itsDanish besiegers; and when a traitor in the town threw the gates open andadmitted them, he said, in chains, 'I will not buy my life with moneythat must be extorted from the suffering people. Do with me what youplease!' Again and again, he steadily refused to purchase his releasewith gold wrung from the poor.
At last, the Danes being tired of this, and being assembled at a drunkenmerry-making, had him brought into the feasting-hall.
'Now, bishop,' they said, 'we want gold!'
He looked round on the crowd of angry faces; from the shaggy beards closeto him, to the shaggy beards against the walls, where men were mounted ontables and forms to see him over the heads of others: and he knew thathis time was come.
'I have no gold,' he said.
'Get it, bishop!' they all thundered.
'That, I have often told you I will not,' said he.
They gathered closer round him, threatening, but he stood unmoved. Then,one man struck him; then, another; then a cursing soldier picked up froma heap in a corner of the hall, where fragments had been rudely thrown atdinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at his face, from which the bloodcame spurting forth; then, others ran to the same heap, and knocked himdown with other bones, and bruised and battered him; until one soldierwhom he had baptised (willing, as I hope for the sake of that soldier'ssoul, to shorten the sufferings of the good man) struck him dead with hisbattle-axe.
If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of this noblearchbishop, he might have done something yet. But he paid the Danesforty-eight thousand pounds, instead, and gained so little by thecowardly act, that Sweyn soon afterwards came over to subdue all England.So broken was the attachment of the English people, by this time, totheir incapable King and their forlorn country which could not protectthem, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides, as a deliverer. Londonfaithfully stood out, as long as the King was within its walls; but, whenhe sneaked away, it also welcomed the Dane. Then, all was over; and theKing took refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who had already givenshelter to the King's wife, once the Flower of that country, and to herchildren.
Still, the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings, could notquite forget the great King Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn diedsuddenly, in little more than a month after he had been proclaimed Kingof England, they generously sent to Ethelred, to say that they would havehim for their King again, 'if he would only govern them better than hehad governed them before.' The Unready, instead of coming himself, sentEdward, one of his sons, to make promises for him. At last, he followed,and the English declared him King. The Danes declared CANUTE, the son ofSweyn, King. Thus, direful war began again, and lasted for three years,when the Unready died. And I know of nothing better that he did, in allhis reign of eight and thirty years.
Was Canute to be King now? Not over the Saxons, they said; they musthave EDMUND, one of the sons of the Unready, who was surnamed IRONSIDE,because of his strength and stature. Edmund and Canute thereupon fellto, and fought five battles--O unhappy England, what a fighting-ground itwas!--and then Ironside, who was a big man, proposed to Canute, who was alittle man, that they two should fight it out in single combat. IfCanute had been the big man, he would probably have said yes, but, beingthe little man, he decidedly said no. However, he declared that he waswilling to divide the kingdom--to take all that lay north of WatlingStreet, as the old Roman military road from Dover to Chester was called,and to give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men being weary ofso much bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon became sole King ofEngland; for Ironside died suddenly within two months. Some think thathe was killed, and killed by Canute's orders. No one knows.