A Student's History of England Volume I Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rural life in the eleventh century. July to December.

(Cott. MS. _Julius A._ vi.)]

5. =Conversion of the Freemen into Serfs.=--It is impossible to give a certain account of the changes which pa.s.sed over the English freemen, but there can be little doubt that a process had been for some time going on which converted them into bondmen, and that this process was greatly accelerated by the Danish wars. When a district was being plundered the peasant holders of the strips of village land suffered most, and needed the protection of the neighbouring thegn, who was better skilled in war than themselves, and this protection they could only obtain on condition of becoming bondmen themselves--that is to say, of giving certain days in the week to work on the special estate of the lord. A bondman differed both from a slave and from a modern farmer. Though he was bound to the soil and could not go away if he wished to do so, yet he could not be sold as though he were a slave; nor, on the other hand, could he, like a farmer, be turned out of his holding so long as he fulfilled his obligation of cultivating his lord's demesne. The lord was almost invariably a thegn, either of the king or of some superior thegn, and there thus arose in England, as there arose about the same time on the Continent, a chain of personal relationships. The king was no longer merely the head of the whole people. He was the personal lord of his own thegns, and they again were the lords of other thegns. The serfs cultivated their lands, and thereby set them free to fight for the king on behalf of the whole nation. It seems at first sight as if the English people had fallen into a worse condition. An organisation, partly military and partly servile, was subst.i.tuted for an organisation of free men. Yet only in this way could the whole of England be amalgamated. The nation gained in unity what it lost in freedom.

6. =The Hundred-moot and the Lord's Court.=--In another way the condition of the peasants was altered for the worse by the growth of the king's power. In former days land was held as 'folkland,' granted by the people at the original conquest, pa.s.sing to the kinsmen of the holder if he died without children. Afterwards the clergy introduced a system by which the owner could grant the 'bookland,' held by book or charter, setting at nought the claim of his kinsmen, and in order to give validity to the arrangement, obtained the consent of the king and his Witenagemot (see p. 45). In time, the king and the Witenagemot granted charters in other cases, and the new 'bookland' to a great extent superseded the old 'folkland,' accompanied by a grant of the right of holding special courts. In this manner the old hundred-moots became neglected, people seeking for justice in the courts of the lords. Yet those who lived on the lord's land attended his court, appeared as compurgators, and directed the ordeal just as they had once done in the hundred-moot.

7. =The Towns.=--The towns had grown up in various ways. Some were of old Roman foundation, such as Lincoln and Gloucester. Others, like Nottingham and Bristol, had come into existence since the English settlement. Others again gathered round monasteries, like Bury St.

Edmunds and Peterborough. The inhabitants met to consult about their own affairs, sometimes in dependence on a lord. Where there was no lord they held a court which was composed in the same way as the hundred-moots outside. The townsmen had the right of holding a market.

Every sale had to take place in the presence of witnesses who could prove, if called upon to do so, that the sale had really taken place, and markets were therefore usually to be found in towns, because it was there that witnesses could most easily be found.

8. =The Origin of the Shires.=--Shires, which were divisions larger than the hundreds, and smaller than the larger kingdoms, originated in various ways. In the south, and on the east coast as far north as the Wash, they were either old kingdoms like Kent and Ess.e.x, or settlements forming part of old kingdoms, as Norfolk (the north folk) formed part of East Anglia, and Dorset or Somerset, the lands of the Dorsaetan or the Somersaetan, formed part of the kingdom of Wess.e.x. In the centre and north they were of more recent origin, and were probably formed as those parts of England were gradually reconquered from the Danes. The fact that most of these shires are named from towns--as Derbyshire from Derby, and Warwickshire from Warwick--shows that they came into existence after towns had become of importance.

9. =The Shire-moot.=--Whilst the hundred-moot decayed, the folk-moot continued to flourish under a new name, as the shire-moot. This moot was still attended by the freemen of the shire though the thegns were more numerous and the simple freemen less numerous than they had once been. Still the continued existence of the shire-moot kept up the custom of self-government more than anything else in England. The ordeals were witnessed, the weregild inflicted, and rights to land adjudged, not by an officer of the king, but by the landowners of the shire a.s.sembled for the purpose. These meetings were ordinarily presided over by the ealdorman, who appeared as the military commander and the official head of the shire, and by the bishop, who represented the Church. Another most important personage was the sheriff, or shire-reeve, whose business it was to see that the king had all his rights, to preside over the shire-moot when it sat as a judicial court, and to take care that its sentences were put in execution.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Walker & Boutallse._

Plan and section of a burh of the eleventh century at Laughton-en-Le-Morthen, Yorks.]

10. =The Ealdormen and the Witenagemot.=--During the long fight with the Danes commanders were needed who could lead the forces of more than a single shire. Before the end of Eadred's reign there were ealdormen who ruled over many shires. One of them for instance, aethelstan, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and of the shires immediately to the west of East Anglia, was so powerful that he was popularly known as the Half-King. Such ealdormen had great influence in their own districts, and they also were very powerful about the king. The king could not perform any important act without the consent of the Witenagemot, which was made up of three cla.s.ses--the Ealdormen, the Bishops, and the greater Thegns. When a king died the Witenagemot chose his successor out of the kingly family; its members appeared as witnesses whenever the king 'booked' land to any one; and it even, on rare occasions, deposed a king who was unfit for his post. In the days of a great warrior king like Eadward or Eadmund, members of the Witenagemot were but instruments in his hands, but if a weak king came upon the throne, each member usually took his own way and pursued his own interest rather than that of the king and kingdom.

11. =The Land.=--The cultivated land was surrounded either by wood or by pasture and open commons. Every cottager kept his hive of bees, to produce the honey which was then used as we now use sugar, and drove his swine into the woods to fatten on the acorns and beech nuts which strewed the ground in the autumn. Sheep and cattle were fed on the pastures, and horses were so abundant that when the Danish pirates landed they found it easy to set every man on horseback. Yet neither the Danes nor the English ever learnt to fight on horseback. They rode to battle, but as soon as they approached the enemy they dismounted to fight on foot.

12. =Domestic Life.=--The huts of the villagers cl.u.s.tered round the house of the lord. His abode was built in a yard surrounded for protection by a mound and fence, whilst very great men often established themselves in burhs, surrounded by earthworks, either of their own raising or the work of earlier times. Its princ.i.p.al feature was the hall, in which the whole family with the guests and the thegns of the lord met for their meals. The walls were covered with curtains worked in patterns of bright colours. The fire was lighted on the hearth, a broad stone in the middle, over which was a hole in the roof through which the smoke of the hall escaped. The windows were narrow, and were either unclosed holes in the wall, or covered with oiled linen which would admit a certain amount of light.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gla.s.s tumbler. (British Museum.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Drinking gla.s.s. (British Museum.)]

13. =Food and Drink.=--In a great house at meal-time boards were brought forward and placed on tressels. Bread was to be had in plenty, and salt b.u.t.ter. Meat too, in winter, was always salted, as turnips and other roots upon which cattle are now fed in winter were wholly unknown, and it was therefore necessary to kill large numbers of sheep and oxen when the cold weather set in. There were dishes, but neither plates nor forks. Each man took the meat in his fingers and either bit off a piece or cut it off with a knife. The master of the house sat at the head of the table, and the lady handed round the drink, and afterwards sat down by her husband's side. She, however, with any other ladies who might be present, soon departed to the chamber which was their own apartment. The men continued drinking long. The cups or gla.s.ses which they used were often made with the bottoms rounded so as to force the guests to keep them in their hands till they were empty. The usual drink was mead, that is to say, fermented honey, or ale brewed from malt alone, as hops were not introduced till many centuries later. In wealthy houses imported wine was to be had.

English wine was not unknown, but it was so sour that it had to be sweetened with honey. It was held to be disgraceful to leave the company as long as the drinking lasted, and drunkenness and quarrels were not unfrequent. Wandering minstrels who could play and sing or tell stories were always welcome, especially if they were jugglers as well, and could amuse the company by throwing knives in the air and catching them as they fell, or could dance on their hands with their legs in the air. When the feast was over, the guests and dependents slept on the floor on rugs or straw, each man taking care to hang his weapons close to his head on the wall, to defend himself in case of an attack by robbers in the night. The lord retired to his chamber, whilst the unmarried ladies occupied bowers, or small rooms, each with a separate door opening on to the yard. Their only beds were bags of straw. Neither men nor women wore night-dresses of any kind, but if they took off their clothes at all, wrapped themselves in rugs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Comb and case of Scandinavian type, found at York. (Now in the British Museum.)]

CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND AND NORMANDY.

LEADING DATES

Death of Eadgar 975 Accession of aethelred 979 Accession of c.n.u.t 1016 Accession of Eadward the Confessor 1035 Banishment of G.o.dwine 1051 Accession of Harold and Battle of Senlac 1066

1. =Eadward the Martyr. 975--979.=--Eadgar died in =975=, leaving two boys, Eadward and aethelred.[4] On his death a quarrel broke out amongst the ealdormen, some declaring for the succession of Eadward and others for the succession of aethelred. The political quarrel was complicated by an ecclesiastical quarrel. The supporters of Eadward were the friends of the secular clergy; the supporters of aethelred were the friends of the monks. Dunstan, with his usual moderation, gave his voice for the eldest son, and Eadward was chosen king and crowned. Not only had he a strong party opposed to him, but he had a dissatisfied step-mother in aelfthryth, the mother of aethelred, whilst his own mother, who had probably been married to Eadgar without full marriage rites, had been long since dead. After reigning for four years Eadward was murdered near Corfe by some of the opposite party, and, as was commonly supposed, by his step-mother's directions.

[Footnote 4: Genealogy of the English kings from Eadgar to Eadgar the aetheling:--

EADGAR 959-975 | ----------------------- | | EADWARD aeTHELRED the Martyr the Unready 975-979 979-1016 | ----------------------- | | EADMUND EADWARD Ironside the Confessor 1016 1042-1066 | Eadward the aetheling | Eadgar the aetheling]

2. =aethelred's Early Years. 979--988.=--aethelred, now a boy of ten, became king in =979=. The epithet the Unready, which is usually a.s.signed to him, is a mistranslation of a word which properly means the Rede-less, or the man without counsel. He was entirely without the qualities which befit a king. Eadmund had kept the great chieftains in subordination to himself because he was a successful leader. Eadgar had kept them in subordination because he treated them with respect.

aethelred could neither lead nor show respect. He was always picking quarrels when he ought to have been making peace, and always making peace when he ought to have been fighting. What he tried to do was to lessen the power of the great ealdormen, and bring the whole country more directly under his own authority. In =985= he drove out aelfric, the Ealdorman of the Mercians. In =988= Dunstan died, and aethelred had no longer a wise adviser by his side.

3. =The Return of the Danes. 984.=--It would have been difficult for aethelred to overpower the ealdormen even if he had had no other enemies to deal with. Unluckily for him, new swarms of Danes and Norwegians had already appeared in England. They began by plundering the country, without attempting to settle in it. In =991= Brihtnoth, Ealdorman of the East Saxons, was defeated and slain by them at Maldon. aethelred could think of no better counsel than to pay them 10,000_l._, a sum of money which was then of much greater value than it is now, to abstain from plundering. It was not necessarily a bad thing to do. One of the greatest of the kings of the Germans, Henry the Fowler, had paid money for a truce to barbarians whom he was not strong enough to fight. But when the truce had been bought Henry took care to make himself strong enough to destroy them when they came again. aethelred was never ready to fight the Danes and Norwegians at any time. In =994= Olaf Trygva.s.son, who had been driven from the kingship of Norway, and Svend, who had been driven from the kingship of Denmark, joined forces to attack London. The London citizens fought better than the English king, and the two chieftains failed to take the town. 'They went thence, and wrought the greatest evil that ever any army could do, in burning, and harrying, and in man-slaying, as in Ess.e.x, and in Kent, and in Suss.e.x, and in Hampshire. And at last they took their horses and rode as far as they could, and did unspeakable evil.' The plunderers were now known as 'the army,' moving about where they would. aethelred this time gave them 16,000_l._ He got rid of Olaf, who sailed away and was slain by his enemies, but he could not permanently get rid of Svend. Svend, about the year =1000=, recovered his kingship in Denmark, and was more formidable than he had been before. Plunderings went on as usual, and aethelred had no resource but to pay money to the plunderers to buy a short respite. He then looked across the sea for an ally, and hoped to find one by connecting himself with the Duke of the Normans.

4. =The Norman Dukes. 912--1002.=--The country which lies on both sides of the lower course of the Seine formed, at the beginning of the tenth century, part of the dominions of Charles the Simple, king of the West Franks, who had inherited so much of the dominions of Charles the Great as lay west of a line roughly drawn from the Scheldt to the Mediterranean through the lower course of the Rhone. Danes and Norwegians, known on the Continent as Normans, plundered Charles's dominions as they had plundered England, and at last settled in them as they had settled in parts of England. In =912= Charles the Simple ceded to their leader, Hrolf, a territory of which the capital was Rouen, and which became known as Normandy--the land of the Normans.

Hrolf became the first Duke of the Normans, but his men were fierce and rugged, and for some time their southern neighbours scornfully called him and his descendants Dukes of the Pirates. In process of time a change took place which affected both Normandy and other countries as well. The West Frankish kings were descended from Charles the Great; but they had failed to defend their subjects from the Normans, and they thereby lost hold upon their people. One of their dependent n.o.bles, the Duke of the French, whose chief city, Paris, formed a bulwark against the Normans advancing up the Seine, grew more powerful than themselves. At the same time the Normans were becoming more and more French in their speech and customs. At last an alliance was made between Hugh Capet, the son of Hugh the Great, Duke of the French (see p. 63), and Richard the Fearless, Duke of the Normans. The race of Charles the Great was dethroned, and Hugh became king of the French. In name he was king over all the territory which had been governed by Charles the Simple. In reality that happened in France which aethelred had been trying to prevent in England. Hugh ruled directly over his own duchy of France, a patch of land of which Paris was the capital. The great va.s.sals of the crown, who answered to the English ealdormen, only obeyed him when it was their interest to do so. The most powerful of these va.s.sals was the Duke of the Normans.

In =1002= the duke was Richard II.--the Good--the son of Richard the Fearless. In that year aethelred, who was a widower, married Richard's sister, Emma. It was the beginning of a connection with Normandy which never ceased till a Norman duke made himself by conquest king of the English.

5. =Political Contrast between Normandy and England.=--The causes which were making the English thegnhood a military aristocracy acted with still greater force in Normandy. The tillers of the soil, sprung from the old inhabitants of the land, were kept by their Norman lords in even harsher bondage than the English serfs. The Norman warriors held their land by military service, each one being bound to fight for his lord, and the lord in turn being bound, together with his dependents, to fight for a higher lord, and all at last for the Duke himself. In England, though, in theory, the relations between the king and his ealdormen were not very different from those existing between the Norman duke and his immediate va.s.sals, the connection between them was far looser. The kingdom as a whole had no general unity. The king could not control the ealdormen, and the ealdormen could not control the king. Even when ealdormen, bishops, and thegns met in the Witenagemot they could not speak in the name of the nation. A nation in any true sense hardly existed at all, and they were not chosen as representatives of any part of it. Each one stood for himself, and it was only natural that men who during the greater part of the year were ruling in their own districts like little kings should think more of keeping up their own almost independent power at home than of the common interests of all England, which they had to consider when they met--and that for a few days only at a time--in the Witenagemot.

aethelred at least was not the man to keep them united.

6. =Svend's Conquest. 1002--1013.=--aethelred, having failed to buy off the Danes, tried to murder them. In =1002=, on St. Brice's Day, there was a general ma.s.sacre of all the Danes--not of the old inhabitants of Danish blood who had settled in aelfred's time--but of the new-comers.

Svend returned to avenge his countrymen. aethelred had in an earlier part of his reign levied a land-tax known as the Danegeld to pay off the Danes--the first instance of a general tax in England. He now called on all the shires to furnish ships for a fleet; but he could not trust his ealdormen. Some of the stories told of these times may be exaggerated, and some may be merely idle tales, but we know enough to be sure that England was a kingdom divided against itself. Svend, ravaging as he went, beat down resistance everywhere. In =1012= the Danes seized aelfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, and offered to set him free if he would pay a ransom for his life. He refused to do so, lest he should have to wring money from the poor in order to pay it. The drunken Danes pelted him with bones till one of the number clave his skull with an axe. He was soon counted as a martyr. Long afterwards one of the most famous of his successors, the Norman Lanfranc, doubted whether he was really a martyr, as he had not died for the faith. 'He that dies for righteousness,' answered the gentle Anselm, 'dies for the faith,' and to this day the name of aelfheah is retained as St.

Alphege in the list of English saints. In =1013= Svend appeared no longer as a plunderer but as a conqueror. First the old Danish districts of the north and east, and then the Anglo-Saxon realm of aelfred--Mercia and Wess.e.x--submitted to him to avoid destruction. In =1013= aethelred fled to Normandy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Martyrdom of St. Edmund by the Danes. (From a drawing belonging to the Society of Antiquaries.)]

7. =aethelred Restored. 1014--1016.=--In =1014= Svend died suddenly as he was riding at the head of his troops to the attack of the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds. A legend soon arose as to the manner of his death. St. Edmund himself, the East Anglian king Eadmund who had once been martyred by Danes (see p. 58), now appeared, it was said, to protect the monastery founded in his honour. 'Help, fellow soldiers!'

cried Svend, as he caught sight of the saint. 'St. Edmund is coming to slay me.' St. Edmund, we are told, ran his spear through the body of the aggressor, and Svend died that night in torments. His Danish warriors chose his son c.n.u.t king of England.[5] The English Witenagemot sent for aethelred to return. At last, in =1016=, aethelred died before he had conquered c.n.u.t or c.n.u.t conquered him.

[Footnote 5: Genealogy of the Danish kings:--

Svend | (1) aelfgifu = c.n.u.t = (2) Emma | 1016-1035 | | | HAROLD HARTHAc.n.u.t Harefoot 1040-1042 1035-1040]

8. =Eadmund Ironside. 1016.=--aethelred's eldest son--not the son of Emma--Eadmund Ironside, succeeded him. He did all that could be done to restore the English kingship by his vigour. In a single year he fought six battles; but the treachery of the ealdormen was not at an end, and at a.s.sandun (? _Ashington_), in Ess.e.x, he was completely overthrown. He and c.n.u.t agreed to divide the kingdom, but before the end of the year the heroic Eadmund died, and c.n.u.t the Dane became king of England without a rival.

9. =c.n.u.t and the Earldoms. 1016--1035.=--c.n.u.t was one of those rulers who, like the Emperor Augustus, shrink from no barbarity in gaining power, but when once they have acquired it exercise their authority with moderation and gentleness. He began by outlawing or putting to death men whom he considered dangerous, but when this had once been done he ruled as a thoroughly English king of the best type. The Danes who had hitherto fought for him had come not as settlers, but as an army, and soon after Eadmund's death he sent most of them home, retaining a force, variously stated as 3,000 or 6,000, warriors known as his House-carls (_House-men_), who formed a small standing army depending entirely on himself. They were not enough to keep down a general rising of the whole of England, but they were quite enough to prevent any single great man from rebelling against him. c.n.u.t therefore was, what aethelred had wished to be, really master of his kingdom. Under him ruled the ealdormen, who from this time were known as Earls, from the Danish t.i.tle of Jarl (see p. 64), and of these Earls the princ.i.p.al were the three who governed Mercia, North-humberland, and Wess.e.x, the last named now including the old kingdoms of Kent and Suss.e.x. There was a fourth in East Anglia, but the limits of this earldom varied from time to time, and there were sometimes other earldoms set up in the neighbouring shires, whereas the first-named three remained as they were for some time after c.n.u.t's death. It is characteristic of c.n.u.t that the one of the Earls to whom he gave his greatest confidence was G.o.dwine, an Englishman, who was Earl of the West Saxons. Another Englishman, Leofwine, became Earl of the Mercians. A Dane obtained the earldom of the North-humbrians, but the land was barbarous, and its Earls were frequently murdered.

Sometimes there was one Earl of the whole territory, sometimes two. It was not till after the end of c.n.u.t's reign that Siward became Earl of Deira, and at a later time of all North-humberland as far as the Tweed. The descendants of two of these Earls, G.o.dwine and Leofwine, leave their mark on the history for some time to come.

10. =c.n.u.t's Empire.=--Beyond the Tweed Malcolm, king of the Scots, ruled. He defeated the North-humbrians at Carham, and c.n.u.t ceded Lothian to him, either doing so for the first time or repeating the act of Eadgar, if the story of Eadgar's cession is true. At all events the king of the Scots from this time ruled as far south as the Tweed, and acknowledged c.n.u.t's superiority. c.n.u.t also became king of Denmark by his brother's death, and king of Norway by conquest. He entered into friendly relations with Richard II., Duke of the Normans, by marrying his sister Emma, the widow of aethelred.[6]

[Footnote 6: Genealogical connection between the Houses of England and Normandy:--

_Dukes of Normandy_ Richard I.

the Fearless | ----------------------------- | | Richard II. (1) aeTHELRED=Emma = (2) c.n.u.t, 1016-1035 the Good the Unready | G.o.dwine | 979-1016 | | --------------- -------- ---------- | | | | | | Richard III. Robert aelfred EADWARD=Eadgyth HAROLD | the Confessor 1066 WILLIAM 1042-1066 the Conqueror 1066-1087]

11. =c.n.u.t's Government.=--c.n.u.t had thus made himself master of a great empire, and yet, Dane as he was, though he treated Englishmen and Danes as equals, he gave his special favour to Englishmen. He restored, as men said, the laws of Eadgar--that is to say, he kept peace and restored order as in the days of Eadgar. He reverenced monks, and once as he was rowing on the waters of the fens, he heard the monks of Ely singing. He bade the boatmen row him to the sh.o.r.e that he might listen to the song of praise and prayer. He even went on a pilgrimage to Rome, to humble himself in that city which contained the burial places of the Apostles Peter and Paul. From Rome he sent a letter to his subjects. 'I have vowed to G.o.d,' he wrote, 'to live a right life in all things; to rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer just judgment to all. If heretofore I have done aught beyond what is just, through headiness or negligence of youth, I am ready, with G.o.d's help, to amend it utterly.' With c.n.u.t these were not mere words. It is not likely that there is any truth in the story how his flattering courtiers told him to sit by the sea-sh.o.r.e and bade the inflowing tide refrain from wetting his feet, and how when the waves rose over the spot on which his chair was placed he refused to wear his crown again, because that honour belonged to G.o.d alone, the true Ruler of the world. Yet the story would not have been invented except of one who was believed to have been clothed with real humility.

12. =The Sons of c.n.u.t. 1035--1042.=--c.n.u.t died in =1035=. G.o.dwine and the West Saxons chose Harthac.n.u.t, the son of c.n.u.t and Emma to take his father's place, whilst the north and centre, headed by Leofwine's son, Leofric,[7] Earl of the Mercians, chose Harold, the son of c.n.u.t by an earlier wife or concubine. G.o.dwine perhaps hoped that Harthac.n.u.t would make the West Saxon earldom the centre of the empire which had been his father's. c.n.u.t's empire was, however, breaking up. The Norwegians chose Magnus, a king of their own race, and Harthac.n.u.t remained in Denmark to defend it against the attacks of Magnus. In Normandy there were two English Ethelings, aelfred and Eadward, the sons of aethelred by Emma, who seem to have thought that the absence of Harthac.n.u.t gave them a chance of returning to England. aelfred landed, but was seized by Harold. He was blinded with such cruelty that he died. His death was, truly or falsely, attributed to G.o.dwine. As Harthac.n.u.t still remained in Denmark, the West Saxons deposed him and gave themselves to Harold, since which time England has never been divided. In =1040= Harold died, and Harthac.n.u.t came at last to England to claim the crown. He brought with him a Danish fleet, and with his sailors and his house-carls he ruled England as a conquered land. He raised a Danegeld to satisfy his men, and sent his house-carls to force the people to pay the heavy tax. Two of them were killed at Worcester, and he burnt Worcester to the ground. In =1042= he died 'as he stood at his drink' at a bridal.

[Footnote 7: Genealogy of the Mercian earls:--

Leofwine | Leofric | aelfgar | --------------------------- | | Eadwine, Morkere, Earl of Mercia Earl of North-humberland]

[Ill.u.s.tration: First Great Seal of Eadward the Confessor (obverse).]