Comic History of England Part 3

Edward the Elder had his father's ability as a ruler, but was not so great as a scholar or _litterateur_. He had not the unfaltering devotion to study nor the earnest methods which made Alfred great. Alfred not only divided up his time into eight-hour shifts,--one for rest, meals, and recreation, one for the affairs of state, and one for study and devotion,--but he invented the candle with a scale on it as a time-piece, and many a subject came to the throne at regular periods to set his candle by the royal lights.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAME TO THE THRONE AT REGULAR PERIODS TO SET THEIR CANDLES BY THE ROYAL LIGHT.]

Think of those days when the Sergeant-at-Arms of Congress could not turn back the clock in order to a.s.sist an appropriation at the close of the session, but when the light went out the session closed.

Athelstan succeeded his father, Edward the Presiding Elder, and resembled him a good deal by defeating the Welsh, Scots, and Danes. In those days agriculture, trade, and manufacturing were diversions during the summer months; but the regular business of life was warfare with the Danes, Scots, and Welsh.

These foes of England could live easily for years on oatmeal, sour milk, and cod's heads, while the fighting clothes of a whole regiment would have been a scant wardrobe for the Greek Slave, and after two centuries of almost uninterrupted carnage their war debt was only a trifle over eight dollars.

Edmund, the brother of Ethelstan, at the age of eighteen, succeeded his brother on the throne.

One evening, while a little hilarity was going on in the royal apartments, Edmund noticed among the guests a robber named Leolf, who had not been invited. Probably he was a pickpocket; and as a royal robber hated anybody who dropped below grand larceny, the king ordered his retainers to put him out.

But the retainers shrank from the undertaking, therefore Edmund sprang from the throne like a tiger and buried his talons in the robber's tresses. There was a mixture of feet, legs, teeth, and features for a moment, and when peace was restored King Edmund had a watch-pocket full of blood, and the robber chieftain was wiping his stabber on one of the royal tidies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDMUND THROWING LEOLF OUT.]

Edred now succeeded the deceased Edmund, his brother, and with a heavy heart took up the eternal job of fighting the Danes. Edred set up a sort of provincial government over Northumberland, the refractory district, and sent a governor and garrison there to see that the Danes paid attention to what he said. St. Dunstan had considerable influence over Edred, and was promoted a great deal by the king, who died in the year 955.

He was succeeded by Edwy the Fair, who was opposed by another Ethel.

Between the Ethels and the Welsh and Danes, there was little time left in England for golf or high tea, and Edwy's reign was short and full of trouble.

He had trouble with St. Dunstan, charging him with the embezzlement of church funds, and compelled him to leave the country. This was in retaliation for St. Dunstan's overbearing order to the king. One evening, when a banquet was given him in honor of his coronation, the king excused himself when the speeches got rather corky, and went into the sitting-room to have a chat with his wife, Elgiva, of whom he was very fond, and her mother. St. Dunstan, who had still to make a speech on Foreign Missions with a yard or so of statistics, insisted on Edwy's return. An open outbreak was the result. The Church fell upon the King with a loud, annual report, and when the debris was cleared away, a little round-shouldered grave in the churchyard held all that was mortal of the king. His wife was cruelly and fatally a.s.sa.s.sinated, and Edgar, his brother, began to reign. This was in the year 959, and in what is now called the Middle Ages.

Edgar was called the Pacific. He paid off the church debt, made Dunstan Archbishop of Canterbury, helped reform the church, and, though but sixteen years of age when he removed all explosives from the throne and seated himself there, he showed that he had a ma.s.sive scope, and his subjects looked forward to much antic.i.p.ation.

He sailed around the island every year to show the Danes how prosperous he was, and made speeches which displayed his education.

His coronation took place thirteen years after his accession to the throne, owing to the fact, as given out by some of the more modern historians, that the crown was at Mr. Isaac Inestein's all this time, whereas the throne, which was bought on the instalment plan, had been redeemed.

Pictures of the crown worn by Edgar will convince the reader that its redemption was no slight task, while the mortgage on the throne was a mere bagatelle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDGAR SURMOUNTED BY HIS CROWN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDGAR CAUSES HIS BARGE TO BE ROWED BY EIGHT KINGS.]

A bright idea of Edgar's was to ride in a row-boat pulled by eight kings under the old _regime_.

Personally, Edgar was reputed to be exceedingly licentious; but the historian wisely says these stories may have been the invention of his enemies. Greatness is certain to make of itself a target for the mud of its own generation, and no one who rose above the level of his surroundings ever failed to receive the fragrant attentions of those who had not succeeded in rising. All history is fraught also with the bitterness and jealousy of the historian except this one. No bitterness can creep into this history.

Edgar, it is said, a.s.sa.s.sinated the husband of Elfrida in order that he might marry her. It is also said that he broke into a convent and carried off a nun; but doubtless if these stories were traced to their very foundations, politics would account for them both.

He did not favor the secular clergy, and they, of course, disliked him accordingly. He suffered also at the hands of those who sought to operate the reigning apparatus whilst his attention was turned towards other matters.

He was the author of the scheme whereby he utilized his enemies, the Welsh princes, by demanding three hundred wolf heads per annum as tribute instead of money. This wiped out the wolves and used up the surplus animosity of the Welsh.

As the Welsh princes had no money, the scheme was a good one. Edgar died at the age of thirty-two, and was succeeded by Edward, his son, in 975.

The death of the king at this early age has given to many historians the idea that he was a sad dog, and that he sat up late of nights and cut up like everything, but this may not be true. Death often takes the good, the true, and the beautiful whilst young.

However, Edgar's reign was a brilliant one for an Anglo-Saxon, and his c.o.o.n-skin cap is said to have cost over a pound sterling.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDGAR THE PACIFIC.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE DANISH OLIGARCHY: DISAFFECTIONS ATTENDING CHRONIC USURPATION PROCLIVITIES.

Edgar was succeeded by his son Edward, called "the Martyr," who ascended the throne at the age of fifteen years. His step-mother, Elfrida, opposed him, and favored her own son, Ethelred. Edward was a.s.sa.s.sinated in 978, at the instigation of his step-mother, and that's what's the martyr with him.

During his reign there was a good deal of ill feeling, and Edward would no doubt have been deposed but for the influence of the church under Dunstan.

Ethelred was but ten years old when he began reigning. Sadly poor Dunstan crowned him, his own eyes still wet with sorrow over the cruel death of Edward. He foretold that Ethelred would have a stormy reign, with sleet and variable winds, changing to snow.

During the remainder of the great prelate's life he, as it were, stood between the usurper and the people, and protected them from the threatening storm.

But in 991, shortly after the death of Dunstan, a great army of Norwegians came over to England for purposes of pillage. To say that it was an allopathic pillage would not be an extravagant statement. They were extremely rude people, like all the nations of northern Europe at that time,--Rome being the Boston of the Old World, and Copenhagen the Fort Dodge of that period.

The Norwegians ate everything that did not belong to the mineral kingdom, and left the green fields of merry England looking like a base-ball ground. So wicked and warlike were they that the sad and defeated country was obliged to give the conquering Norske ten thousand pounds of silver.

Dunstan died at the age of sixty-three, and years afterwards was canonized; but firearms had not been invented at the time of his death.

He led the civilization and progress of England, and was a pioneer in cherishing the fine arts.

Olaf, who led the Norwegians against England, afterwards became king of Norway, and with the Danes used to ever and anon sack Great Britain,--_i.e._, eat everybody out of house and home, and then ask for a sack of silver as the price of peace.

Ethelred was a cowardly king, who liked to wear the implements of war on holidays, and learn to crochet and tat in time of war. He gave these invaders ten thousand pounds of silver at the first, sixteen thousand at the second, and twenty-four thousand on the third trip, in order to buy peace.

Olaf afterwards, however, embraced Christianity and gave up fighting as a business, leaving the ring entirely to Sweyn, his former partner from Denmark, who continued to do business as before.

The historian says that the invasion of England by the Norwegians and Danes was fully equal to the a.s.sa.s.sination, arson, and rapine of the Indians of North America. A king who would permit such cruel cuttings-up as these wicked animals were guilty of on the fair face of old England, should live in history only as an invertebrate, a royal failure, a decayed mollusk, and the dropsical head of a tottering dynasty.

In order to strengthen his feeble forces, Ethelred allied himself, in 1001, to Richard II., Duke of Normandy, and married his daughter Emma, but the Danes continued to make night hideous and elope with ladies whom they had never met before. It was a sad time in the history of England, and poor Emma wept many a hot and bitter tear as she yielded one jewel after another to the p.a.w.nbroker in order to buy off the coa.r.s.e and hateful Danes.

If Ethelred were to know how he is regarded by the historian who pens these lines, he would kick the foot-board out of his casket, and bite himself severely in four places.

To add to his foul history, happening to have a few inoffensive Danes on hand, on the 13th of November, the festival of St. Brice, 1002, he gave it out that he would ma.s.sacre these people, among them the sister of the Danish king, a n.o.ble woman who had become a Christian (only it is to be hoped a better one), and married an English earl. He had them all butchered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ETHELRED WEDS EMMA.]

In 1003, Sweyn, with revenge in his heart, began a war of extermination or subjugation, and never yielded till he was, in fact, king of England, while the royal intellectual polyp, known as Ethelred the Unwholesome, fled to Normandy, in the 1013th year Anno Domini.

But in less than six weeks the Danish king died, leaving the sceptre, with the price-mark still upon it, to Canute, his son, and Ethelred was invited back, with an understanding that he should not abuse his privileges as king, and that, although it was a life job during good behavior, the privilege of beheading him from time to time was and is vested in the people; and even to-day there is not a crowned head on the continent of Europe that does not recognize this great truth,--viz., that G.o.d alone, speaking through the united voices of the common people, declares the rulings of the Supreme Court of the Universe.

On the old autograph alb.u.ms of the world is still written in the dark corners of empires, "_the king can do no wrong_." But where education is not repressed, and where that Christianity which is built on love and charity is taught, there can be but one King who does no wrong.