Anglesey. He appointed his son Ethelwulf king CHAP. of Kent.25 THE only enemy that baffled the genius of Eg XI. 832. The Danes bert was the Danes, who continued their depreda- invade tions; and probably under the command of that Egbert. celebrated sea-king, Ragnar Lodbrog, whose actions will be more distinctly considered. 26 They ravaged the Isle of Sheppey, and in the next year defeated Egbert at Charmouth, in Dorsetshire. 27 This disaster, perhaps, occasioned that council which Wiglaf, in his charter to Croyland, mentions to have met this year at London, for the purpose of deliberating on the Danish depredations. 28 The efficacy of the measures adopted by the council appeared at Hengston Hill, in Cornwall. The Danes landed in this part of the island, and the Cornish Britons, from fear or voluntary policy, entered into offensive alliance with them against Egbert. The king of Wessex defeated their combined forces with great slaughter. 29 835. 836. AFTER a reign of posterity seldom rivalled, Egbert died full of glory.30 He had made all the death. 24 Brut y Saeson, 475. Brut y Tywysog. 392. Sax. Chron. 72. Ethelwerd, 841. 25 So he says in a charter at Rochester, dated " Ethelwulph, quem regem constituemus in Cantia." Thorpe, Reg. Reff. p. 22. 26 See the next book, ch. 3. 27 Sax. Chron. 72. 28 Ingulf. 10. (Ubi omnes congregati fuimus pro concilio capiendo contra Danicos piratas litt ora Angliæ assidue infestantes.) 29 Sax. Chron. 72. 30 Sax. Chron. 73. Flor. Wig. 291. Higden, 253. Chron. Petri de Burgo, 13. The Chronicle of Mailros says in 838, p. 142. The Asserii Annales, 839, p. 155. Wallingford, 837, Egbert's III. 836. BOOK Anglo-Saxon kingdoms subordinate to his own; but the tale, that he assembled the Anglo-Saxon states, and, abolishing the distinction of Saxons and Angles, and all provincial appellations, commanded the island to be called England, and procured himself to be crowned and intitled king of England, seems not to be entitled to our belief.31 p. 531. On the 26th January, in the year 839, an unusual inundation of the sea devastated all Frisia, so that it was almost on a level with the copious masses of sands, called there Dunos (Downs). Animals, men, and houses, were destroyed by the waters. The number of the inhabitants known to have perished in the deluge, was 2437. Annal. Bertiniani. 6 Bouquet's Recueil. - 2. 31 I was induced, as early as I began this work, to doubt this popular tale, by observing these circumstances:- 1. That although if such an act had taken place, the legal title of Egbert and his successors would have been rex Anglorum; yet that neither he nor his successors, till after Alfred, generally used it. In his charters Ethelwulf always signs king of the West Saxons; so do his three sons; so Alfred; and in his will he says, I, Alfred, of the West Saxons, king. Asser, the friend of this king, styles Ethelwulf and his three sons always kings of the West Saxons, p. 6-21. It is with Alfred that he begins to use a different title; he names him Angul Saxonum rex.Egbert did not establish the monarchy of England: he asserted the predominance of Wessex over the others, whom he defeated or made tributary, but he did not incorporate East Anglia, Mercia, or Northumbria. It was the Danish sword which destroyed these kingdoms, and thereby made Alfred the monarcha of the Saxons: accordingly, Alfred is called primus monarcha by some; but, in strict truth, the monarchy of England must not even be attributed to him, because Danish sovereigns divided the island with him, and occupied all the parts which the Angles had peopled, except Mercia. It was Athelstan, who destroyed the Danish sovereignty, that may, with the greatest propriety, be entitled primus monarcha Anglorum; and accordingly Alured of Beverly so intimates him, p. 93. Totius Angliæ monarchiam primus Anglo-Saxonum XI. 836. As the new enemies from the Baltic, who had CHA P. begun to appear in England, for the first time, at the end of the eighth and in the ninth centuries, were not duly noticed by our historians before the publication of this work, it will be necessary, for the more perfect understanding of the events which they caused, to take a review of the political state of Scandinavia, and of its customs at this period. obtinuit Edelstanus. - 3. The important incidents of the coro- BOOK IV. IV. CHAP. I. The Political State of NORWAY, SWEDEN, and DENMARK, in the Eighth Century. BOOK ALTHOUGH popular language, seldom accurate, has given the denomination of Danes, to the invaders of England, they were composed of the nations who lived in the regions now known by the general appellations of Sweden and Norway, as well as of the inhabitants of Zealand and Jutland. Of these, the Swedes were the earliest civilised, and seem to have first abandoned the system of maritime piracy. The Norwegians continued their aggressions, though at long intervals, to the year wherein this history ends. The Danes, who headed-the most terrible of the invasions, were also the most successful. Under Sweyn, Canute, and his children, they obtained the government of Britain. State of THE general aspect of the north, in the eighth century, was remarkable for two peculiarities, which were fitted to produce an age of piracy. These were, the numerous petty kings who ruled in its various regions, and the sea-kings who swarmed upon the ocean. NORWAY, whose broken coast stretches along a Norway. tumultuous ocean, from the rocks of the Baltic into the arctic circle, was the most sterile of all the regions of the north. Its rugged mountains, and intolerable cold, were unfriendly to agricultural I. cultivation; but they nurtured a hardy and vigor- CHA P. ous race, who, possessing no luxuries, feared no invasion, but poured their fleets on other coasts, to seize the superfluities which happier climates produced.' The navigator whom Alfred consulted and employed, describes this region, which he calls Northmanna land, as very long and very small. "All that man may use for pasture or plough lieth against the sea; and even this in some places very rocky. Wild moors lie against the east, and along the inhabited lands. In these moors the finnas dwell. The cultivated land is broadest towards the east, but becomes continually smaller as it stretches towards the north." 2 Ohthere added, that the "moors were in some places so broad, that a man would be two weeks in travelling over them; in others but six days." 3 FROM these descriptions we may remark, that the natural state of the country favoured maritime depredations. The population was along the sea. The natives were hardy, and their subsistence scanty. Compelled by their penury, they roamed largely abroad, and returned, when plunder had enriched them. 4 NORWAY, in the eighth century, was divided among numerous sovereignties, called fylki, which an Icelandic Saga defines to have been a province which could furnish twelve ships, containing each 1 Adam Bremen. Historia Ecclesiastica, lib. iv. c. 96. p. 71. ed Lindenbrog. Franc. 1630. 2 See Ohthere's narration, inserted by Alfred in his Saxon translation of Orosius, p. 24. ed. Lond. 1773. The land subjected to human culture, he describes as about 60 miles broad in the eastward, about 30 in the middle; and northward, where smallest, it might be three miles to the moors. Ibid. 3 Ohthere, ibid. 4 Adam Brem. p. 71. |