Ethelwolf

This prince had neither the abilities nor the vigor of his father, and was better qualified for governing a convent than a kingdom.[*] He began his reign with making a partition of his dominions, and delivering over to his eldest son, Athelstan, the new-conquered provinces of Essex, Kent, and Sussex. But no inconveniences seem to have arisen from this partition as the continual terror of the Danish invasions prevented all domestic dissension. A fleet of these ravagers, consisting of thirty-three sail, appeared at Southampton, but were repulsed with loss by Wolfhere, governor of the neighboring country.[**] The same year, Æthelhelm, governor of Dorsetshire, routed another band, which had disembarked at Portsmouth; but he obtained the victory after a furious engagement, and he bought it with the loss of his life.[***]

&nbsp [* W. Malms, lib. ii. cap 2.]

&nbsp [** Chron. Sax. p. 73. Ethelwerd, lib. iii. cap.

&nbsp3.]

&nbsp [*** Chron. Sax. p. 73. H. Hunting, lib. v.]

Next year, the Danes made several inroads into England, and fought battles, or rather skirmishes, in East Anglia and Lindesey and Kent; where, though they were sometimes repulsed and defeated, they always obtained their end, of committing spoil upon the country, and carrying off their booty. They avoided coming to a general engagement, which was not suited to their plan of operations. Their vessels were small, and ran easily up the creeks and rivers, where they drew them ashore, and, having formed an intrenchment round them, which they guarded with part of their number, the remainder scattered themselves every where, and carrying off the inhabitants, and cattle, and goods, they hastened to their ships, and quickly disappeared. If the military force of the county were assembled, (for there was no time for troops to march from a distance,) the Danes either were able to repulse them, and to continue their ravages with impunity, or they betook themselves to their vessels, and, setting sail, suddenly invaded some distant quarter, which was not prepared for their reception.

Every part of England was held in continual alarm; and the inhabitants of one county durst not give assistance to those of another, lest their own families and property should in the mean time be exposed by their absence to the fury of these barbarous ravagers.[*]

&nbsp [* Alured. Beverl. p. 108.]

All orders of men were involved in this calamity; and the priests and monks, who had been commonly spared in the domestic quarrels of the Heptarchy, were the chief objects on which the Danish idolaters exercised their rage and animosity. Every season of the year was dangerous, and the absence of the enemy was no reason why any man could esteem himself a moment in safety.

These incursions had now become almost annual; when the Danes, encouraged by their successes against France as well as England, (for both kingdoms were alike exposed to this dreadful calamity,) invaded the last in so numerous a body as seemed to threaten it with universal subjection. But the English, more military than the Britons, whom a few centuries before they had treated with like violence, roused themselves with a vigor proportioned to the exigency. Ceorle, governor of Devonshire, fought a battle with one body of the Danes at Wiganburgh,[*] and put them to rout with great slaughter.

&nbsp [* H. Hunting, lib. v. Ethelwerd, lib. iii. cap 3.

&nbspSim. Dunelm. p. 120.]

King Athelstan attacked another at sea, near Sandwich, sunk nine of their ships, and put the rest to flight.[*]

&nbsp [* Chron. Sax. p. 74. Asser. p. 2.]

A body of them, however, ventured, for the first time, to take up winter quarters in England; and receiving in the spring a strong reënforcement of their countrymen, in three hundred and fifty vessels, they advanced from the Isle of Thanet, where they had stationed themselves, burnt the cities of London and Canterbury, and having put to flight Brichtric, who now governed Mercia under the title of king, they marched into the heart of Surrey, and laid every place waste around them. Ethelwolf, impelled by the urgency of the danger, marched against them at the head of the West Saxons; and, carrying with him his second son, Ethelbald, gave them battle at Okely, and gained a bloody victory over them. This advantage procured but a short respite to the English. The Danes still maintained their settlement in the Isle of Thanet; and, being attacked by Ealher and Huda, governors of Kent and Surrey, though defeated in the beginning of the action, they finally repulsed the assailants, and killed both the governors, removed thence to the Isle of Shepey, where they took up their winter quarters, that they might farther extend their devastation and ravages.

This unsettled state of England hindered not Ethelwolf from making a pilgrimage to Rome, whither he carried his fourth and favorite son, Alfred, then only six years of age.[*] He passed there a twelvemonth in exercises of devotion; and failed not in that most essential part of devotion, liberality to the church of Rome. Besides giving presents to the more distinguished ecclesiastics, he made a perpetual grant of three hundred mancuses[**] a year to that see; one third to support the lamps of St. Peter's, another those of St. Paul's, a third to the pope himself.[***] In his return home, he married Judith, daughter of the emperor Charles the Bald; but, on his landing in England, he met with an opposition which he little looked for.

His eldest son, Athelstan, being dead, Ethelbald, his second, who had assumed the government, formed, in concert with many of the nobles, the project of excluding his father from a throne which his weakness and superstition seem to have rendered him so ill qualified to fill. The people were divided between the two princes, and a bloody civil war, joined to all the other calamities under which the English labored, appeared inevitable, when Ethelwolf had the facility to yield to the greater part of his son's pretensions. He made with him a partition of the kingdom; and, taking to himself the eastern part, which was always, at that time, esteemed the least considerable, as well as the most exposed,[****] he delivered over to Ethelbald the sovereignty of the western. Immediately after, he summoned the states of the whole kingdom, and with the same facility conferred a perpetual and important donation on the church.

&nbsp [* Asser. p. 2. Chron. Sax. 76. H. Hunting, lib.

&nbspv.]

&nbsp [** A mancus was about the weight of our present

&nbsphalf crown. See Spelman's Glossary, in verbo Mancus.]

&nbsp [*** W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 2.]

&nbsp [**** Asser. p. 3. W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 2. M.

&nbspWest. p. 7, 8.]

The ecclesiastics, in those days of ignorance, made rapid advances in the acquisition of power and grandeur; and, inculcating the most absurd and most interested doctrines, though they sometimes met, from the contrary interests of the laity, with an opposition which it required time and address to overcome, they found no obstacle in their reason or understanding. Not content with the donations of land made them by the Saxon princes and nobles, and with temporary oblations from the devotion of the people, they had cast a wishful eye on a vast revenue, which they claimed as belonging to them by a sacred and indefeasible title. However little versed in the Scriptures, they had been able to discover that, under the Jewish law, a tenth of all the produce of land was conferred on the priesthood; and, forgetting what they themselves taught, that the moral part only of that law was obligatory on Christians, they insisted that this donation conveyed a perpetual property, inherent by divine right in those who officiated at the altar. During some centuries, the whole scope of sermons and homilies was directed to this purpose; and one would have imagined, from the general tenor of these discourses, that all the practical parts of Christianity were comprised in the exact and faithful payment of tithes to the clergy.[*] Encouraged by their success in inculcating these doctrines, they ventured farther than they were warranted even by the Levitical law, and pretended to draw the tenth of all industry, merchandise, wages of laborers, and pay of soldiers;[**] nay, some canonists went so far as to affirm that the clergy were entitled to the tithe of the profits made by courtesans in the exercise of their profession.[***]

Though parishes had been instituted in England by Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, near two centuries before,[****] the ecclesiastics had never yet been able to get possession of the tithes; they therefore seized the present favorable opportunity of making that acquisition; when a weak, superstitious prince filled the throne, and when the people, discouraged by their losses from the Danes, and terrified with the fear of future invasions, were susceptible of any impression which bore the appearance of religion.[*****] So meritorious was this concession deemed by the English, that, trusting entirely to supernatural assistance, they neglected the ordinary means of safety; and agreed, even in the present desperate extremity, that the revenues of the church should be exempted from all burdens, though imposed for national defence and security.[******]

&nbsp [* Padre Paolo, sopra beneficii ecclesiastici, p.

&nbsp51, 52, edit. Colon. 1675.]

&nbsp [** Spell. Concil. vol. i. p. 268.]

&nbsp [*** Padre Paolo, p. 132.]

&nbsp [**** Parker, p. 77.]

&nbspc. 8.]

&nbsp [****** Asser. p. 2. Chron. Sax. p. 76. W. Malms,

&nbsplib. ii. cap. 2. Ethelwerd, lib. iii. cap. 3. M. West. p.

&nbsp158. Ingulph. p. 17. Alured. Beverl. p. 95.]