 1. Ancient England and the Romans. If you look at a map of the world, you will see, in the left hand up a corner of the eastern hemisphere, two islands lying in the sea. They are England and Scotland and Ireland. England and Scotland form the greater part of these islands. Ireland is the next in size. The little neighbouring islands, which are so small upon the map as to be mere dots, are chiefly little bits of Scotland, broken off, I dare say, in the course of a great length of time by the power of the restless water. In the old days, a long, long while ago, before our Saviour was born on earth and lay asleep in a manger, these islands were in the same place, and the stormy sea roared around them, just as it roars now. But the sea was not alive then, with great ships and brave sailors, sailing to and from all parts of the world. It was very lonely. The islands lay solitary in the great expanse of the water. The foaming waves dashed against their cliffs, and the bleak winds blew over their forests. But the winds and waves brought no adventurers to land upon the islands. And the savage islanders knew nothing of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world knew nothing of them. It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an ancient people, famous for carrying on trade, came in ships to these islands, and found that they produced tin and lead, both very useful things, as you know, and both produced this very hour upon the sea coast. The most celebrated tin mines in Cornwall are still close to the sea. One of them, which I have seen, is so close to it that it is hollowed out underneath the ocean. And the miners say that in stormy weather, when they are at work down in that deep place, they can hear the noise of the waves thundering above their heads. So the Phoenicians, coasting about the islands, would come without much difficulty to where the tin and lead were. The Phoenicians traded with the islanders for these metals, and gave the islanders some other useful things in exchange. The islanders were, at first, poor savages, going almost naked, or only dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and staining their bodies, as other savages do, with coloured earths and the juices of plants. But the Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts of France and Belgium, and saying to the people there, we have been to those white cliffs across the water, which you can see in fine weather and from that country, which is called Britain, we bring this tin and lead. Tempted some other French and Belgians to come over also. These people settled themselves on the south coast of England, which is now called Kent. And although they were of rough people, too, they taught the savage Britons some useful arts, and improved that part of the islands. It is probable that other people came over from Spain to Ireland, and settled there. Thus, by little and little, strangers became mixed with the islanders, and the savage Britons grew into a wild, bold people, almost savage still, especially in the interior of the country, away from the sea where the foreign settlers settled and went. But hardy, brave and strong. The whole country was covered with forests and swamps. The greater part of it was very misty and cold. There were no roads, no bridges, no streets, no houses that you would think deserving of the name. A town was nothing but a collection of straw-covered huts, hidden in a thick wood with a ditch all around, and a low wall made of mud. All the trunks of trees placed one upon another. The people planted little or no corn, but lived upon the flesh of their flocks and cattle. They made no coins, but used metal rings for money. They were clever in basket work, as savage people often are, and they could make a coarse kind of cloth and some very bad earthenware. But in building fortresses they were much more clever. They made boats of basket work, covered with the skins of animals, but seldom, if ever, ventured far from the shore. They made swords of copper mixed with tin, but these swords were of an awkward shape, and so soft that a heavy blow would bend one. They made light shields, short pointed daggers and spears, which they jerked back after they had thrown them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather fastened to the stem. The butt end was a rattle to frighten an enemy's horse. The ancient Britons being divided into as many as thirty or forty tribes, each commanded by its own little king, were constantly fighting with one another, as savage people usually do, and they always fought with these weapons. They were very fond of horses. The standard of Kent was the picture of a white horse. They could break them in and manage them wonderfully well. Indeed, the horses, of which they had an abundance, though they were rather small, were so well taught in those days that they can scarcely be said to have improved since, though the men are so much wiser. They understood and obeyed every word of command, and would stand still by themselves in all the din and noise of battle, while their masters went to fight on foot. The Britons could not have succeeded in their most remarkable art without the aid of these sensible and trusty animals. The art I mean is the construction and management of war chariots or cars, for which they have ever been celebrated in history. Each of the best sort of these chariots, and quite breast high in front and open at the back, contained one man to drive, and two or three others to fight, all standing up. The horses who drew them were so well trained that they would tear, at full gallop, over the most stony ways, and even through the woods, dashing down their masters' enemies beneath their hooves, and cutting them to pieces with the blades of sword or scythe, which were fastened to the wheels, and stretched out beyond the car on each side for that cruel purpose. In a moment, while at full speed, the horses would stop at the driver's command. The men within would leap out, deal blows about them with their swords like hail, leap on the horses, on the pole, spring back into the chariots anyhow, and, as soon as they were safe, the horses tore away again. The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called the religion of the Druids, it seems to have been brought over, in very early times indeed, from the opposite country of France, anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of the serpent and of the sun and moon, with the worship of some of the heathen gods and goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended to be enchanters, and to carried magicians' wands and wore, each of them about his neck. What he told the ignorant people was the serpent's egg in a golden case. But it is certain that the druidical ceremonies included the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of some suspected criminals, and, on particular occasions, even the burning alive, in immense wicker cages, of a number of men and animals together, the druid priests of some kind of veneration for the oak, and for the mistletoe, the same plant that we hang up in our houses at Christmas time now, when its white berries grew upon the oak. They met together in dark woods, which they called sacred groves, and there they instructed in their mysterious arts, young men who came to them as pupils, and who sometimes stayed with them as long as twenty years. These Druids build great temples and altars open to the sky, fragments of some of which are yet remaining. Stonehenge, on Salisbury plain, in Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these. Three curious stones, called Kitt's Coty House on Bluebell Hill near Maidstone in Brent, form another. We know from examination of the great blocks of which such buildings are made, that they could not have been raised without the aid of some ingenious machines, which are common now, but which the ancient Britons certainly did not use in making their own uncomfortable houses. I shall not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils have stayed with them twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, kept the people out of sight while they made these buildings, and then pretended that they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a hand in the fortresses too. At all events, as they were very powerful and very much believed in, and as they made and executed the laws and paid no taxes, I don't wonder that they liked their trade. And as they persuaded the people the more Druids the were, the better off the people would be. I don't wonder that there are good many of them, but it is pleasant to think that there are no Druids now who go on in that way and pretend to carry and chant as ones and serpents eggs. And, of course, there is nothing of the kind anywhere. Such was the improved condition of the ancient Britons, fifty-five years before the birth of our Saviour, when the Romans, under their great general Julius Caesar, were masters of all the rest of the known world. Julius Caesar had then just conquered Gaul, and, hearing in Gaul, a good deal about the opposite island with the white cliffs, and about the bravery of the Britons who inhabited it, some of whom had been fetched over to help Gauls in the war against him, he resolved, as he was so near, to come and conquer Britain next. So Julius Caesar came sailing over to this island of ours, with eighty vessels and twelve thousand men. And he came from the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, because thence was the shortest passage into Britain, just for the same reason as our steamboats now take the same track every day. He expected to conquer Britain easily, but it was not such easy work as he supposed, for the bold Britons fought most bravely, and what with not having his horse-soldiers with him, for they had been driven back by a storm, and what with having some of his vessels dashed to pieces by a high tide, after they were drawn ashore, he ran great risk of being totally defeated. However, for once that the bold Britons beat him, he beat them twice, though not so soundly, but that he was very glad to accept their proposes of peace, and go away. But in the spring of the next year he came back, this time with eight hundred vessels and thirty thousand men. The British tribes chose, as their general-in-chief, a Britain, whom the Romans in their Latin language, called Cassiva Launus, but whose British name is supposed to have been Casualon. A brave general he was, and well he and his soldiers fought the Roman army. So well, that whenever in that war the Roman soldiers saw a great cloud of dust, and heard the rattle of the rapid British chariots, they trembled in their hearts. Besides a number of smaller battles, there was a battle fought near Canterbury and Kent. There was a battle fought near Chertsey and Surrey. There was a battle fought near a marshy little town in a wood, the capital of that part of Britain, which belonged to Cassiva Launus, and which was probably now what is sent Albans into Hertfordshire. However, brave Cassiva Launus had the worst of it on the whole, though he and his men always fought like lions. As the other British chiefs were jealous of him, and were always quarrelling with him and with one another, he gave up and reposed peace. Julius Caesar was very glad to grant peace easily, and to go away again with all his remaining ships and men. He had expected to find pearls in Britain, and he may have found a few for anything I know, but at all events he found delicious oysters. And I'm sure he found tough Britons, of whom I dare say he made the same complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte the great French general did, eighteen hundred years after, when he said they were such unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they were beaten. They never did know, I believe, and never will. Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that time there was peace in Britain. The Britons improved their towns and mode of life, became more civilised, travelled and learned a great deal from the Gauls and Romans. At last the Roman emperor Claudius sent Alas Pláotius, a skillful general with a mighty force, to subdue the island, and shortly afterwards arrived himself. They did little, and a storious scapula another general came. Some of the British chiefs of tribe submitted, others resolved to fight to the death. Of these brave men the bravest was Caractacus, or Caradoc, who gave battle to the Romans with his army among the mountains of north Wales. This day, said he to his soldiers, decides the fate of Britain, your liberty or your eternal slavery dates from this hour. Remember your brave ancestors who drove the great Caesar himself across the sea. On hearing these words his men with a great shout rushed upon the Romans. But the strong Roman swords and armour were too much for the weaker British weapons in close conflict. The Britons lost that day. The wife and daughter of the brave Caractacus were taken prisoner. His brothers delivered themselves up. He himself was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by his false and base stepmother. And they carried him and all his family in triumph to Rome. But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in prison, great in chains. His noble heir and dignified endurance of distress so touched the Roman people who thronged the streets to see him. The tea and his family were restored to freedom. No one knows whether his great heart broke and he died in Rome or whether he ever returned to his own dear country. English oaks have grown up from acorns and withered away when they were hundreds of years old. And other oaks have sprung up in their places and died too, very aged, since the rest of the history of the brave Caractacus was forgotten. Still the Britons would not yield. They rose again and again and died by thousands soared in hand. They rose on every possible occasion. Switoneus, another Roman general, came and stormed the island of Anglesey, then called Mona, which was supposed to be sacred, and he burnt the druids in their own wicked cages by their own fires. But even while he was in Britain, with his victorious troops, the Britons rose. Because Bodicea, a British queen, the widow of the king of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted the plundering of her property by the Romans who were settled in England. She was scourged by Audra of Catus, a Roman officer, and her two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence, and her husband's relations were made slaves. To avenge this injury the Britons rose with all their might and rage. They drove Catus into Gaul. They laid the Roman possession's waste. They forced the Romans out of London, then a poor little town, but a trading place. They hanged, burnt, crucified, and slew by the sword, seventy thousand Romans in a few days. Sortonia strengthened his army, and advanced to give them battle. They strengthened their army and desperately attacked his, on a field where it was strongly posted. Before the first charge of the Britons was made, Bodicea, in a war chariot with her fair hair streaming in the wind, and her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove among the troops and cried to them for vengeance on their oppressors, the licentious Romans. The Britons fought till the last, but they were vanquished with great slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison. Still the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When Sortonius left the country, they fell upon his troops and retook the island of Anglesey. Agricola came fifteen or twenty years afterwards, and retook it once more, and devoted seven years to subduing the country, especially that part of it which is now called Scotland. But its people, the Caledonians, resisted him at every inch of ground. They fought the bloodiest battles with him. They killed their very wives and children to prevent his making prisoners of them. They fell, fighting in such great numbers at certain hills in Scotland, are yet supposed to be vast heaps of stones piled up above their graves. Hadrian came thirty years afterwards, and still they resisted him. Severus came nearly a hundred years afterwards, and they worried his great army like dogs and rejoiced to see them die, by thousands in the bogs and swamps. Caracola, the son and successor of Severus, did the most to conquer them, for a time, but not by force of arms. He knew how little that would do. He yielded up a quantity of land to the Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same privileges as the Romans possessed. There was peace after this, for seventy years. Their new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a fierce seafaring people from the countries to the north of the Rhine, the great river of Germany on the banks of which the best grapes grow to make the German wine. They began to come into pirate ships to the sea coast of Gaul and Britain, and to plunder them. They were repulsed by Caracias, a native either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed by the Romans to the command, and under whom the Britons first began to fight upon the sea. But after this they renewed their averages. A few years more, and the Scots, which was then the name for the people of Ireland, and the Picts, and northern people, began to make frequent plundering incursions into the south of Britain. All these attacks were repeated at intervals during two hundred years, and through a long succession of Roman emperors and chiefs. During all which length of time the Britons rose against the Romans over and over again. At last in the days of the Roman honorees, when the Roman power all over the world was fast declining, and when Rome wanted all his soldiers at home, the Romans abandoned all hope of conquering Britain and went away. And still at last, as at first, the Britons rose against them in their old, brave manner. For a very little while before, they had turned away the Roman magistrates, and declared themselves an independent people. Five hundred years had passed since Julius Caesar's first invasion of the island, when the Romans departed from it forever. In the course of that time, although they had been the cause of terrible fighting and bloodshed, they had done much to improve the condition of the Britons. They had made great military roads, they had built forts, they had taught them how to dress and arm themselves much better than they had ever known how to do before. They had refined the whole British way of living. Agricola had built a great wall of earth, more than seventy miles long, extending from Newcastle to beyond Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out the Picts and Scots. Hadrian had strengthened it. Severus, finding it much in want of repair, had built it afresh of stone. Above all, it was in the Roman time, and by means of Roman ships, that the Christian religion was first brought into Britain. And its people first taught the great lesson that, to be good in the sight of God, they must love their neighbours as themselves, and do unto others as they would be done by. The Druids declared that it was very wicked to believe in any such thing, and cursed all the people who did believe it, very heartily. But when the people found that they were none the better for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse for the curses of the Druids, but that the sun shone and the rain fell without consulting the Druids at all, they just began to think that the Druids were mere men, and that it signified very little whether they cursed or blessed. After which the pupils of the Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and the Druids took to other trades. Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in England. It is but little that is known of those five hundred years, but some remains of them are still found. Often when labourers are digging up the ground to make foundations for houses or churches, they light on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of pavement of which they trod are discovered among the earth that is broken by the plow, or the dust that is crumbled by the gardener's spade. Wells that the Romans sunk still yield water. Roads that the Romans made form part of our highways. In some old battlefields British spearheads and Roman armour have been found, mingled together in decay as they fell in the thick pressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps overgrown with grass, and of mounds that are the burial places of heaps of Britons, are to be seen in almost all parts of the country. Across the bleak moors of Northumberland, the wall of Severus, overrun with moss and weeds, still stretches a strong ruin, and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleeping on it in the summer weather. On Salisbury plain, Stonehenge yet stands, a monument of the earlier time when the Roman name was unknown in Britain, and when the Druids, with their best magic ones, could not have written it in the sands of the wild sea shore. Ancient England under the early Saxons. The Romans had scarcely gone away from Britain, when the Britons began to wish they had never left it. For the Romans being gone, and the Britons being much reduced in numbers by their long wars, the Picts and Scots came pouring in, over the broken and unguarded wall of Severus, in swarms. They plundered the richest towns and killed the people, and came back so often for more booty and more slaughter, that the unfortunate Britons lived a life of terror. As if the Picts and Scots were not bad enough on land, the Saxons attacked the islanders by sea. And as if something more was still wanting to make them miserable, they quarreled bitterly among themselves as to what prayers they ought to say, and how they ought to say them. The priests, being very angry with one another on these questions, cursed one another in the heartiest manner. And, uncommonly like the old druids, cursed all the people whom they could not persuade. So, altogether, the Britons were very badly off, you may believe. They were in such distress, in short, that they sent a letter to Rome in treating help, which they called the groans of the Britons, and in which they said, the Barbarians chase us into the sea, the sea throws us back upon the barbarians, and we have only the hard choice left us of perishing by the sword or perishing by the waves. But the Romans could not help them, even if they were so inclined, for they had enough to do to defend themselves against their own enemies, who were then very fierce and strong. At last the Britons, unable to bear their hard condition any longer, resolved to make peace with the Saxons, and to invite the Saxons to come into their country, and help them to keep out the Picts and Scots. It was a British prince named Vortigan, who took this resolution, and who made a treaty of friendship with Hengist and Horsha, two Saxon chiefs. Both of these names in the old Saxon language signify horse. For the Saxons, like many other nations in a rough state, were fond of giving men the names of animals, as horse, wolf, bear, hound. The Indians of North America, were very inferior people to the Saxons though, do the same to this day. Hengist and Horsha drove out the Picts and Scots, and Vortigan, being grateful to them for that service, made to know opposition to their settling themselves in that part of England, which is called the Isle of Thanet, or to their inviting over more of their countrymen to join them. But Hengist had a beautiful daughter named Rowena, and when, at a feast, she filled a golden goblet to the brim with wine, and gave it to Vortigan, saying in a sweet voice, Dear King, thy health, the King fell in love with her. My opinion is that the cunning Hengist meant him to do so, in order that the Saxons might have greater influence with him, and that the fair Rowena came to that feast, golden goblet and all, on purpose. At any rate they were married, and long afterwards, whenever the King was angry with the Saxons, or jealous of their encroachments, Rowena would put her beautiful arms round his neck, and softly say, Dear King, they are my people, be favourable to them, as you loved that Saxon girl who gave you the golden goblet of wine at the feast, and really, I don't see how the King could help himself. Ah, we must all die! In the course of years Vortigan died. He was dethroned and put in prison first, I am afraid, and Rowena died, and generations of Saxons and Britons died. An event that happened during a long, long time ago would have been quite forgotten but for the tales and songs of the old Bards, who used to go about from feast to feast with their white beards, recounting the deeds of their forefathers. Among the histories of which they sang and talked, there was a famous one, concerning the bravery and virtues of King Arthur, supposed to have been a British prince in those old times. But whether such a person really lived, or whether there were several persons whose histories came to be confused together under that one name, or whether all about him was invention, no one knows. I will tell you shortly what is most interesting in the early Saxon times, as they are described in these songs and stories of the Bards. In, and long after, the days of Vortigan, fresh bodies of Saxons, under various chiefs, came pouring into Britain. One body conquering the Britons in the east and settling there, calling their kingdom Essex. Another body settled in the west, and called their kingdom Wessex. The North folk, or Norfolk people, established themselves in one place. The South folk, or Suffolk people, established themselves in another. And gradually seven kingdoms or states arose in England, which were called the Saxon Heptarchy. The poor Britons, falling back before these crowds of fighting men whom they had innocently invited over as friends, retired into Wales and the adjacent country, into Devonshire and into Cornwall. Those parts of England long remained unconquered. And in Cornwall now, where the sea coast is very gloomy, steep and rugged, where in the dark winter time ships have often been wrecked close to the land, and every sole on board has perished, where the winds and waves howl drearily and split the solid rocks into arches and caverns. There are very ancient ruins, which the people call the ruins of King Arthur's castle. Kent is the most famous of the seven Saxon kingdoms, because the Christian religion was preached to the Saxons there, who domineered over the Britons too much to care for what they said about their religion, or anything else. By Augustine, a monk from Rome, King F. Albert of Kent was soon converted. And the moment he said he was a Christian, his courtiers all said they were Christians. After which ten thousand of his subjects said they were Christians too. Augustine built a little church close to this King's palace, on the ground now occupied by the beautiful Cathedral of Canterbury. Sebert, the King's nephew, built on a muddy marshy place near London, where there had been a temple to Apollo, a church dedicated to St. Peter, which is now Westminster Abbey. And in London itself, on the foundation of a temple to Diana, he built another little church, which has risen up since that old time, to be St. Paul's. After the death of Ethelbert, Edwin, King of Northumbria, who was such a good king that it was said a woman or child might openly carry a purse of gold in his reign, without fear, allowed his child to be baptized, and held a great council to consider whether he and his people should all be Christians or not. It was decided that they should be. Coiffey, the chief priest of the old religion, made a great speech on the occasion. In this discourse he told the people that he had found out the old gods to be imposters. I am quite satisfied of it, he said. Look at me! I have been serving them all my life, and they have done nothing for me, whereas if they had been really powerful they could not have decently done less. In return for all I have done for them, then make my fortune. As they have never made my fortune, I am quite convinced they are imposters. When this singular priest had finished speaking, he hastily armed himself with sword and lance, mounted a war-horse, rode at a full gallop inside of all the people to the temple, and flung his lance against it as an insult. From that time the Christian religion spread itself among the Saxons and became their faith. The next very famous prince was Egbert. He lived about a hundred and fifty years afterwards, and claimed to have a better right to the throne of Wessex than Beatrix, another Saxon prince who was at the head of that kingdom. And he married Egbert, the daughter of Offer, king of another of the Seven Kingdoms. This queen, Egberger, was a handsome murderess, who poisoned people when they offended her. One day she mixed a cup of poison for a certain noble belonging to the court. But her husband drank of it too by mistake, and died. Upon this the people revolted in great crowds, and running to the palace and thundering at the gates cried down with the wicked queen who poisons men. They drove her out of the country, and abolished the title she had to disgrace. When years had passed away some travellers came home from Italy, and said that in the town of Pavia they had seen a ragged beggar woman, who had once been handsome, but was then shriveled, bent and yellow, wondering about the streets crying for bread. And that this beggar woman was the poisoning English queen. It was indeed Egberger. And so she died, without a shelter for her wretched head. Egbert, not considering himself safe in England, in consequence of his having claimed the crown to Wessex, for he thought his rival might take him prisoner and put him to death, sought refuge at the court of Charlemagne, King of France. On the death of Beatrix, so unhappily poisoned by mistake, Egbert came back to Britain, succeeded to the throne of Wessex, conquered some of the other monarchs of the Seven Kingdoms, added their territories to his own, and, for the first time, caught the country over which he ruled, England, and now new enemies arose, who, for a long time, travelled England sorely. These were the Northmen, the people of Denmark and Norway, whom the English called the Danes. They were a warlike people, quite at home upon the sea, not Christians, very daring and cruel. They came over in ships, and plundered and burned, wheresoever they landed. Once they beat Egbert in battle, once Egbert beat them, but they cared no more for being beaten than the English themselves. In the four following short reigns of Ethel Wolf and his sons Ethel Bard, Ethel Burt and Ethel Red, they came back, over and over again, burning and plundering and laying England waste. In the last mention reign, they seized Edmund, King of East England, and bound him to a tree. Then they proposed to him that he should change his religion, but he, being a good Christian, steadily refused. Upon that they beat him, made cowardly jests upon him, or defenceless as he was, shot arrows at him, and, finally, struck off his head. It is impossible to say whose head they might have struck off next, but for the death of King Ethel Red, from a wound he had received in fighting against them, and the succession to his throne of the best and wisest king that ever lived in England. Or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Alfred the Great was a young man, three and twenty years of age when he became king. Twice in his childhood, he had been taken to Rome, where the Saxon nobles were in the habit of going on journeys which they supposed to be religious, and once he had stayed for some time in Paris. Learning, however, was so little cared for then, that at twelve years old he had not been taught to read, although of the sons of King Ethel Wolf, he, the youngest, was the favorite. But he had, as most men who grow up to be great and good are generally found to have had, an excellent mother, and one day this lady, whose name was Osberga, happened as she was sitting among her sons to read a book of Saxon poetry. The art of printing was not known until long and long after that period, and the book which was written was what is called illuminated, with beautiful bright letters richly painted. The brothers admiring it very much, their mother said, I will give it to that one of you four princes who first learns to read. Alfred sought out a tutor that very day, applied himself to learn with great diligence, and soon won the book. He was proud of it all his life. This great king in the first year of his reign fought nine battles with the Danes. He made some treaties with them too, by which the false Danes swore they would quit the country. They pretended to consider that they had taken a very solemn oath in swearing this upon holy bracelets that they wore, and which were always buried with them when they died. But they cared little for it, for they thought nothing of breaking oaths and treaties too, as soon as it suited their purpose, and coming back again to fight, plunder and burn as usual. One fatal winter, in the fourth year of King Alfred's reign, they spread themselves in great numbers over the whole of England, and so dispersed and routed the king's soldiers that the king was left alone, and was obliged to disguise himself as a common peasant, and to take refuge in the cottage of one of his cowherds who did not know his face. Here King Alfred, while the Danes sought him far and near, was left alone one day by the cowherd's wife to watch some cakes which she had put to bake upon the hearth. But being at work upon his bow and arrows, with which he hoped to punish the false Danes when a brighter time should come, and thinking deeply of his poor unhappy subjects whom the Danes chased through the land, his noble mind forgot the cakes, and they were burned. What! said the cowherd's wife, who scolded him well when she came back, and little thought that she was scolding the king, you will be ready enough to eat them by and by, and yet you cannot watch them, idle dog? At length the Devonshire men made head against a new host of Danes who landed on their coast, killed their chief, and captured their flag, on which was represented the likeness of a raven, a very fit bird for a thievish army like that, I think. The loss of their standard troubled the Danes greatly, for they believed it to be enchanted, woven by three daughters of one father in a single afternoon, and they had a story among themselves, that when they were victorious in battle, the raven stretched his wings and seemed to fly, and that when they were defeated he would droop. He had good reason to droop now, if he could have done anything half so sensible, for King Alfred joined the Devonshire men, made a camp with them on a piece of firm ground in the midst of a bog and summer shire, and prepared for a great attempt for vengeance on the Danes, and the deliverance of his oppressed people. But first, as it was important to know how numerous those pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified, King Alfred, being a good musician, disguised himself as a gleaman or minstrel, and went with his harp to the Danish camp. He played and sang in the very tent of Guthram, the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes as they caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing but his music, he was watchful of their tents, their arms, their discipline, their discipline, everything that he desired to know, and right soon did this great king entertain them to a different tune. For, summoning all his true followers to meet him at an appointed place, where they received him with joyful shouts and tears, as the monarch whom many of them had given up for lost or dead, he put himself at their head, marched on the Danish camp, defeated the Danes with great slaughter, and besieged them for 14 days to prevent their escape. But being as merciful as he was good and brave, he then instead of killing them proposed peace, on condition that they should altogether depart from that western part of England, and settle in the east, and that Guthram should become a Christian in remembrance of the divine religion which now taught his conqueror, the noble Alfred, to forgive the enemy who had so often injured him. This Guthram did. At his baptism, King Alfred was his godfather, and Guthram was an honorable chief who well deserved that clemency, for ever afterwards he was loyal and faithful to the king. The Danes under him were faithful too. They plundered and burned no more, but worked like honest men. They plowed and sowed, and reaped, and led good, honest English lives, and I hope the children of those Danes played many a time with Saxon children in the sunny fields, and that Danish young men fell in love with Saxon girls, and married them, and that English travellers, benighted at the doors of Danish cottages, often went in for shelter until morning, and that Danes and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of King Alfred the Great. All the Danes were not like these under Guthram, for after some years more of them came over, in the old plundering and burning way, among them a fierce pirate of the name of Hastings, who had the boldness to sail up the Thames to Gravesand with eighty ships. For three years there was a war with these Danes, and there was a famine in the country too, and a plague, both upon human creatures and beasts. But King Alfred, whose mighty heart never failed him, built large ships nevertheless, with which to pursue the pirates on the sea, and he encouraged his soldiers, by his brave example, to fight valiantly against them on the shore. At last he drove them all away, and then there was repose in England. As great and good in peace, as he was great and good in war, King Alfred never rested from his labours to improve his people. He loved to talk with clever men, and with travellers from foreign countries, and to write down what they told him for his people to read. He had studied Latin after learning to read English, and now another of his labours was to translate Latin books into the English Saxon tongue that his people might be interested and improved by their contents. He made just laws that they might live more happily and freely. He turned away all partial judges that no wrong might be done them. He was so careful of their property, and punished robbers so severely that it was a common thing to say that under the great King Alfred, garlands of golden chains and jewels might have hung across the streets, and no man would have touched one. He founded schools. He patiently heard causes himself in his court of justice. The great desires of his heart were to do right to all his subjects, and to leave England better, wiser, happier in all ways than he founded. His industry in these efforts was quite astonishing. Every day he divided into certain portions, and in each portion devoted himself to a certain pursuit. That he might divide his time exactly, he had waxed torches or candles made, which were all of the same size, were notched across at regular distances, and were always kept burning. Thus, as the candles burnt down, he divided the day into notches, almost as accurately as we now divided into hours upon the clock. But when the candles were first invented, it was found that the wind and drafts of air blowing into the place through the doors and windows, and through the chinks in the walls, caused them to gutter and burn unequally. To prevent this, the king had them put into cases formed of wood and white horn, and these were the first land horns ever made in England. All this time he was afflicted with a terrible, unknown disease, which caused him violent and frequent pain that nothing could relieve. He bore it as he had borne all the troubles of his life like a brave good man, until he was 53 years old, and then, having reigned 30 years, he died. He died in the year 901, but long ago as that is, his fame and the love and gratitude with which his subjects regarded him are freshly remembered to the present hour. In the next reign, which was the reign of Edward, surnamed the Elder, who was chosen in council to succeed, a nephew of King Alfred troubled the country by trying to obtain the throne. The Danes in the east of England took part with the usurper, perhaps because they had honored his uncle so much, and honored him for his uncle's sake, and there was hard fighting, but the king, with the assistance of his sister, gained the day, and reigned in peace for four and twenty years. He gradually extended his power over the whole of England, and so the seven kingdoms were united into one. When England thus became one kingdom, ruled over by one Saxon king, the Saxons had been settled in the country more than 450 years. Great changes had taken place in its customs during that time. The Saxons were still greedy eaters and great drinkers, and their feasts were often of a noisy and drunken kind, but many new comforts and even elegances had become known, and were fast increasing. Hangings for the walls of rooms, where, in these modern days, we paste up paper, are known to have been sometimes made of silk, ornamented with birds and flowers in needlework. Tables and chairs were curiously carved in different woods, were sometimes decorated with gold or silver, sometimes even made of those precious metals. Knives and spoons were used at table, gold and ornaments were worn, with silk and cloth and golden tissues and embroideries. Dishes were made of gold and silver, brass and bone. There were varieties of drinking horns, bedsteads, musical instruments. A harp was passed round at a feast like the drinking bowl, from guest to guest, and each one usually sang or played when his turn came. The weapons of the Saxons were stoutly made, and among them was a terrible iron hammer that gave deadly blows and was long remembered. The Saxons themselves were a handsome people. The men were proud of their long, fair hair parted on the forehead, their ample beards, their fresh complexions, and clear eyes. The beauty of the Saxon women filled all England with a new delight and grace. I have more to tell of the Saxons yet, but I stop to say this now, because under the Great Alfred, all the best points of the English Saxon character were first encouraged, and in him, first shown. It has been the greatest character among the nations of the earth. Wherever the descendants of the Saxon race have gone, have sailed or otherwise made their way, even to the remotest regions of the world, they have been patient, persevering, never to be broken in spirit, never to be turned aside from enterprises on which they have resolved. In Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the whole world over, in the desert, in the forest, on the sea, scorched by a burning sun or frozen by ice that never melts, the Saxon blood remains unchanged. Wheresoever that race goes, there, law and industry, and safety for life and property, and all the great results of steady perseverance are certain to arise. I pause to think with admiration of the noble king who, in his single person, possessed all the Saxon virtues, whom misfortune could not subdue, whom prosperity could not spoil, whose perseverance nothing could shake, who was hopeful and defeat and generous in success, who loved justice, freedom, truth, and knowledge, who, in his care to instruct his people, probably did more to preserve the beautiful old Saxon language than I can imagine, without whom the English tongue in which I tell this story might have wanted half its meaning. As it is said that his spirit still inspires some of our best English laws, so let you and I pray that it may animate our English hearts, at least to this. To resolve, when we see any of our fellow creatures left in ignorance, that we will do our best while life is in us to have them taught, and to tell those rulers whose duty it is to teach them, and who neglect their duty, that they have profited very little by all the years that have rolled away since the year 901, and that they are far behind the bright example of King Alfred the Great. 4. England under Ethelstan and the Six Boy Kings Ethelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded that king. He reigned only fifteen years, but he remembered the glory of his grandfather, the Great Alfred, and governed England well. He reduced the turbulent people of 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 the Cornishmen, who were not yet quite under the Saxon government. He restored 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 strong alliance made against him by Analf, a Danish prince, Constantine, king of the Scots, and the people of North Wales, he broke and defeated in one great 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 to become polite and agreeable, and foreign princes were glad, as they have sometimes been since, to come to England on visits to the English court. When Ethelstan died, at forty-seven years old, his brother Edmund, who was only eighteen, became king. He was the first of six boy kings, as you will presently know. They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a taste for improvement and refinement. But he was beset by the Danes, and had a short and troubled reign, which came to a troubled end. One night, when he 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 from England. Made very angry by the boldness of this man, the king turned to his 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 life any man may take at any time. Command that robber to depart. I will not depart, said Leof. No, cried the king. No, by the lord, said Leof. Upon that the king rose from his seat, and, making passionately at the 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 the king'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 may imagine what rough lives the kings of those times led, when one of them could 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, but of a strong mind. And his armies fought the Northmen, the Danes, and Norwegians, or the Sea Kings, as they were called, and beat them for the time. And in nine years Edred died and passed away. Then came the boy king Edwi, fifteen years of age, but the real king, who had the real power, was a monk named Dunston, a clever priest, a little mad, and not a little proud and cruel. Dunston was then abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, wither the body of king Edmund the Magnificent was carried to be buried. While yet a boy he had got out of his bed one night, being then in a fever, and walked about Glastonbury Church when it was under repair, and because he did not tumble off some scaffolds that were there and break his neck, it was reported that he had been shown over the building by an angel. He had also made a harp that was said to play of itself, which it very likely did, as Aeolian harps which are played by the wind, and are understood now, always do. For these wonders he had been once denounced by his enemies, who were jealous of his favour with the late king Ethelstan, as a magician. And he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot, and thrown into a marsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause a great deal of trouble yet. The priests of those days were, generally, the only scholars. They were learned in many things. Having to make their own convents and monasteries, on uncultivated grounds that were granted to them by the crown, it was necessary that they should be good farmers and good gardeners, or their lands would have been too poor to support them. For the decoration of the chapels where they prayed, and for the comfort of the refectories where they ate and drank, it was necessary that there should be good carpenters, good smiths, good painters among them. For their greater safety in sickness and accident, living alone by themselves in solitary places, it was necessary that they should study the virtues of plants and herbs, and should know how to dress cuts, burns, scalds, and bruises, and how to set broken limbs. Accordingly they taught themselves, and one another, a great variety of useful arts, and became skillful in agriculture, medicine, surgery, and handicraft. And when they wanted the aid of any little piece of machinery, which would be simple enough now, but was marvellous then, to impose a trick upon the poor peasants, they knew very well how to make it, and did make it, many a time and often. I have no doubt. Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the most sagacious of these monks. He was an ingenious smith, and worked at a forge in a little cell. This cell was made too short to admit of his lying at full length when he went to sleep, as if that did any good to any body. And he used to tell the most extraordinary lies about demons and spirits, who, he said, came there to persecute him. For instance, he related that one day when he was at work, the devil looked in at the little window, and to try to tempt him to lead a life of idle pleasure. Whereupon, having his pincers in the fire, red-hot, he seized the devil by the nose, and put 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's madness, 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 always wanted. On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy King Edwie, it was remarked by Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was a dain by birth, that the king quietly left the coronation feast, while all the company were there. 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 grossly abused them, but dragged the young king back into the feasting-hall by force. Some, again, think Dunstan did this, because the young king's fair wife was his own cousin, and the monks objected to people marrying their own cousins. But I believe he did it, because he was an imperious, audacious, ill-conditioned priest, who, having loved a young lady himself before he became a sour monk, hated all love now, and everything belonging to it. The young king was quite old enough to feel this insult. Dunstan had been treasurer in the last reign, and he soon charged Dunstan with having taken some of the last king's money. The Glastonbury Abbot fled to Belgium, very narrowly escaping some pursuers who were sent to put out his eyes, as you will wish they had, when you read what follows. And his abbey was given to priests who were married, whom he always, both before and afterwards, opposed. But he quickly conspired with his friend, Odo the Dane, to set up the king's young brother, Edgar, as his rival for the throne. And not content with this revenge he caused the beautiful queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only seventeen or eighteen, to be stolen from 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 and befriended 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 cruel wound, and sent her home as beautiful as before. But the villain Dunstan, and that other villain Odo, caused her to be waylaid at Gloucester, as she was joyfully hurrying to join her husband, and to be hacked and hewn with swords, and to be barbarously maimed and lame and left to die. When Edwin the Fair, his people called him so because he was so young and handsome, heard of her dreadful fate, he died of a broken heart. And so the pitiful story of the young wife and husband ends. Ah, better to be two cottagers in these better times than king and 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 the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced them by solitary monks like himself, of the rigid order called the Benedictines. He made himself Archbishop of Canterbury for his greater glory, and exercised such power over the neighboring British princes, and so collected them about the king, that once, when the king held his court at Chester, and went on the River Dee to visit the monastery of St. John, the eight oars of his boat were pulled, 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 was very obedient to Dunstan and the monks, they took great pains to represent him as the best of kings. But he was really profligate, debauched, and vicious. He once forcibly carried off a young lady from the convent at Wilton, and Dunstan, pretending to be very much shocked, condemned him not to wear his crown upon his head for seven years. No great punishment, I dare say, as it can hardly have been a more comfortable ornament to wear than a stupan without a handle. His marriage with his second wife, Elfrida, is one of the worst events of his reign. Hearing of the beauty of this lady, he dispatched his favorite courtier, Ethelwald, to her father's castle in Devonshire, to see if she were really as charming as fame reported. Now she was so exceedingly beautiful that Ethelwald fell in love with her himself and married her, but he told the king that she was only rich and not handsome. The king, suspecting the truth when they came home, resolved to pay the newly married couple a visit, and suddenly told Ethelwald to prepare for his immediate coming. Ethelwald terrified, confessed to his young wife what he had said and done, and implored her to disguise her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, that he might be safe from the king's anger. She promised that she would, but she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a queen than the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her best dress, and adorned herself with her richest jewels, and when the king came, presently, he discovered the cheat. So he caused his false friend, Ethelwald, to be murdered in a wood, and married his widow, this bad Elfrida. Six or seven years afterwards he died, and was buried, as if he had been all that the monks said he was, in the abbey of Glastonbury, which he, or Dunston 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 Wales when they were not attacking travellers and animals, that the tribute payable by the Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition of their producing, every year, three hundred wolves' heads. And the Welshmen were so sharp upon the wolves, to save their money, that in four years there was not a wolf left. Then came the boy king Edward, called the martyr from the manor of his death. Elfrida had a son, named Ethelred, for whom she claimed the throne. But Dunston did not choose to favour him, and he made Edward king. The boy was hunting one day, down in Dorseture, when he rode near to Corf Castle, where Elfrida and Ethelred lived. Wishing to see them kindly, he rode away from his attendance and galloped to the castle gate, where he arrived at twilight and blew his hunting-horn. "'You are welcome, dear king,' said Elfrida, coming out with her brightest smiles. Pray you dismount and enter.' "'Not so, dear madam,' said the king. "'My company will miss me, and fear that I have met with some harm. Please you to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here, in the saddle, to you and to my little brother, and so ride away with the good speed I have made in riding here.' Elfrida, going in to bring the wine, whispered an armed servant, one of her attendants, who stole out of the darkening gateway, and crept round behind the king's horse. As the king raised the cup to his lips, saying, health, to the wicked woman who was smiling on him, and to his innocent brother whose hand she held in hers, and who was only ten years old, this armed man made a spring and stabbed him in the back. He dropped the cup and spurred his horse away, but soon fainting with loss of blood dropped from the saddle, and in his fall entangled one of his feet in the stirrup. The frightened horse dashed on, trailing his rider's curls upon the ground, dragging his smooth young face through ruts and stones and briars and fallen leaves and mud, until the hunters, tracking the animal's course by the king's blood, caught his bridle and released the disfigured body. Then came the sixth and last of the boy king's, Ethelred, whom Elfrida, when he cried out, at the sight of his murdered brother riding away from the castle gate, unmercifully beat with a torch which she snatched from one of the attendants. The people so disliked this boy, on account of his cruel mother and the murder she had done to promote him, that Dunstan would not have had him for king, but would have made Edgitha, the daughter of the dead king Edger, and of the lady whom he stole out of the convent at Wilton, Queen of England, if she would have consented. But she knew the stories of the youthful kings too well, and would not be persuaded from the convent where she lived in peace. So Dunstan put Ethelred on the throne, having no one else to put there, and gave him the nickname of the Unready, knowing that he wanted resolution and firmness. At first Elfrida possessed great influence over the young king, but as he grew older and came of age her influence declined. The infamous woman, not having it in her power to do any more evil, then retired from court, and, according to the fashion of the time, built churches and monasteries to expiate her guilt. As if a church, with a steeple reaching to the very stars, would have been any sign of true repentance for the blood of the poor boy whose murdered form was trailed at his horse's heels. As if she could have buried her wickedness beneath the senseless stones of the whole world piled up one upon another for the monks to live in. About the ninth or tenth year of this reign Dunstan died. He was growing old then, but was as stern and artful as ever. Two circumstances that happened in connection with him, in this reign of Ethelred, made a great noise. Once he was present at a meeting of the church, when the question was discussed whether priests should have permission to marry, and, as he sat with his head hung down, apparently thinking about it, a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix in the room, and warn the meeting to be of his opinion. This was some juggling of Dunstan's, and was probably his own voice disguised. But he played off a worse juggle than that soon afterwards, for another meeting being held on the same subject, and he and his supporters being seated on one side of a great room, and their opponents on the other, he rose and said, To Christ himself, as judge, do I commit this cause? Immediately on these words being spoken, the floor where the opposite party sat gave way, and some were killed, and many wounded. You may be pretty sure that it had been weakened 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 a workman for that. When he died, the monks settled that he was a saint, and called him Saint Dunstan ever afterwards. They might just as well have settled that he was a coach-horse, and could just as easily have called him one. Ethel read the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to be rid of this holy saint, but left to himself he was a poor, weak king, and his reign was a reign of defeat and shame. The restless Danes, led by Spain, a son of the King of Denmark who had quarreled with his father, and had been banished from home, again came into England, and year after year attacked and despoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings away, the weak Ethel read paid them money, but the more money he paid, the more money the Danes wanted. At first he gave them ten thousand pounds. On their next invasion, sixteen thousand pounds. On their next invasion, four and twenty thousand pounds. To pay which large sums, the unfortunate English people were heavily taxed. But as the Danes still came back and wanted more, he thought it would be a good plan to marry into some powerful foreign family that would help him with soldiers. So in the year one thousand and two he courted and married Emma, the sister of Richard, 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 never done on English ground before or since. On the thirteenth of November, in pursuance of secret instructions sent by the King over the whole country, the inhabitants of every town and city armed, and murdered all the Danes who were their neighbors. 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 the English great wrong, and whose pride and insolence in swaggering in the houses of the English, and insulting their wives and daughters, had become unbearable. But no doubt there were also among them many peaceful Christian Danes who had married English women and become like English men. They were all slain. Even to Gunhilda, the sister of the King of Denmark, married to an English Lord, who was first obliged to see the murder 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 that he would have a great revenge. He raised an army and a mightier fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed to England. And in all his army there was not a slave or an old man, but every soldier was a free man, and the son of a free man, and in the prime of life, and sworn to be revenged upon the English nation for the massacre of that dread thirteenth of November, when his countrymen and countrywomen and the little children whom they loved were killed with fire and sword. And so the Sea Kings came to England in many great ships, each bearing the flag of its own commander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins, beasts of prey, threatened England from the prowls of those ships as they came onward through the water, and were reflected in the shining shields that hung upon 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 his anger prayed that the gods in whom he trusted might all desert him if his 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 their lances in the earth as they advanced, or throwing them into rivers in token of their making all the island theirs. In remembrance of the black November night when the Danes were murdered, wheresoever the invaders came, they made the Saxons prepare and spread for them great feasts, and when they had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a curse to England with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their Saxon entertainers, and marched on. For six long years they carried on this war, burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, granaries, killing the laborers in the fields, preventing the seed from being sown in the ground, causing famine and starvation, leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes where they had found rich towns. To crown this misery English officers and men deserted, and even the favourites of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized many of the English ships, turned pirates against their own country, and aided by a storm, occasioned the loss of nearly the whole English navy. There was but one man of note at this miserable pass, who was true to his country and the feeble king. He was a priest and a brave one. For twenty days the Archbishop of Canterbury defended that city against its Danish besiegers, and when a traitor in the town threw the gates open and admitted them, he said, in chains, I will not buy my life with money that must be extorted from the suffering people. Do with me what you please." Again and again he steadily refused to purchase his release with gold rung from the poor. At last the Danes being tired of this, and being assembled at a drunken merry-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 close to him, to the shaggy beards against the walls, where men were mounted on tables and forms, to see him over the heads of others, and he knew that his 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 from a heap in a corner of the hall, where fragments had been rudely thrown at dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at his face, from which the blood came spurting forth. Then others ran to the same heap, and knocked him down with other bones, and bruised and battered him, until one soldier whom he had baptized, willing, as I hope for the sake of that soldier's soul, to shorten the sufferings of the good man, struck him dead with his battle-axe. If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of this noble archbishop, he might have done something yet. But he paid the Danes forty-eight thousand pounds instead, and gained so little by the cowardly act that Spain soon afterwards came over to subdue all England. So broken was the attachment of the English people by this time to their incapable king and their forlorn country, which could not protect them, that they welcomed Spain on all sides as a deliverer. London faithfully stood out, as long as the king was within its walls, but when he sneaked away, it also welcomed the Dane. Then all was over, and the king took refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who had already given shelter to the king's wife, once the flower of that country, and to her children. Still, the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings, could not quite forget the great king Alfred and the Saxon race. When Spain died suddenly, in little more than a month after he had been proclaimed King of England, they generously sent to Ethelred to say that they would have him for their king again, if he would only govern them better than he had governed them before. The Unready, instead of coming himself, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make promises for him. At last he followed, and the English declared him King. The Danes declared Knute, the son of Spain, 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 all his reign of eight and thirty years. Was Knute to be king now? Not over the Saxons, they said. They must have Edmund, one of the sons of the Unready, who was surnamed Ironside, because of his strength and stature. Edmund and Knute thereupon fell to and fought five battles. Oh, unhappy England! What a fighting ground it was! And then Ironside, who was a big man, proposed to Knute, who was a little man, that they too should fight it out in single combat. If Knute had been the big man, he would probably have said yes. But, being the little man, he decidedly said no. However, he declared that he was willing to divide the kingdom, to take all that lay north of Watling Street, 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 of so much bloodshed, this was done. But Knute soon became sole king of England, for Ironside died suddenly within two months. Some think that he was killed, and killed by Knute's orders. No one knows. End of Chapter 4. Recording by Laura Koskinen. Chapter 5 of A Child's History of England. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Laura Koskinen. A Child's History of England. By Charles Dickens. Chapter 5. England under Knute the Dane. Knute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless king at first. After he had clasped the hands of the Saxon chiefs, in token of the sincerity with which he swore to be just and good to them in return for their acknowledging him, he denounced and slew many of them, as well as many relations of the late king. He who brings me the head of one of my enemies, he used to say, shall be dearer to me than a brother. And he was so severe in hunting down his enemies, that he must have got together a pretty large family of these dear brothers. He was strongly inclined to kill Edmund and Edward, two children, sons of poor Ironside. But being afraid to do so in England, he sent them over to the king of Sweden, with a request that the king would be so good as to dispose of them. If the king of Sweden had been like many, many other men of that day, he would have had their innocent throats cut. But he was a kind man, and brought them up tenderly. Normandy ran much in Knute's mind. In Normandy were the two children of the late king, Edward and Alfred by name, and their uncle the Duke might one day claim the crown for them. But the Duke showed so little inclination to do so now, that he proposed to Knute to marry his sister, the widow of the Unreddy, who, being but a showy flower and caring for nothing so much as becoming a queen again, left her children and was wedded to him. Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valour of the English in his foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble him at home, Knute had a prosperous reign and made many improvements. He was a poet and a musician. He grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood he had shed at first, and went to Rome in a pilgrim's dress by way of washing it out. He gave a great deal of money to foreigners on his journey, but he took it from the English before he started. On the whole, however, he certainly became a far better man when he had no opposition to contend with, and was as great a king as England had known for some time. The old writers of history relate how that Knute was one day disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery, and how he caused his chair to be set on the seashore, and feigned to command the tide as it came up not to wet the edge of his robe, for the land was his. How the tide came up, of course, without regarding him, and how he then turned to his flatterers and rebuked them, saying, What was the might of any earthly king, to the might of the creator, who could say unto the sea, Thus far shall thou go, and no farther? We may learn from this, I think, that a little sense will go a long way in a king, and that courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a liking for it. If the courtiers of Knute had not known, long before, that the king was fond of flattery, they would have known better than to offer it in such large doses. And if they had not known that he was vain of this speech—anything but a wonderful speech, it seems to me, if a good child had made it—they would not have been at such great pains to repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the seashore together, the king's chair sinking in the sand, the king in a mighty good humor with his own wisdom, and the courtiers pretending to be quite stunned by it. It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go thus far and no farther. The great command goes forth to all the kings upon the earth, and went to Knute in the year 1035, and stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside it stood his Norman wife. Perhaps as the king looked his last upon her, he, who had so often thought just trustfully of Normandy long ago, thought once more of the two exiled princes in their uncle's court, and of the little favour they could feel for either Danes or Saxons, and of a rising cloud in Normandy that slowly moved towards England. CHAPTER VI. England under Harold Harefoot, Harter Knute, and Edward the Confessor. Knute left three sons by name Spain, Harold, and Harter Knute. But his queen, Emma, once the flower of Normandy, was the mother of only Harter Knute. Knute had wished his dominions to be divided between the three, and had wished Harold to have England. But the Saxon people in the south of England, headed by a nobleman with great possessions, called the powerful Earl Godwin, who is said to have been originally a poor cowboy, opposed this, and desired to have instead either Harter Knute, or one of the two exiled princes who were over in Normandy. It seemed so certain that there would be more bloodshed to settle this dispute, that many people left their homes and took refuge in the woods and swamps. Happily, however, it was agreed to refer the whole question to a great meeting at Oxford, which decided that Harold should have all the country north of the Thames, with London for his capital city, and that Harter Knute should have all the south. The quarrel was so arranged, and, as Harter Knute was in Denmark, troubling himself very little about anything but eating and getting drunk, his mother and Earl Godwin governed the south for him. They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling people who had hidden themselves were scarcely at home again, when Edward, the elder of the two exiled princes, came over from Normandy with a few followers to claim the English crown. His mother Emma, however, who only cared for her last son Harter Knute, instead of assisting him as he expected, opposed him so strongly with all her influence that he was very soon glad to get safely back. His brother Alfred was not so fortunate. Believing in an affectionate letter written some time afterwards to him and his brother in his mother's name, but whether really with or without his mother's knowledge is now uncertain, he allowed himself to be tempted over to England, with a good force of soldiers, and landing on the Kentish coast, and being met and welcomed by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as far as the town of Guildford. Here he and his men halted in the evening to rest, having still the Earl in their company, who had ordered lodgings and good cheer for them. But in the dead of the night, when they were off their guard being divided into small parties sleeping soundly after a long march and a plentiful supper in different houses, they were set upon by the King's troops and taken prisoners. Next morning they were drawn out in a line to the number of six hundred men, and were barbarously tortured and killed, with the exception of every tenth man who was sold into slavery. As to the wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked, tied to a horse, and sent away into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes were torn out of his head, and where in a few days he miserably died. I am not sure that the Earl had willfully entrapped him, but I suspect it strongly. Harold was now King all over England, though it is doubtful whether the Archbishop of Canterbury—the greater part of the priests were Saxons and not friendly to the Danes—ever consented to crown him. Crowned or uncrowned, with the Archbishop's leave or without it, he was King for four years, after which short reign he died, and was buried, having never done much in life but go hunting. He was such a fast runner at this, his favorite sport, that the people called him Harold Harefoot. Harder Canute was then at Bruges in Flanders, plotting with his mother, who had gone over there after the cruel murder of Prince Alfred, for the invasion of England. The Danes and Saxons finding themselves without a King, and dreading new disputes, made common cause and joined in inviting him to occupy the throne. He consented, and soon troubled them enough, for he brought over numbers of Danes, and taxed the people so insupportably to enrich those greedy favorites that there were many insurrections, especially one at Worcester, where the citizens rose and killed his tax collectors. In revenge for which he burned their city. He was a brutal King, whose first public act was to order the dead body of poor Harold Harefoot to be dug up, beheaded, and thrown into the river. His end was worthy of such a beginning. He fell down drunk, with a goblet of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at Lambeth, given in honor of the marriage of his standard bearer, a Dane named Toad the Proud. And he never spoke again. Edward, afterwards called by the monks the Confessor, succeeded, and his first act was to oblige his mother Emma, who had favored him so little, to retire into the country, where she died some ten years afterwards. He was the exiled Prince, whose brother Alfred had been so foully killed. He had been invited over from Normandy by Hardicnute in the course of his short reign of two years, and had been handsomely treated at court. His cause was now favored by the powerful Earl Godwin, and he was soon made King. This Earl had been suspected by the people, ever since Prince Alfred's cruel death. He had even been tried in the last reign for the Prince's murder, but had been pronounced not guilty, chiefly as it was supposed, because of a present he had made to the swinish king, of a gilded ship with a figurehead of solid gold, and a crew of eighty splendidly armed men. It was his interest to help the new king with his power, if the new king would help him against the popular distrust and hatred. So they made a bargain. Edward the confessor got the throne. The Earl got more power and more land, and his daughter Aditha was made queen, for it was a part of their compact that the king should take her for his wife. But although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to be beloved—good, beautiful, sensible, and kind—the king from the first neglected her. Her father, and her six proud brothers, resenting this cold treatment, harassed the king greatly, by exerting all their power to make him unpopular. Having lived so long in Normandy, he preferred the Normans to the English. He made a Norman archbishop, and Norman bishops. His great officers and favourites were all Normans. He introduced the Norman fashions and the Norman language. In imitation of the state custom of Normandy, he attached a great seal to his state documents, instead of merely marking them, as the Saxon kings had done, with the sign of the cross—just as poor people who have never been taught to write, now make the same mark for their names. All this, the powerful Earl Godwin and his six proud sons, represented to the people as disfavor shown towards the English, and thus they daily increased their own power, and daily diminished the power of the king. They were greatly helped by an event that occurred when he had reigned eight years. Eustace, Earl of Bologna, who had married the king's sister, came to England on a visit. After staying at the court some time, he set forth, with his numerous train of attendance, to return home. They were to embark at Dover. Entering that peaceful town in armour, they took possession of the best houses, and noisily demanded to be lodged and entertained without payment. One of the bold men of Dover, who would not endure to have these domineering strangers jingling their heavy swords and iron corselets up and down his house, eating his meat and drinking his strong liquor, stood in his doorway and refused admission to the first armed man who came there. The armed man drew and wounded him. The man of Dover struck the armed man dead. Intelligence of what he had done, spreading through the streets to where the Count Eustace and his men were standing by their horses, bridal in hand, they passionately mounted, galloped to the house, surrounded it, forced their way in—the doors and windows being closed when they came up—and killed the man of Dover at his own fireside. They then clattered through the streets, cutting down and riding over men, women, and children. This did not last long, you may believe. The men of Dover set upon them, with great fury, killed nineteen of the foreigners, wounded many more, and blockading the road to the port so that they should not embark, beat them out of the town by the way they had come. Hereupon Count Eustace rides as hard as man can ride to Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded by Norman monks and Norman lords. Justice, cries the Count, upon the men of Dover who have set upon and slain my people. The king sends immediately for the powerful Earl Godwin, who happens to be near, reminds him that Dover is under his government, and orders him to repair to Dover and do military execution on the inhabitants. It does not become you, says the proud Earl in reply, to condemn, without a hearing, those whom you have sworn to protect. I will not do it. The king, therefore, summoned the Earl on pain of banishment and loss of his titles and property, to appear before the court to answer this disobedience. The Earl refused to appear. He, his eldest son Harold, and his second son Spain, hastily raised as many fighting men as their utmost power could collect, and demanded to have Count Eustace and his followers surrendered to the justice of the country. The king, in his turn, refused to give them up and raised a strong force. After some treaty and delay, the troops of the great Earl and his sons began to fall off. The Earl, with the part of his family and abundance of treasure, sailed to Flanders. Harold escaped to Ireland, and the power of the great family was for that time gone in England. But the people did not forget them. Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness of a mean spirit, visited his dislike of the once powerful father and sons upon the helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending wife, whom all who saw her, her husband and his monks accepted, loved. He seized rapaciously upon her fortune and her jewels, and, allowing her only one attendant, confined her in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his, no doubt an unpleasant lady after his own heart, was Abbas or Jailer. Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of his way, the king favored the Normans more than ever. He invited over William, Duke of Normandy, the son of that Duke who had received him and his murdered brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's daughter, with whom that Duke had fallen in love for her beauty as he saw her washing clothes in a brook. William, who was a great warrior, with a passion for fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the invitation, and the Normans in England, finding themselves more numerous than ever when he arrived with his retinue, and held in still greater honor at court than before, became more and more haughty towards the people, and were more and more disliked by them. The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well how the people felt, for with part of the treasure he had carried away with him, he kept spies and agents in his pay all over England. Accordingly, he thought the time was come for fitting out a great expedition against the Norman-loving king. With it he sailed to the Isle of White, where he was joined by his son Harold, the most gallant and brave of all his family. And so the father and son came sailing up the Thames to Sothec, great numbers of the people declaring for them, and shouting for the English Earl and the English Harold, against the Norman favorites. The king was at first as blind and stubborn as kings usually have been, when so ever they have been in the hands of monks. But the people rallied so thickly round the old Earl and his son, and the old Earl was so steady in demanding, without bloodshed, the restoration of himself and his family to their rights, that at last the court took the alarm. The Norman Archbishop of Canterbury and the Norman Bishop of London, surrounded by their retainers, fought their way out of London, and escaped from Essex to France in a fishing boat. The other Norman favorites dispersed in all directions. The old Earl and his sons, except Spain, who had committed crimes against the law, were restored to their possessions and dignities. Aditha, the virtuous and lovely queen of the insensible king, was triumphantly released from her prison, the convent, and once more sat in her chair of state, arrayed in the jewels of which, when she had no champion to support her rights, her cold-blooded husband had deprived her. The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored fortune. He fell down in a fit at the king's table, and died upon the third day afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a far higher place in the attachment of the people than his father had ever held. By his valour he subdued the king's enemies in many bloody fights. He was vigorous against rebels in Scotland. This was the time when Macbeth slew Duncan, upon which event our English Shakespeare, hundreds of years afterwards, wrote his great tragedy, and he killed the restless Welsh king Griffith, and brought his head to England. What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on the French coast by a tempest, is not at all certain, nor does it at all matter. That his ship was forced by a storm on that shore, and that he was taken prisoner, there is no doubt. In those barbarous days all shipwrecked strangers were taken prisoners, and obliged to pay ransom. So a certain Count Guy, who was the Lord of Panthieu, where Harold's disaster happened, seized him, instead of relieving him like a hospitable and Christian Lord as he ought to have done, and expected to make a very good thing of it. But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of Normandy, complaining of this treatment, and the Duke no sooner heard of it than he ordered Harold to be escorted to the ancient town of Rouen, where he then was, and where he received him as an honoured guest. Now, some writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, who was by this time old and had no children, had made a will, appointing Duke William of Normandy his successor, and had informed the Duke of his having done so. There is no doubt that he was anxious about his successor, because he had even invited over from abroad Edward the Outlaw, a son of Ironside, who had come to England with his wife and three children, but whom the King had strangely refused to see when he did come, and who had died in London suddenly. Princes were terribly liable to sudden death in those days, and had been buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. The King might possibly have made such a will, or, having always been fond of the Normans, he might have encouraged Norman William to aspire to the English Crown by something that he said to him when he was staying at the English Court. But certainly William did now aspire to it, and knowing that Harold would be a powerful rival, he called together a great assembly of his nobles, offered Harold his daughter Adele in marriage, informed him that he meant on King Edward's death to claim the English Crown as his own inheritance, and required Harold then and there to swear to aid him. Harold, being in the Duke's power, took this oath upon the missile, or prayer-book. It is a good example of the superstitions of the monks, that this missile, instead of being placed upon a table, was placed upon a tub, which, when Harold had sworn, was uncovered and shown to be full of dead men's bones, bones as the monks pretended, of saints. This was supposed to make Harold's oath a great deal more impressive and binding, as if the great name of the Creator of Heaven and Earth could be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a double tooth, or a fingernail of Dunstan. Within a week or two, after Harold's return to England, the dreary old confessor was found to be dying. After wandering in his mind like a very weak old man, he died. As he had put himself entirely in the hands of the monks when he was alive, they praised him lustily when he was dead. They had gone so far already, as to persuade him that he could work miracles, and had brought people afflicted with a bad disorder of the skin to him to be touched and cured. This was called Touching for the King's Evil, which afterwards became a royal custom. You know, however, who really touched the sick and healed them, and you know his sacred name is not among the dusty line of human kings.