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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 vigour 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. King Athelstan attacked another at sea near Sandwich, sunk nine of their ships, and put the rest to flight". A body of them, however, ventured, for the first time, to take up winter quarters in England; and receiving in the spring a strong reinforcement 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. They 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 Ethel

1 H. Hunting. lib. v. Ethelwerd, lib. iii. cap. 3. Sim. Dunelm. p. 120. m Chron. Sax. P. 74. Asser. p. 2.

851.

wolf from making a pilgrimage to Rome; whither he carried his fourth, and favourite 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 laboured, 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.

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 Chron. Sax. 76. H. Hunting. lib. v. • A mancus was of our present half-crown. See Spelman's Glossary, in verbo P W. Malms. lib. ii. cap. 2. 9 Asser. p. 3. W. Malms. M. West. p. 1. 8.

n Asser. p. 2. about the weight Mancus.

lib. ii. cap. 2.

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, merchandize, wages of labourers, 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 courtezans 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 favourable 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 assist

S

X

Padre Paolo, sopra beneficii ecclesiastici, p. 51, 52. edit. Colon. 1675. Spell. Concil. vol. i. P. 268. t Padre Paolo, p. 132.

Ingulph. p. 862. Selden's Hist. of Tithes, c. 8.

u Parker, p. 77.

857.

860.

ance, 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 burthens, though imposed for national defence and security.

ETHELBALD AND ETHELBERT.

ETHELWOLF lived only two years after making this grant; and by his will he shared England between his two eldest sons, Ethelbald and Ethelbert; the west being assigned to the former, the east to the latter. Ethelbald was a profligate prince; and marrying Judith, his motherin-law, gave great offence to the people; but moved by the remonstrances of Swithun, bishop of Winchester, he was at last prevailed on to divorce her. His reign was short; and Ethelbert, his brother, succeeding to the government, behaved himself, during a reign of five years, in a manner more worthy of his birth and station. The kingdom, however, was still infested by the Danes, who made an inroad, and sacked Winchester; but were there defeated. A body also of these pirates, who were quartered in the isle of Thanet, having deceived the English by a treaty, unexpectedly broke into Kent, and committed great outrages.

866.

ETHERED.

ETHELBERT was succeeded by his brother Ethered, who, though he defended himself with bravery, enjoyed, during his whole reign, no tranquillity from those Danish irruptions. His younger brother, Alfred, seconded him in all his enterprises; and generously sacrificed to the public good all resentment, which he might entertain, on account of his being excluded by Ethered from a large patrimony which had been left him by his father.

The first landing of the Danes in the reign of Ethered

y Asser. p. 2. Chron. Sax. p. 76. W. Malms. lib. ii. cap. 2. Ethelwerd, lib. iii, cap. 3. M. West. p. 158. Ingulph. p. 17. Alured. Beverl. p. 95.

was among the East Angles, who, more anxious for their present safety than for the common interest, entered into a separate treaty with the enemy, and furnished them with horses, which enabled them to make an irruption by land into the kingdom of Northumberland. They there seized the city of York; and defended it against Osbricht and Ælla, two Northumbrian princes, who perished in the assault". Encouraged by these successes, and by the superiority which they had acquired in arms, they now ventured, under the command of Hinguar and Hubba, to leave the seacoast; and penetrating into Mercia, they took up their winter quarters at Nottingham, where they threatened the kingdom with a final subjection. The Mercians, in this extremity, applied to Ethered for succour; and that prince, with his brother Alfred, conducting a great army to Nottingham, obliged the enemy to dislodge, and to retreat into Northumberland. Their restless disposition, and their avidity for plunder, allowed them not to remain long in those quarters; they broke into East Anglia, defeated and took prisoner, Edmund, the king of that country, whom they afterwards murdered in cool blood; and committing the most barbarous ravages on the people, particularly on the monasteries, they gave the East Angles cause to regret the temporary relief which they had obtained by assisting the common enemy.

The next station of the Danes was at Reading; whence they infested the neighbouring country by their incursions. The Mercians, desirous of shaking off their dependence on Ethered, refused to join him with their forces; and that prince, attended by Alfred, was obliged to march against the enemy with the West Saxons alone, his hereditary subjects. The Danes, being defeated in an action, shut themselves up in their garrison; but quickly making thence an irruption, they routed the West Saxons, and obliged them to raise the siege. An action soon after ensued at Aston, in Berkshire, where the English, in the beginning of the day, were in danger of a total defeat. Alfred, advancing with one division of z Asser. p. 6. Chron. Sax. p. 79.

870.

871. 1

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