PERIOD THE THIRD.

FROM THE END OF THE HEPTARCHY TO THE REIGN OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

EGBERT.

Ann. 827 to 831.

EGBERT in his youth had been obliged to withdraw secretly into France, to prevent the effects of the great jealousy he had given to Brithric, the reigning prince of the West Saxons, both because he seemed by his birth better entitled to the crown, and because he had acquired in an eminent degree the affections of the people. He was well received by Charlemagne; and by living in the court and serving in the army of that illustrious monarch, the most able and most generous that had appeared in Europe during several ages, he had acquired those accomplishments which afterwards enabled him to make such a shiting figure on the throne by the splendor of his victories and the wisdom and energy of his administration. His early misfortunes thus proved of singular advantage to him. The inhabitants of his kingdoms had lost all desire of revolting from that monarch, and considered a union in government as opening to them the agreeable prospect of future tranquillity. But such is the instability of human affairs, and the weakness of man's best conjectures, that Egbert was hardly settled on his united throne when both he and his subjects began to be alarmed at the approach of new enemies, and the island exposed to fresh invasions.

Before the end of the heptarchy, those nations

who had possessed the countries bordering on the Baltic had began to infest the western coasts of Europe. They invaded some provinces of France; and, on account of their coming from the north, they were known under the general name of Normans. Emboldened by their successes on the continent, they were tempted to visit England in their frequent excursions. The Danes chiefly levelled their fury against that country. Their first appearance on its shores had been in the year 787. They landed in the kingdom of Wessex, to take a view of the state of the country; and when summoned by the magistrate of the place to appear before the king, and account for their enterprise, they fled to their ships for safety, after having committed some small depredations. The next alarm was given to Northumberland, in the year 794, when a body of these pirates plundered a monastery; but their ships being much damaged by a storm, and their leader slain in a skirmish, they were at last defeated by the inhabitants, and the remainder of them put to the sword.

Ann. 832 to 838.

Five years after the accession of Egbert to the throne of England, the Danes landed in the isle of Shepey, and after having pillaged it, escaped with impunity. The next year they landed again in England from thirty-five ships, and were encountered by Egbert, at Charmouth, in Dorsetshire. The battle was bloody, and to the great disadvantage of the Danes; they, however, maintained their post, and thence made good their retreat to their ships. Having thus learned by experience that they must expect a vigorous resistance from this warlike prince, they entered into an alliance with the Britons of Cornwall; and landing two years after in

that country, made an inroad with their confederates into the county of Devon, where they were met, and totally defeated, by Egbert, at Henges Down, near Kellington. By this victory he would have secured the kingdom from invasion for some time; but his death, which soon after took place, seemed to put an end to the success of the English army, and to invite the enemy to renew his de

vastation.

Under his reign the Scots and Picts had a decisive battle, in which the former prevailed, and in the year 838, both kingdoms were united by Kenneth, which begins the second period of the Scottish history.

Egbert was succeeded by his son Ethelwolf.

ETHELWOLF, second King from the Heptarchy. Ann. 839 to 850.

Ethelwolf had neither the energy nor the abilities of his father. Educated in a cloister, and destined to the monastic life, he was better qualified for governing a convent than a kingdom. He began his reign with delivering to his eldest son, Athelston, the provinces of Essex, Kent, and Sussex, to govern them with the title of King. In November 844, he called at Winchester an assembly of all the great men of his hereditary kingdom of Wessex, both of the clergy and laity, and, with their consent, made a solemn grant to the church of the tenth part of all the lands belonging to the crown, free from all taxes, impositions, and obligations of every kind. In 855, after his return from Rome, he extended this grant to the other tributary kingdoms which then composed the English monarchy. A fleet of Danes, consisting of thirty-three sail, appeared at Southampton, but were repulsed by Wolfhere, go

vernor of the neighbouring county. Soon after, another band, landing at Portsmouth, was routed by Æthelhem, governor of Dorsetshire, after a bloody engagement, in which he lost his life. Next year these barbarous savages made several inroads into East Anglia, Lindesey, and Kent; and though sometimes defeated, they plundered the country, and carried off their booty. These incursions became almost annual.

Ann. 851 to 853.

The Danes invade England with a very numerous army, which is put to rout with great slaughter by Ceorle, governor of Devonshire, in a battle fought at Wiganburgh. King Athelston attacks at sea, near Sandwich, another band of them, sinks nine of their ships, and puts the rest to flight. A body of them, however, venture, for the first time, to take up winter quarters in the Isle of Thanet, where they receive, in the next spring, a strong reinforcenient of their countrymen in 350 vessels. They begin the campaign by burning the cities of London and Canterbury; and having put to flight the troops commanded by Brithric, governor of Mercia under the title of King, they march into the heart of Surrey, and lay every place waste around them. Ethelwolf, impelled by the urgency of the danger, marches against them, at the head of the West Saxons, and carrying with him his second son Ethelbald, gives them battle at Okeley, and gains a bloody victory over them. Nevertheless they still maintain their settlement in the Isle of Thanet, and being attacked by the governors of Kent and Surrey, they gain a complete victory, after having killed both the governors; whence they remove to the Isle of Shepey, in which they take up their winter quarters.

Ann. 854 to 857.

This alarming crisis hinders not Ethelwolf from making a pilgrimage to Rome with his fourth and favourite son Alfred, then only six years of age. He passes there twelve months in the exercise of devotion, and on his return home marries Judith, daughter of the emperor Charles the Bald. On his landing in England he finds that his eldest son Athelstan being dead, Ethelbald, his second son, who had assumed the government, had formed with many of the nobles the project of excluding him from the throne. The people were divided between the two princes, and a bloody civil war, added to all the other calamities under which the English laboured seemed inevitable. Ethelwolf prevents it by yielding to the greater part of his son's pretensions. He makes a partition of the kingdom, takes to himself the eastern part, which was the least considerable and the most exposed, and delivers over to Ethelbald the sovereignty of the western. Having thus prevented all dissentions, he summoned a council of the states of the kingdom to take into consideration the claims of the ecclesiastics, who pretended that the Jewish law conferred a tenth of all the produce of the land on the priesthood, and that this donation conveyed a perpetual property, inherent by divine right, in those who officiated at the altar. They ventured farther than they were warranted even by the Levitical law; as they insisted that the tenth of the produce of all industry, merchandise, wages of labourers, and pay of soldiers, belonged to the clergy; nay, one of their canonists (Padre Paolo, sopra beneficii ecclesiastici, edit. Colon. 1675, p. 132,) went so far as to affirm that they were entitled to the tithe of the profits made by courtezans in the exercise of their profession. In those ages of ignorance and credulity, when fanati