comments on them for the instruction of his jadges, who were in general, by the misfortune of the time, ignorant; and if he took care to correct their ignorance, he was rigorous towards their corruption. He inquired strictly into their conduct; he heard appeals in person; he held his wittena-gemotes, or parliaments, frequently; and kept every part of his government in health and vigour. Nor was he less solicitous for the defence than he had shown himself for the regulation of his kingdom. He nourished with particular care the new naval strength, which he had established; he built forts and castles in the most important posts; he settled beacons to spread an alarm on the arrival of an enemy; and ordered his militia in such a manner that there was always a great power in readiness to march, well appointed and well disciplined. But that a suitable revenue might not be wanting for the support of his flects and fortifications, he gave great encouragement to trade; which by the piracies on the coasts, and the rapine and injustice exercised by the people within, had long become a stranger to this island. In the midst of these various and important cares, he gave a peculiar attention to learning, which by the rage of the late wars had been entirely extinguished in his kingdom. "Very few there were (says this monarch) on this side the Humber, that understood their ordinary pravers; or that were able to translate any Latin book into English; so few, that I do not remember even one qualified, to the southward of the Thames, when I began my reign." To cure this deplorable ignorance, he was indefatigable in his endeavours to bring into England men of learning in all branches from every part of Europe; and unbounded in his liberality to them. He enacted by a law, that every person possessed of two hides of land should send their children to school until sixteen. Wisely considering where to put a stop to his love even of the liberal arts, which are only suited to a liberal condition, he enterprized yet a greater design than that of forming the growing generation-to instruct even the grown; enjoining all his earldormen and sheriffs immediately to apply themselves to learning, or to quit their offices. To facilitate these great purposes he made a regular foundation of an university, which with great reason, is believed to have been at Oxford. Whatever trouble he took to extend the benefits of learning among his subjects, he showed the example himself, and applied to the cultivation of his mind with unparalleled diligence and success. He could neither read He nor write at twelve years old; but he improv Religion, which in Alfred's father was so prejudicial to affairs, without being in him at all inferiour in its zeal and fervour, was of a more enlarged and noble kind; far from being a prejudice to his government, it seems to have been the principle that supported him in so many fatigues, and fed like an abundant source his civil and military virtues. To his religious exercises and studies he devoted a full third part of his time. It is pleasant to trace a genius even in its smallest exertions; in measuring and allotting his time for the variety of business he was engaged in. According to his severe and methodical custom, he had a sort of wax candles, made of dif ferent colours, in different proportions, according to the time he allotted to each particular affair; as he carried these about with him wherever he went, to make them burn evenly, he invented horn lanthorns. Or.e cannot help being amazed that a prince, who lived in such turbulent times, who commanded personally in fifty-four pitched battles, wiro had so disordered a province to regulate, who was not only a legislator but a judge, and who was continually superintending armies, his navies, the traffic of his kingdom, his revenues, and the conduct of all his officers, could have bestowed so much of his time on religious exercises and speculative knowledge; but the exertion of all his faculties and virtues seemed to have given a mutual ength to all of them. Thus all historians speak of this prince, whose whole history was one pane gyric; and whatever dark spots of human frailty may have adhered to such a character, they are entirely hid in the splendour of Ꮓ his many shining qualities and grand virtues, that throw a glory over the obscure period in which he lived, and which is for no other reason worthy of our knowledge. The latter part of his reign was molested with new and for midable attempts from the Danes; but they no longer found the country in its former condition; their fleets were attacked; and those that landed, found a strong and regular opposition. There were now fortresses which restrained their ravages, and armies well appointed to oppose them in the field; they were defeated in a pitched battle; and after several desperate marches from one part of the country to the other, every where harassed and hunted, they were glad to return with half their number, and to leave Alfred in quiet to accomplish the great things he had projected. This prince reigned twenty-seven years, and died at last of a disorder in his bowels, which had afflicted him, without interrupting his designs or souring his temper, during the greatest part of his life. CHAPTER V. SUCCESSION OF KINGS FROM ALFRED TO HAROLD. His son Edward succeeded; though of less learning than his father, he equalled him in his political virtues; he made war with suc cess on the Welsh, the Scots and the Danes, and left his kingdom strongly fortified; and exercised, not weakened, with the enterprizes of a vigorous reign. Because his son Edmund was under age, the crown was set on the head of his illegitimate offspring, Athelstan. His, like the reigns of all the princes of this time, was molested by the continual incursions of the Danes; and nothing but the succession of men of spirit, capacity, and love of their country, which providentially happened at this time, could ward off the ruin of the kingdom. Such Athelstan was; and such was his brother Edmund, who reigned five years with great reputation, but was at length, by an obscure ruffian, assassinated in his own palace. Edred, his brother, succeeded to the late monarchy; though he had left two sons, Edwin and Edgar, both were passed by on account of their minority. But on this prince's death, which happened after a troublesome reign of ten years, valiantly supported against continual inroads of the Danes, the crown devolved on Edwin of whom little can be said, because his reign was short, and he was so embroiled with his clergy that we can take his character only from the monks, who in such a case are suspicious authority. Edgar, the second son of King Edmund, came young to the throne; but he had the happiness to have his youth formed, and his kingdom ruled, by men of experience, virtue and authority. The cele brated Dunstan was his first minister, and had a mighty influence over all his actions. This prelate had been educated abroad, and had seen the world to advantage. As he had great power at court by the superiour wisdom of his counsels, so by the sanctity of his life he had great credit with the people, which gave a firmness to the government of his master, whose private character was, in many respects, extremely exceptionable. It was in his reign, and chiefly by the means of his minister, Dunstan, that the monks, who had long prevailed in the opinion of the generality of the people, gave a total overthrow to their rivals, the secular clergy. The secular clergy were at this time for the most part married, and were therefore too near the common modes of mankind to draw a great deal of their respect; their character was supported by a very small portion of learning, and their lives were not such as people wish to see in the clergy. But the monks were unmarried; austere in there lives; regular in their duties; possessed of the learning of the times; well united under a proper subordination ;*full of art, and implacable towards their enemies. These circumstances, concurring with the dispositions of the king and the designs of Dunstan, prevailed so far, that it was agreed in a council, convened for that purpose, to expel the secular clergy from their livings, and to supply their places with monks throughout the kingdom. Although the partizans of the secular priests were not a few, nor of the lowest class, yet they were unable to withstand the current of the popula desire, strengthened by the authority of a potent and respected monarch; however, there was a seed of discontent sown on this occasion, which grew up afterwards to the mutual destruction of all the parties. During the whole reign of Edgar, as he had secured the most popular part of the clergy, and with them the people, in his interests, there was no internal disturbance; there was no foreign war, because this prince was always ready for war. But he principally owed his security to the care he took of his naval power, which was much greater and better regulated than that of any English monarch before him. He had three fleets always equipped, one of which annually sailed round the island; thus the Danes, the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh were kept in awe. He assumed the title of king of Albion. His court was magnificent, and much frequented by strangers. His revenues were in excellent order; and no prince of his time supported the royal character with more dignity. Edgar had two wives, Elflada and Elfrida; by the first he had a son called Edward. The second bore him one called Etheldred. On Edgar's death, Edward, in the usual order of succession, was called to the throne; but Elfrida caballed in favour of her son; and finding it impossible to set him up in the life of his brother, she murdered him with her own hands in her castle of Corfe, whither he had retired to refresh himself, wearied with hunting. Etheldred, who by the crimes of his mother, ascended a throne sprinkled with his brother's blood, had a part to act which exceeded the capacity that could be expected in one of his youth and inexperience. The partizans of the secular clergy, who were kept down by the vigour of Edgar's government, thought this a fit time to renew their pretensions. The monks defended themselves in their possessions; there was no moderation on either side, and the whole nation joined in these parties. The murder of Edward threw an odious stain on the king, though he was wholly innocent of that crime. There was a general discontent; and every corner was full of murmurs and cabals. In this state of the kingdom it was equally dangerous to exert the fulness of the sovereign authority, or to suffer it to relax. The temper of the king was most inclined to the latter method, which is of all things the worst. A weak government, too easy, suffers evils to grow, which often make the most rigorous and illegal proceedings necessary. Through an extreme lenity it is on some occasions tyrannical. This was the condition of Etheldred's nobility, who, by being permitted every thing, were never contented. Thus all the principal men held a sort of factious and independent authority; they despised the king; they oppressed the people, and they hated one another. The Danes, in every part of England but Wessex, as numerous as the English themselves, and in many parts more numerous, were ready to take advantage of these disorders; and waited with impatience some new attempt from abroad, that they might rise in favour of the invaders. They were not long without such an occasion; the Danes pour in almost upon every part at once, and distract the defence which the weak prince was preparing to make. In those days of wretchedness and igno rance, when all the maritime parts of Europe were attacked by these formidable enemies at once, they never thought of entering into any alliance against them; they equally neglected the other obvious method to prevent their incursions, which was to carry the war into the invaders' country. What aggravated these calamities, the nobility, mostly disaffected to the king, and entertaining very little regard to their country, made, some of them, a weak and cowardly opposition to the enemy; some actually betrayed their trust; some even were found, who undertook the trade of piracy themselves. It was in this condition that Edric, duke of Mercia, a man of some ability, but light, inconstant, and utterly devoid of all principle, proposed to buy a peace from the Danes. The general weakness and consternation disposed the king and people to take this pernicious advice. At first £.10,000 was given to the Danes, who retired with this money and the rest of their plunder. The English were now, for the first time, taxed to supply this payment. The imposition was called Danegelt, not more burthensome in the thing than scandalous in the name. The scheme of purchasing peace not only gave rise to many internal hardships, but, whilst it weakened the kingdom, it inspired such a desire of invading it to the enemy, that Sweyn, king of Denmark, came in person soon after, with a prodigious fleet and army. The English, having once found the method of diverting the storm by an inglorious bargain, could not bear to think of any other way of resistance. A greater sum, £.48,000 was now paid, which the Danes accepted with pleasure, as they could by this means exhaust their enemies, and enrich themselves with little danger or trouble. With very short intermissions they still returned, continually increasing in their demands; in a few years they extorted upwards of £.160,000 from the English, besides an annual tribute of £.48,000. The country was wholly exhausted both of money and spirit. The Danes in England, under the protection of the foreign Danes, committed a thousand insolencies; and so infatuated with stupidity and baseness were the English at this time, that they employed hardly any other soldiers for their defence. In this state of shame and misery, their sufferings suggested to them a design rather desperate than brave. They resolved on a massacre of the Danes; some authors sav that in one night the whole race was cut off Many, probably all the military men, were so destroyed. But this massacre, injudicious: as it was cruel, was certainly not universal; nor did it serve any other or better end than to exasperate those of the same nation abroad, who the next year landed in England with a powerful army to revenge it, and committed outrages even beyond the usual tenour of the Danish cruelty. There was in England no money left to purchase a peace, nor courage to wage a successful war; and the king of Denmark, Sweyn, a prince of capacity, at the head of a large body of brave and enterprising men, soon mastered the whole kingdom, except London. Etheldred, abandoned by fortune and his subjects, was forced to fly into Normandy. As there was no good order in the English affairs, though continually alarmed, they were always surprised; they were only roused to arms by the cruelty of the enemy; and they were only formed into a body by being driven from their homes: so that they never made a resistance until they seemed to be entirely conquered. This may serve to account for the frequent sudden reductions of the island, and the frequent renewals of their fortune when it seemed the most desperate. Sweyn, in the midst of his victories, dies; and, though succeeded by his son Canute, who inherited his father's resolution, their affairs were thrown into some disorder by this accident. The English were encouraged by it. Etheldred was recalled, and the Danes retired out of the kingdom; but it was only to return the next year with a greater and better appointed force. Nothing seemed able to oppose them. The king dies. A great part of the land was surrendered, without resistance, to Canute. Edmund, the eldest son of Etheldred, supported, however, the declining hopes of the English for some time; in three months he fought three victorious battles; he attempted a fourth, but lost it by the base desertion of Edric, the principal author of all these troubles. It is common with the conquered side to attribute all their misfortunes to the treachery of their own party. They choose to be thought subdued by the treachery of their friends rather than the superior bravery of their enemies. All the old historians talk in this strain; and it must be acknowledged that all adherents to a declining party have many temptations to infidelity. Edmund, defeated, but not discouraged, retreated to the Severn, where he recruited his forces. Canute followed at his heels. And now the two armies were drawn up which were to decide the fate of England; when it was proposed to determine the war by a single combat between the two kings. Neither was unwilling; the Isle of Alney in the Severn was chosen for the lists; Edmund had the advantage by the greatness of his strength, Canute by his address; for when Edmund had so far prevailed as to disarm him, he proposed a parley, in which he persuaded Edmund to a peace, and to a division of the kingdom. Their armies accepted the agreement; and both kings departed in a seeming friendship. But Edmund died soon after, with a probable suspicion of being murdered by the instru ments of his associate in the empire. Canute, on this event, assembled the states of the kingdom, by whom he was acknowledg ed king of all England. He was a prince truly great; for having acquired the kingdom by his valour, he maintained and improved it by his justice and clemency. Choosing rather to rule by the inclination of his subjects than the right of conquest, he dismissed his Danish army, and committed his safety to the laws. He re-established the order and tranquillity, which so long a series of bloody wars had banished. He revived the antient statutes of the Saxon princes; and governed through his whole reign with such steadiness and moderation, that the English were much happier under this foreign prince than they had been under their natural kings., Canute, though the beginning of his life was stained with those marks of violence and injustice which attend conquest, was remarkable in his latter end for his piety. According to the mode of that time, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, with a view to expiate the crimes which paved his way to the throne; but he made a good use of this peregrination, and returned full of the observations he had made in the country through which he passed, which he turned to the benefit of his extensive dominions. They comprehended England, Denmark, Norway, and many of the countries which lie upon the Baltic. Those he left, established in peace and security, to his children. The fate of his northern posses sions is not of this place. England fell to his son Harold, though not without much competi tion in favour of the sons of Edmund Ironside, while some contended for the right of the sons of Etheldred, Alfred and Edward. Harold inherited none of the virtues of Canute; he banished his mother, Emma, murdered his half brother, Alfred, and died, without issue, after a short reign, full of violence, weakness, and cruelty. His brother, Hardicanute, who succeeded him, resembled him in his character; he committed new cruelties and injustices in revenging those which his brother had committed, and he died after a yet shorter reign. The Danish power, established with so much blood, expired of itself; and Edward, the only surviving son of Etheldred, then an exile in Normandy, was called to the throne by the unanimous voice of the kingdom. This prince was educated in a monastery, where he learned piety, continence, and humility, but nothing of the art of government. He was innocent and artless, but his views were narrow, and his genius contemptible. The character of such a prince is not, therefore, what influences the government, any further than as it puts it in the hands of others. When he came to the throne, Goodwin, earl of Kent, was the most popular man in England; he possessed a very great estate, an enterprizing disposition, and an eloquence beyond the age he lived in; he was arrogant, imperious, assuming, and of a conscience which never put itself in the way of his interest. He had a considerable share in restoring Edward to the throne of his ancestors; and by this merit, joined to his popularity, he for some time directed every thing according to his pleasure. He intended to fortify his interest by giving in marriage to the king his daughter, a lady of great beauty, great virtue, and an education bevond her sex. Goodwin had, however, powerful rivals in the king's favour. This monarch, who possessed many of the private virtues, had a grateful remembrance of his favourable reception in Normandy; he caressed the people of that country, and promoted several to the first places, ecclesiastical and civil, in his kingdom. This begot an uneasiness in all the English; but Earl Goodwin was particularly offended. The Normans, on the other hand, accused Goodwin of a design on the crown, the justice of which imputation the whole tenour of his conduct evinced sufficiently. But as his cabals began to break into action before they were in perfect ripeness for it, the Norman party prevailed, and Goodwin was banished. This man was not only very popular at home by his generosity and address, but he found means to engage even foreigners in his interests. Baldwin, earl of Flanders, gave him a very kind reception. By his assistance, Goodwin fitted out a fleet, hired a competent force, sailed to England, and having near Sandwich deceived the king's navy, he presented himself at London before he was expected. The king made ready as great a force as the time would admit to oppose him. The gallies of Edward and Goodwin met on the Thames; but such was the general favour to Goodwin, such the popularity of his cause, that the king's men threw down their arms, and refused to fight against their countrymen in favour of strangers. Edward was obliged to treat with his own subjects; and, in consequence of this treaty, to dismiss the Normans, whom he believed to be the best attached to his interests. Goodwin used the power, to which he was restored, to gratify his personal revenge; showing no mercy to his enemies. Some of his sons behaved in the most tyrannical manner. The great lords of the kingdom envied and hated a greatness which annihilated the royal authority, eclipsed them, and oppressed the people; but Goodwin's death soon after quieted for a while their murmurs. The king, who had the least share in the transactions of his own reign, and who was of a temper not to perceive his own insignificance, begun in his old age to think of a successor. He had no children; for some weak reasons of religion or personal dislike he had never cohabited with his wife. He sent for his nephew Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, out of Hungary, where he had taken refuge; but he died soon after he came to England, leaving a son called Edgar Atheling. The king himself, irresolute in so momentous an affair, died without making any settlement. His reign was properly that of his great men, or rather of their factions. All of it that was his own was good. He was careful of the privileges of his subjects, and took care to have a body of the Saxon laws, very favourable to them, digested and enforced. Ho remitted the heavy imposition called Danegeld, amounting to £.40,000 a year, which had been constantly collected after the occasion had ceased; he even repaid to his subjects what he found in the treasury at his accession. In short, there is little in his life that can call his title to sanctity in question; though he can never be reckoned among the great kings. CHAPTER VI. HAROLD II.-INVASION OF THE NCKMANS.ACCOUNT OF THAT PEOPLE, AND OF THE STATE OF ENGLAND AT THE TIME OF THE INVASION. THOUGH Edgar Atheling had the best title to the succession, yet Harold, the son of Ead |