E CHAPTER VIII. ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY CONTINUED.-ETHELBERT TO EGBERT. A. 565 to 823. P. 313. THELBERT, the successor of Ermenric, became King CHAP. VIII. of Kent in 565. His reign commenced most inauspiciously with a civil war. He attacked the King of the West Saxons, in Surrey, and was defeated. He had next to Ang, Sax. Ch., defend his own kingdom, and experienced some difficulty in preserving it. Danger and adversity made him wiser. Of his marriage to Bertha and of the conversion of the AngloSaxons, I shall speak shortly. He reigned fifty-six years, and was succeeded by his son Edbald, who reigned twentyfive years. Passing over six other Kings of Kent, Erconbert, Egbert, Lothere, Edric, Withred and Swabert (who for a time jointly held the kingdom), and Ethelbert II., (who appears to have held Kent with Sigeward), we find A. 774. Offa, King of Mercia, in the succeeding reign of Alric invading Kent and vanquishing him after a desperate engagement at Otford; and Offa would in all probability have united Kent with Mercia, had he not been deterred by an invasion of his own kingdom by the Welsh. With Alric ended the right line of the Saxon Kings of Kent of the race of Hengist. Edbert or Pren then seized on the throne, and in this reign Cenulph or Kenulph (another King of A. 796. Mercia) ravaged Kent and the province which is called "This year (A.D. 773), a fiery crucifix appeared in the heavens after sunset: and the same year the Mercians and Kentish men fought at Otford, and wondrous adders were seen in the land of the south Saxons."— AngloSax. Chron., p. 339. Ethelwerd, P. 19. CHAP. VIII. Mersewari (supposed to be Romney Marsh) and having defeated Edbert, he carried him into Mercia, where he let his eyes be picked out and his hands cut off. Cenulph Ang. Sax. Ch., placed Cudred on the throne, who was succeeded by Baldred, and he was driven out of his kingdom by the victorious Egbert, King of the West Saxons. p. 343. A. 823. Vol. I., p. 6. Anglo-Saxon Thus Kent, after having been ruled over by a sole monarch about 375 years, ceased to be a distinct kingdom.* Let us here pause and hastily review a few of the great changes and events which took place during the three centuries comprised in these reigns, for "it is now," says Macaulay, "that our darkness begins to break, and the country, which had been lost to view as Britain, reappears as England." After reading the closing page of the fourth chapter of this work, the reader will be surprised to learn, that when St. Augustine landed and raised the standard. of the Cross in Kent, he found the Christian religion extinct, and the nation a second time reduced to paganism. This period of our history is as "dark as it is horrible." The blood of the Briton was freely mingled with that of the Saxon, but warfare was carried on with such ferocity, first in exterminating the Britons from Kent, and afterwards in quelling internal feuds, that at the end of 150 years the seeds of eternal life sown with the blood of martyrs had perished. When the Saxons became firmly settled in Kent, they established their own religious institutions. Roman paganism was laid aside, and their own polytheism and idolatry everywhere substituted. Strange to say, that while the sun, the moon, and the days of the week, remained objects of worship in Kent, the German conquerors of the Roman Empire were introducing Christianity in the In recording briefly these successive occupations of the Kentish throne, I have followed William of Malmesbury (Bohn's Ed.), who, according to Archbp. Usher, was "the chief of Historians." Leland calls him "an elegant, learned, and faithful Historian ;" and Sir Henry Saville is of opinion that he is the only man of his time who has discharged his trust as an historian. Dr. Giles's Preface. CHAP. VIII. provinces they had vanquished. Here Woden was the chief deity to whom they offered human sacrifices. Their priesthood comprised both sexes. All classes, even the King, believed in magic; for, after the arrival of St. Augustine, Ethelbert preferred receiving him in the open air Bede, 37. in the Isle of Thanet, rather than in a house, imagining that magical arts had greater influence under a roof.* p. 225. That these barbaric nations of Europe must have sprung from some more civilized states may be collected from many of the traditions which have been preserved; one of them, Mr. Turner says, was, that the earth and heavens were preceded by a state of non-entity. Another, Turner, Vol. I. that at a destined period the earth and all the universe would be destroyed by fire. The Being who was to direct it was called Surtur, or the black one. Till that day Loke, their principle of evil, was to remain in the cave and chains of iron to which he was consigned. A new world was to emerge at this period; the good would be happy; the gods would sit in judgment, and the wicked would be condemned to a dreary habitation. The most formidable feature in this religion was its separation from the pure and heavenly virtues of life, and its indissoluble union with war and violence. It condemned the faithless and the perjured, but it represented the Supreme Deity as the father of combats and slaughter, and regarded as his favourite children those who fell in the field of battle. The rapid succession of wars with all their horrors thus became sanctified; and one cannot be surprised at the almost total obliteration of the labours and exertions of the Christian missionaries in our island, who had been murdered by their conquerors, their humble places of worship destroyed, and "in every quarter," to use the language of D'Aubigné, "temples to Thor had risen above Faiths of the the churches in which Jesus Christ had been worshipped." World, p. 391. The Saxons believed that the houses built by other races might be rendered dangerous by means of charms and magic, and wherever they settled they established themselves chiefly in the country, and erected their own dwellings.-Wright, 440, F CHAP. VIII. P. 12. Bede, Bohn's Remnants of a Christian church were no doubt still extant in different parts of the island, but no reliable information has been handed down to us. The subsequent desire of Gregory (afterwards Bishop of Rome, styled the Great) to effect the conversion of the English on beholding in the market-place of Rome the noble appearance of some youths (Angles) brought there. for sale, and its accomplishment, are too familiar to my readers to need repetition here. We also know that Ethelbert's marriage with Bertha (a Christian princess of Frank descent) favoured this design. Dean Stanley has graphically described the landing of St. Augustine in the Isle of Thanet with forty monks, in the year 597. Numerous conversions followed, and Ethelbert himself was soon received into the communion of the Church. The Anglo-Saxons having thus submitted to the papal dominion, were anxious that the little remnant of the British Church then existing should do the same. Not, however, having received Christianity from Rome, that church endeavoured to preserve its independence. A conference, it is said, took place between Augustine and the British bishops under an oak, arising out of a controversy respecting the time for the observance of the great festival of Easter, but without any good result. The British Church survived for a time in the mountainous districts of Wales, but gradually diminishing, at length disappeared before the encroachments and fascinations of the church of Rome, backed by pretensions to miraculous powers, and sanctioned, as it contended, by the special interposition of Heaven. From Canterbury, the first English Christian city-from Kent, the first English Christian kingdom, has by degrees Stanley, p. 39. arisen the whole constitution of Church and State in England, which now binds together the British empire. p. 32. It had been Gregory's intention to fix the primacy in *This event happened before A.D. 588.-Stanley's Canterbury, Note 1, p. 12. London and York alternately; but the local feelings CHAP. VIII. which grew out of Augustine's landing in Kent were too strong for him, and they have prevailed to this day. St. Augustine's last act at Canterbury was the consecration of Justus as Bishop of Rochester, and Mellitus as Bishop of London. P. xxxviii. Cod. Dip., The first Chronicles, it is supposed, were those of either Bede, 72. Kent or Wessex, which seem to have been regularly continued by the Archbishops of Canterbury, or by their Sax. Chron., direction. The readers of Anglo-Saxon history require to be reminded that we have really no trustworthy record of any great event previous to the arrival of St. Augustine. Almost everything which precedes this great epoch is mere tradition, though, no doubt, with a substratum of truth. In the province of Kent the first person on record celebrated for his learning was Tobias, ninth Bishop of Rochester, who succeeded to that sce A.D. 693. From this Sax. Chron., P. xxxviii. period, therefore, may be dated the advance in Kent of literature, the composition of Chronicles, and other vehicles of instruction necessary for the improvement of a rude. people. Although the Christian religion, as accepted by Ethelbert towards the close of the sixth century, had been taking root in most of the kingdoms then constituting the Octarchy, it did not dawn upon the small and secluded kingdom of the South Saxons for nearly a century afterwards; as late as the year 681 the people of Sussex A.D. 681. remained pagans. Their condition became known to Wilfred, Archbishop of York, who, in returning from the Wright, p. 403. Continent, was driven by stress of weather on that coast, and subsequently founded a monastery on the little island. of Selsea. Nothing can more strongly exemplify the im The attendants of this bishop, it would appear, first taught the inhabitants of Sussex sea fishing, and rescued them from famine. They only knew how to catch eels in their streams, and the bishop's men, collecting the eel nets, cast them into the sea, and drew to shore three hundred fishes of various sorts, which gained the good will of the people.-Bede, 195. |