while the monks builded and studied and dug, the nuns spun, wove, and embroidered. Moreover, many Englishmen became famous and heroic apostles to their kinsmen on the Continent.

End of the Northumbrian Supremacy. - Oswy of Northumbria died in 670, and Northumbria soon ceased to be a leading power. Internal strife, hostilities on the northern border, and the enmity of Mercia proved too much for it to withstand. The kingdom lingered on till it was destroyed in the ninth century by a new enemy, the Northmen; but it would be useless to try to make headway through its confused and tumultuous annals. Suffice to say that during the eighth century there were fourteen kings, of whom many were deposed and none died peacefully.

Supremacy of Mercia. Offa (757-796). During the eighth century the leading position in England was taken by Mercia. Mercian power reached its height under Offa (757-796), who after more than twenty years of hard fighting succeeded in securing his supremacy south of the Humber and in subduing and absorbing the Welsh on the western border. He was on terms of intimacy with Charlemagne and more than one sign indicates his influence with the Papacy: Pope Hadrian described him as the King of the English nation; and he made the Pope a grant, in 787, which is regarded as the origin of Peter's pence. Offa also made laws for his people, which, while they are no longer extant, were drawn on by Alfred the Great for his later and more famous compilation.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING

Cæsar in his Gallic Wars and Tacitus in his Germania describe the conditions of the early Germans on the Continent in about 50 B.C. and 100 A.D. respectively.

Among the descriptions in later works are: Pasquali Villari, The Barbarian Invasions (1902); F. B. Gummere, Germanic Origins (1892); Hannis Taylor, The Origin and Growth of the English Constitution (vol. I, 1892); Wm. Stubbs, English Constitutional History (5th ed., 1891) I, chs. II, III. Taylor's work is a compilation which is very clearly written, but exaggerates the Germanic origin of English institutions. Stubbs, although superseded in places, is still the authoritative comprehensive work on English constitutional history in the Middle Ages. Among the best of the briefer manuals are: A. B. White, The Making of the English Constitution (1908); F. W. Maitland, The Constitutional History of England (1908); and T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History (7th ed., 1911). A very suggestive sketch is G. B. Adams, An Outline Sketch of English Constitutional History (1918). D. J. Medley, Manual of English Constitutional History (4th ed., 1907) is a most useful work of reference.

For invasions and the early history of the Anglo-Saxons, the most valuable general sources are Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, to 731, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which in one version goes to 1154. Each work has been translated many times. Inexpensive editions are those of J. A. Giles in Bohn's Standard Library, (1843) and (1847) respectively. The best modern narratives are J. R. Green, The Making of England (1881); Ramsay, Foundations of England, I; Oman, England before the Norman Conquest, and Hodgkin, Political History of England.

For the introduction of Christianity, see H. O. Wakeman, History of the Church of England (8th ed., 1914), and William Hunt, History of the English Church (1901). Wakeman's is the best one-volume work. Hunt's is the first of a series of nine volumes by different authors. Each chapter is provided with a fairly full bibliography. F. Makower, Constitutional History of the Church of England (Eng. tr., 1895) is very good on the organization of the Church.

An invaluable work of reference for the whole period is the Dictionary of National Biography, 63 vols., 1885-1900, with 6 supplementary volumes bringing the work up to 1912. The ample biographies are accompanied by good bibliographies. In 1908-1909 a cheaper edition in 22 volumes was issued.

CHAPTER IV

THE ASCENDANCY OF THE WEST SAXONS. THE GROWTH AND DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ANGLO-SAXON MONARCHY

Rise of the West Saxons. Ine (688-725).—Not long after the death of Offa, the Mercians were forced to yield their supreme position to the West Saxons, who had started on a career of conquest with the brightest of prospects generations before, but had been held back largely by internal dissensions. The greatest of their early Kings after the warrior Ceawlin (593) was Ine (688-725), celebrated for his commanding position in the south and for his code of laws largely amendments of existing custom and an enumeration of crimes and their penalties. After reigning nearly forty years Ine abdicated and went on a pilgrimage to Rome, where he died. Nearly a century was to pass before the West Saxon power again took the lead. Then its supremacy among the Anglo-Saxons was destined to be lasting. Many reasons explain this: there began in the ninth century a series of Kings who were, almost without exception, effective rulers and indomitable warriors; they were supported by the Church, which saw the best prospect of carrying on its work under a strong united monarchy; and finally, the invasions of the Northmen destroyed the rival kingdoms which had impeded the West Saxon advance and drew the divided peoples together against a common enemy.

Egbert (802-839) Establishes the West Saxon Supremacy. — The beginning of the West Saxon supremacy dates from the accession of Egbert, who, during some years of exile, dwelt in the domain of Charlemagne, from whose vast Empire he gained his first ideas of a great united rule. On the death of the King who had driven him out he returned, in 802, and was accepted as ruler by the West Saxons. He reduced the Mercians to submission; the people of East Anglia sought his " peace and protection"; he recovered the Kentish kingdom of his father; and he forced the Northumbrians and Welsh to take him for their lord. During his last years he had to fight off attacks of the Northmen who had first appeared in the reign of his predecessor,

and who were to occupy practically the whole energies of Egbert's son and of his four grandsons.

The Northmen. The Northmen, or Danes, as the Anglo-Saxons called them, - often known as the "vikings" or rovers inhabited the peninsulas of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. They were heathens, sea rovers, and pirates who passed their time mainly in plundering and fighting. Organized in small bands, they had their headquarters in the innumerable fiords, inlets, and creeks which indented the Scandinavian coast. Their boats were small open affairs, high at the prow and stern, propelled by oars, though often they bore a single mast and sail which could be set up to help the oarsmen when the wind was right. While they founded powerful states in northwest France (Normandy) and in southern Italy, we are concerned primarily with the Northmen in England. At first they conducted merely disconnected plundering expeditions, then they made settlements, and finally established kingdoms.

The Danes in England. — In 793 they landed at Lindisfarne, where they "lamentably destroyed God's church . . . through rapine and slaughter." During the course of the next century the invaders. secured territorial settlements in northern and eastern England, overrunning Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia. In 795 they landed in Ireland, where they later established a kingdom. As has been seen, they proved, from the time of Egbert, a serious menace to the West Saxons. They not only infested the southern and southeastern coasts, but, during the reign of his son, they penetrated inland1 and even took London and Canterbury. While Ethelred, a grandson of Egbert, was ruling the West Saxons and straining every nerve to drive the Danes out of his territory, he was mortally wounded in 871.

Alfred the Great (871-901). — Æthelred left two sons; but they were under age, and Alfred, who had so ably assisted his brother, was chosen to succeed him as King of Wessex and Kent. That the kingdoms of Wessex and Kent were defended against the Danes and organized to form a center for the ultimate recovery of the whole Island was due to Alfred, the supreme hero of the English race. He was born in 848, and from his infancy he was marked as a child of special attainments

1 A raid into East Anglia in 870 is notable for the gruesome martyrdom of the King of that land. St. Edmund, as he came to be, refused to divide his treasure with the Danish chief, to renounce his religion, or to become a vassal. Forthwith he was tied to a tree, scourged, then shot through with arrows and beheaded. Long after, a shrine was built to commemorate his martyrdom at Bury, now known as Bury St. Edmunds.

and charm; his later youth was spent in hard and stern duties, and he was only twenty-two when the whole burden of defending the kingdom fell on him. The darkest time in the annals of England came in 876, when, after a brief truce, Guthrum, who had made himself King of East Anglia, landed on the south coast, overran Dorsetshire and seized Exeter. Alfred retreated to the fen country of Somerset,1 and established a fortress on an inaccessible island in the marshes. After he had brought together the men of Hampshire, Wiltshire, ad Somerset he sallied forth and defeated the Danes in 878 at Etnandun (now Hedington). By the so-called Peace of Wedmore (879) Alfred made them consent to receive baptism and to evacuate the West Saxon land. It was not till 886, after he had defeated the Danes a sea fight north of the Thames, that Alfred got a treaty dividing his land. from what came to be known as the Danelagh. By the terms of that treaty the Danes were to keep all east of a line "up the Thames to the mouth of the Lea, up the Lea to its source, thence across to Bedford, thence up the Ouse to Watling Street." Thereby Alfred got London, which he fortified and rebuilt.

Alfred's Military Reorganization. - Having driven out the enemy, he set himself to organize a permanent defense, to give his people wise laws, to improve their political institutions, to educate them and furnish them with a literature. The chief military weakness of the English had been the fact that, as soon as a battle was won, the army would disperse and leave the land unprotected. To prevent this, Alfred divided the men into three parts; one was kept at work in the fields, another was held constantly under arms, and still a third was assigned to garrison strongholds or fortresses.

His Laws and Political Reorganization. Having prepared for defense he proceeded to compile a body of laws. Besides a few new provisions and some taken directly from the Scriptures he selected what to him "seemed good" from those his "forefathers held" from the dooms of Æthelbert of Kent, from Ine of Wessex, and Offa of Mercia, besides taking some provisions directly from the Scriptures. It was a decided step in unification to give his subjects a common law where each people had had its own particular system, moreover his influence on the political institutions of his time is not without significance. The invention of shires has been attributed to Alfred, but

1 The story is that he was a fugitive in hiding and that once he took refuge in a cowherd's hut where the housewife gave him some cakes to tend. He allowed them to burn and was sharply berated for his carelessness. This story is a myth, nor indeed, did Alfred come as a fugitive, but to gather new strength against his enemies. 2 For shires, see below p. 45.