that is, a district under the jurisdiction of a Bishop; but Theodore broke up most of these great dioceses into smaller ones, which in his time were all subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury. After Theodore's death an Archbishop was appointed for York; but the province, that is, the district under his jurisdiction, has always contained much fewer dioceses than the province of Canterbury. At first there were but few churches; in many places there were only crosses, under which the missionaries sent out from the King's court or the monastery preached, said mass, and baptized; but by degrees more churches were built, and priests settled down beside them. The township, or cluster of townships, to which a single priest ministered, was at a later time called his parish. During the early period of English history the Church was the chief bond of the nation. Politically, Englishmen were divided into West-Saxons, Mercians, and so forth; it was only as members of one Church that they felt themselves to be fellowcountrymen. Thus the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose word was respected throughout the English land, was, in his way, a greater man than any of the seven or eight Kings who were struggling and fighting around him.

CHAPTER IV.

THE RISE OF WESSEX.

Decline of Northumberland; Ine of Wessex; Offa of Mercia; Egbert, King of the English (1)—the Danes in England and Ireland (2)—Æthelwulf and his sons ; the Danish war; Ragnar Lodbrog; St. Edmund (3)— Alfred; story of the cakes; taking of the Raven; Alfred in the Danish camp; Treaty of Wedmore; Danish

settlements (4)-Alfred's government; his death (5)— Edward the Elder; the Lady of the Mercians; Lordship of Britain (6)-Rolf the Northman; Normandy (7).

time

I. The Rise of Wessex.-For some Northumberland took the lead among the English states; but towards the close of the seventh century its power began to go down, and Wessex and Mercia then disputed the supremacy of the South. Wessex, which was ruled by the descendants of Cerdic, had grown by constant encroachments on the Welsh; and Ine, who became its King in 688, almost completed the conquest of Somerset. He was the founder of Taunton, a fortress for the defence of his new frontier, and tradition ascribes to him the building of a stone church for the monastery of Ynysvitrin or Glastonbury, hard by an earlier wooden church of the Britons. ine's dooms," that is, laws or judgments, are the earliest collection of West-Saxon laws which have come down to us, though there are written Kentish laws older still. Among the Mercian Kings the most famous is Offa, who reigned from 757 to 796. He conquered a great part of the Welsh land of Powys, including its capital town of Pen-y-wern, now Shrewsbury. To guard his new-won land he made a great dyke "Offa's Dyke "-from the mouth of the Wye to that of the Dee. Wessex rose to power under the great King Ecgberht or Egbert, who ascended the throne in 802, and brought all the English kingdoms, together with the Welsh both of Cornwall and of what we now call Wales, more or less into subjection. He was King of all the Saxons and Jutes, and Lord of the East-Angles, Mercians, and Northumbrians, whose kings submitted to be his men, or in later phrase, his vassals, owing him a certain obedience. Egbert, as the chief, though not the only king in the land, was thus able to call himself King of the English. But hardly had Wessex established its supremacy when it

found a new foe in the Scandinavian pirates, whose increasing ravages troubled Egbert's later years.

2. The Danes or Northmen.-The Scandinavians or Northmen were a Teutonic people, who in course of time formed the Kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. As those who entered England were chiefly Danes, English writers commonly speak of the Scandinavians in general by that name. Among these people, as of old among their kinsmen the Angles and Saxons, piracy was an honourable profession, and wealth and fame were won in the roving life of a leader of pirates or Vikings. This last word, derived from vik, a bay or creek, means "men of the bays," the natural harbours which afforded shelter to their vessels. They were thorough seamen, far ahead of other nations in the building and handling of sea-going vessels. Their practice was to sail up the rivers in their ascs or ash-wood galleys, to choose some place for a fortified camp, and, obtaining horses in the country, make forays over the land, plundering, burning, and slaying. They spoke a kindred tongue to English, worshipped the same gods as the heathen English had done, and singled out with delight churches, monasteries, and priests for destruction. This was probably not so much from hatred of Christianity as because the religious houses, rich and defenceless, were tempting prey. For the most part the Vikings made little difficulty about forsaking their own religion whenever there was anything to be gained by conversion. Never to flinch in fight, or to shed a tear even for their dearest kinsfolk, and to be as reckless in meeting as in inflicting death, summed up their ideas of honour and duty. The lesser British Isles became favourite Viking haunts, and Scandinavian princes ruled in Man and the Orkneys. Those who harassed Scotland were chiefly Norwegians, to whom in later days the name of Northmen was restricted. No people suffered more than the Irish, who, though in many respects

more civilized than their neighbours, were split into tribes and clans too much at variance with each other to make common cause against their better disciplined and armed invaders. Such order and civilization as Ireland had attained to died out in the course of the long struggle with the Scandinavians, who succeeded in fixing themselves at the mouths of the navigable rivers. Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford were their chief towns.

3. The Danish Wars. Ethelwulf and his Sons.-Egbert was succeeded in 837 by his son Ethelwulf, and he by his four sons, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred I., and Alfred (or, as we now write it, Alfred), who all reigned one after the other, none of the first three living long. Under Ethelred began the great Danish war, as to the cause of which there are many Northern legends. One tale is that it was undertaken to revenge the death of Ragnar Lodbrog, a mighty Viking, who had been shipwrecked on the Northumbrian coast. There the King of the country, Ella, threw him into a dungeon full of poisonous snakes, under whose bites he expired, chanting to the last a wild song recounting his exploits, and boasting that he would "die laughing." Much of this is, no doubt, fabulous, but there may have been a real Ragnar, and several of the chieftains who harassed the British Isles are called his sons. The known facts are that in 866 "a great heathen army "landed in East-Anglia, and in the two next years subdued Northumberland and Mercia. In 870 East-Anglia was again invaded, and its King, Edmund, was defeated and slain by the Danish leaders Ingvar and Ubba, sons of Ragnar. Edmund, according to legend, was offered his life and kingdom if he would consent to reign under Ingvar. On his refusal to submit to a heathen lord, the Danes bound him to a tree, scourged him, made him, in savage sport, a mark for their arrows, and at last struck

off his head. He was honoured as a martyr, and the Church of St. Edmundsbury was afterwards erected over his grave. From the rapid success of the invaders, it would look as if the people north of Thames cared little whether their masters were Danes or WestSaxons. But when in 871 the Danes entered Wessex, they met with a stubborn resistance.

4. Ælfred or Alfred, 871-901.-Alfred, when a child of four years old, had been sent by his father on a visit to Rome, where Pope Leo IV. adopted him as his godson. At nineteen he married, and it is said that during his wedding feast he was seized with fearful pain, which, baffling the medical skill of the time, harassed him for the next twenty years; if so, his bravery and vigour are the more remarkable. At the age of twenty-two he became King, and a hard fight he had of it. Soon after his accession Wessex obtained a respite, though the Danes still occupied Mercia and the North. But after a time the attacks upon Wessex were renewed, and early in 878 the army under Guthrum, a Danish chief who had possessed himself of East-Anglia, made a sudden march upon Chippenham, and thence overran the country.

Many

of the people fled beyond sea; the rest submitted, while Alfred, with a few followers, disappeared among the swamps and woods of Somersetshire. At one time -so runs a tale which appears to have come to us from a ballad he stayed in disguise with one of his neatherds, who kept the secret even from his own wife. One day the woman having set some cakes to bake at the fire by which Alfred was sitting making ready his bow and arrows, returned to find her cakes burning in the sight of the unheeding King. Flying to save them, she roundly scolded him for his neglect to turn the cakes, which she said he was only too glad to eat when hot. That same winter the Devonshire WestSaxons slew Ubba in battle, and captured the magic Raven banner which was said to have been woven