APPENDIX.

NOTE A. p. 13. The use of the word “English.”

My readers will doubtless have remarked—indeed I have, in the text, expressly called their attention to the fact—that, in speaking of the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain looked at as a whole, I always use the word “English,” never the words “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon,” which are more commonly in use. I do this advisedly, on more grounds than one. I hold it to be a sound rule to speak of a nation, as far as may be, by the name by which it called itself in the age of which we are speaking. This alone would be reason enough for using the word “English” and no other. But besides this, the common way of talking about “Saxons” and “Anglo-Saxons” leads to various confusions and misconceptions; it ought therefore to be avoided on that ground still more than on the other.

I am not aware of any instance in which a Teutonic inhabitant of Britain, living before the Norman Conquest, and speaking in his own tongue and in his own name of the whole nation formed by the union of the various Teutonic tribes in Britain, uses the word “Saxon.” “Engle,” “Angel-cyn,” are the words always used. The only exceptions, if we can call them exceptions, are certain charters in which the King of the English is called “King of the Anglo-Saxons.” Of these I shall presently speak (see below, p. 534540, and Appendix B). But I am not aware that the word “Anglo-Saxon” is ever used in English writings except in the royal style, and even there it is excessively rare. It is quite certain that the word “Anglo-Saxon” was not used, any more than the word “Saxon,” as the ordinary name of the nation. An inhabitant of one of the real Saxon settlements might indeed call himself a Saxon as opposed to his Anglian or Jutish neighbours. But even in this case it is remarkable that we very seldom find the word “Saxon” used alone. It is almost always coupled with one of its geographical adjuncts, “West,” “East,” or “South.” Cuthred’s army at Burford (see pp. 38, 517) is not spoken of as the “Saxon” but as the “West-Saxon” host, even though its adversaries were Angles. But the word “Saxon” is never used, in the native tongue, to express either the whole nation or any part of it which was not strictly Saxon. On the other hand, the words “Engle” and “Angel-cyn” are constantly used to express, not only the whole nation, but particular parts of it which were not strictly Anglian. The Chronicles use the words in this sense from the very beginning. They expressly tell us that Hengest and Horsa were, in strictness, not Angles, but Jutes; yet their followers are called “Engle” (473), and the Teutonic settlers as a whole are called “Angel-cyn” (449). One single passage in the Chronicles (605), which has another look, I shall have presently to speak of as being most distinctly an exception which proves the rule. “Engle,” in short, in native speech, is the name of the whole nation, of which the “Seaxe” are a part.

On the other hand, for reasons which I have already stated (see p. 13), all the Teutonic settlers in Britain have always been known to their Celtic neighbours as “Saxons.” They were so in the fifth century; they are so still. In the Pictish Chronicle, for instance, Lothian is always “Saxonia.” On the continent too the word was sometimes used to describe the Teutonic settlers in Britain before they were fully consolidated into one kingdom. At the very beginning Prosper (see Appendix C) talks of Saxons, while Prokopios (see above, pp. 22, 31) talks of Ἄγγιλοι. As Gregory the Great calls the Jutish Æthelberht “Rex Anglorum” (Bæda, Hist. Eccl. i. 32), so Einhard speaks of certain Northumbrians, who therefore were strictly Angles, as 535Saxons. Ealhwine (Alcuin), who was certainly a Northumbrian, is called (Vita Karoli, 25) “Saxonici generis homo,” and one Ealdwulf, who seems also to have been a Northumbrian, appears (Annals, 808) as “de ipsa Britannia, natione Saxo.” But I suspect that this way of speaking was peculiar or nearly so to Einhard. A generation earlier, Paul Warnefrid has several passages which illustrate the uncertain way in which the Teutonic settlers in Britain were for a long time spoken of on the Continent. But though he uses the words “Angli” and “Saxones” as it might seem indiscriminately, there is no case in which it is clear that he applies the Saxon name to any but real Saxons, while he uses the Anglian name to take in those who were not real Angles. First of all, in ii. 6 the Saxons who joined in Alboin’s invasion of Italy are distinguished as “vetuli Saxones.” In iii. 25 he records the conversion of the English, how “Beatus Gregorius Augustinum, ... in Britanniam misit, eorumque prædicatione ad Christum Anglos convertit.” In v. 30 we read of the “ecclesiæ Anglorum;” but in c. 32 the banished prince Bertarid “ad Britanniam insulam Saxonumque regem properare disponit;” and in c. 33, “navem ascendit ut ad Britanniam insulam ad regnum Saxonum transmearet.” Here a West-Saxon King is doubtless meant. In vi. 28 we find two persons, seemingly Ine and his wife Æthelburh, described in the text as “duo reges Saxonum,” and in the heading as “duo Anglorum reges.” Lastly, in vi. 37 the fashion of pilgrimage is attributed to “multi Anglorum gentis nobiles et ignobiles;” and in the same chapter Saxones is used in its common meaning of Old-Saxons. Altogether, “Anglus” is the received and usual name even from the earliest times; it became more usual as time went on, and after the nation was consolidated, when the “Rex Anglorum” was known on the continent as a great potentate, any other way of speaking altogether died out, and foreign nations always spoke of us as we spoke of ourselves. The opposition between “Saxon” and “Norman,” so commonly made by modern writers when speaking of the days of the Conquest, is never found in any contemporary writer of any nation. The rule on this head during the period of the Conquest is very plain. In the English Chronicles, in Domesday and other legal documents, and in the Bayeux Tapestry, the opposition is made between “French” and “English.” “The King’s 536men, French and English,” form an exhaustive division. In Latin writers, especially those on the Norman side, the opposition is made between “Normans” and “English.” “Normans” and “Saxons” are not opposed till long after. The earliest instance that I know of the usage is in Robert of Gloucester, who opposes “Normans” and “Saxons” exactly as Thierry does, in verses which Thierry has not inappropriately chosen for the epilogue of his work;

“Of þe Normannes beþ þẏs hey men, þat beþ of þys lond,

And þe lowe men of Saxons, as ẏch understonde.”

(Vol. i. p. 363, ed. 1810.)

It is possibly owing to the comparative laxity of the foreign use of the words that even the native use is not quite so strict in Latin writings as it is in those which are composed in the native tongue. Native writers, when following, or translating from, Welsh authorities, often follow the Welsh usage, and use the word “Saxones” in positions where, if they had been speaking in their own persons, they would certainly have used the word “Angli.” There is one instance, and, as far as I know, one instance only, of this Welsh usage having made its way into the English speech. In the entry in the Chronicles under the year 605, the word “Saxon” does occur for once in the wider sense. But the word is not used by the Chronicler in his own person, nor is it put into the mouth of any Angle or Saxon. It is found in a speech of Augustine to the Welsh Bishops; “Gif Wealas nellað sibbe wið us, hy sculon æt Seaxena handa forwurðan,” a prediction which was accomplished by the invasion of the Anglian Æthelfrith. Here is a story, probably preserved by Welsh tradition, in which a Roman speaking to Welshmen is made to adopt a Welsh form of speech. The contrast between this passage and the ordinary language of the Chronicles makes the ordinary usage still more marked. In Latin the usage is more common. Asser, as a Welshman, naturally speaks of “Saxones,” and his so speaking is a strong proof of the genuineness of his work. Florence of Worcester therefore, in that part of his Chronicle in which he copies Asser, keeps Asser’s language, and speaks of “Saxones,” whereas, when speaking in his own words or translating from the English Chronicles, he speaks of “Angli” from the beginning. No doubt the subjects of Ælfred, the books, 537poems, &c. to which the name “Saxon” is thus applied, were strictly Saxon; but no West-Saxon, speaking in his own tongue, would have called them so. Ælfred calls his own tongue “English,” and nothing else; but Asser naturally called it “Saxon.” So Bæda, as long as he draws from Welsh sources or repeats Welsh traditions, uses the words “Angli” and “Saxones” almost indiscriminately (Hist. Eccl. i. 14, 15, 22); but, as soon as he begins fairly to speak in his own person, he always uses “Angli” (i. 23 et seqq.). Exactly the same distinction will be found in the use of the words by Æthelweard and Henry of Huntingdon, who constantly use the word “Saxones” in what we may call the Welsh stage of their histories. But Henry uses “Anglus” also from the beginning, and, when he gets fairly clear of Welsh matters, he uses it exclusively. It is most curious to see him, as in the Prologue to the fifth Book, fall back on the Welsh way of speaking when he has to make a summary of what has gone before. And as the Welsh way of speaking affected these writers, we find writers who had occasion to speak of Pictish matters affected in the like way by Pictish usage. Thus Æddi or Eddius, the biographer of Wilfrith (c. 19, 20), speaking of the relations between Picts and Northumbrians, uses the Pictish mode of speech; he speaks of “Saxones,” and says that the Picts “subjectionem Saxonum despiciebant.”

Besides these instances of Celtic influence on English speech, it is not uncommon to find in the charters the word “Saxonice” used as a definition of language, where the vernacular definition would undoubtedly have been “on Englisc.” In West-Saxon charters the usage is in truth no more than we might have looked for. The words and things spoken of were Saxon in the strict sense. Bæda too not uncommonly (iii. 7 et al.) uses “Saxon” as a description of language; but it is usually, if not always, when he is speaking of persons or places which are strictly Saxon. He may therefore mean “Saxon” as opposed to “Anglian.” But the usage certainly now and then passes these bounds, and we find the word Saxon and its derivatives applied to objects which were not strictly Saxon. Thus in a charter of Ecgfrith of Mercia in 796 (Cod. Dipl. i. 207), we find the words “celebri vico qui Saxonice vocatur æt Baðum.” Though even here it is worth remarking that the place spoken of, though at that time under 538Mercian rule, was in a district which was originally Saxon and which became Saxon again. So in a deed of Archbishop Oswald as late as 990 (Cod. Dipl. iii. 253) we read how a certain grant “in ista cartula Saxonicis sermonibus apparet.” But the land spoken of is in Worcestershire, also a district originally Saxon. It is more remarkable when in a charter of Archbishop Wulfred in 825 (Cod. Dipl. i. 280), the Synod of Clovesho is said to be “de diversis Saxoniæ partibus congregatum.” As the document chiefly relates to Mercian affairs, it is clear that “Saxonia” here means England generally. The word is used in the same sense at an earlier time in a petition of Wilfrith to Pope Agatho (Eddius, c. 29), in which he describes himself as “episcopus Saxoniæ.” So again in the letter—whether genuine or not, matters little—of Eleutherius of Winchester in William of Malmesbury (i. 30), he is described as “pontificatus Saxoniæ gubernacula regens.” In this passage “Saxonia” might mean Wessex; but Hwætberht, Abbot of Wearmouth (Bæda, Hist. Abb. Wiremuth, c. 14. p. 329 Hussey), also calls himself “Abbas cœnobii beatissimi apostolorum principis in Saxonia.” It should of course be remembered that these are letters addressed to foreigners, and in which a foreign mode of speech is naturally adopted. Still, when I have these examples before me, and when I remember how late it was before the names “Anglia” and “Englaland” became thoroughly established in use, I am inclined to think that “Saxonia” may be the older name of the two. We have seen (see p. 79) that the name Englaland dates only from the last period of the Danish wars; the earliest use of it that I have come across is not earlier than the reign of Æthelred, being found in the treaty with Olaf and Justin in 991 (see p. 79, and below, Note DD). Here the word Englaland, Ænglaland, is twice found. From the latter days of Æthelred and the reign of Cnut the territorial name becomes more and more commonly used. (It is needless to say that the entry in the Canterbury Chronicle for 876 and the long insertion at 995 are not contemporary.) It would seem then that the name of England was first used in opposition, not to Wales or Scotland, but to the Scandinavian lands. As opposed to the lands of the Scot and the Briton the strict territorial name was rather Saxony than England. It was only natural that it should be so. The part of Britain occupied by the Teutonic invaders, the English 539land as distinguished from the English people, would receive its first territorial name from the Celts of the island, and that name would naturally be, as we have seen in the case of Lothian, “Saxonia.” In dealing with foreigners, even Englishmen might, in the days of Wilfrith or Hwætberht, use the only territorial name which their country had as yet acquired, and, in the days of Wulfred, the same word might be now and then used as a rhetorical flourish. I am therefore inclined to think that there is really more authority for calling England, as a whole, “Saxony,” than there is for calling Englishmen, as a whole, “Saxons.” The Latin name Anglia is most likely older than the English Englaland. But it is hard to say when it came into contemporary use. It seems to be unknown to Bæda, but it is familiar to Æthelweard. A rarer form, “Angul-Saxonia,” “Anglo-Saxonia,” is now and then found, as in a charter of Eadward the Elder in Cod. Dipl. v. 165, and in a doubtful charter of Æthelred (see below, p. 557). So in a Frankish ecclesiastical writer in Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. i. 665, Queen Balthild is said to come “de ultramarinis partibus Angli-Saxoniæ.” Still, whatever may have been the case in earlier times, all these usages had died out long before the time of the Norman Conquest. After all England and all Britain had been brought into subjection to a Saxon dynasty, we hear no more about “Saxons” or “Saxony.” The latest instance that I can remember of “Saxonice” being used for “on Englisc” is in a passage of Florence of Worcester (1002, see p. 306), where he says that the Norman Emma was “Saxonice Ælfgiva vocata.” The expression stands almost by itself; but it should be remembered that it is of the West-Saxon speech that it is used. During the period of the Conquest, as the people are always “Angli” and their land “Anglia,” so it is always the English language (“lingua Anglica or Anglicana”), never the Saxon, which contemporary writers oppose to the French.

The fact that the word “Saxon” is thus occasionally used in Latin, in cases where we always find “English” used in the native tongue, is, I think, mainly to be attributed to the tendency, one which has more or less influence on almost all Latin writings then and since, to use expressions which sounded in any way grander or more archaic than those which were in common use. I suspect that the occasional use of “Saxon” instead of “English” was very 540much of a piece with the use, not uncommon in the charters, of “Albion” to express Britain. To talk of “Saxonia,” “Saxonice,” &c. was doubtless one of the elegancies of the Kanzleistyl of those days. It is an archaism, just as when, in a charter of Eadwig (Cod. Dipl. ii. 324; cf. 391), we read of the “Gewissi,” a name which had passed out of use ages before. Once or twice we find “Teutonice” instead of either “Anglice” or “Saxonice.” The decrees of the Synod of Cealcyth in 787 (Labbe and Cossart, vi. 1873) were published “tam Latine quam Teutonice, quo omnes intelligere possent.” So in the Encomium Emmæ (ii. 18) we once find the word used where either English or Danish is intended, and the expression is an unusual and affected one as applied to either. In a most remarkable story told by Giraldus (Itin. Kamb. i. 6. p. 64 Dimock), a Welshman is said to speak to Henry the Second “quasi Teutonice,” and is presently answered “Anglice.” But Giraldus elsewhere (i. 8. p. 77), in his curious philological discussion, distinguishes “Anglice” and “Teutonice,” though his “Teutonice” does not seem to be High-Dutch. There can be no doubt that this use of “Teutonice” was simply an instance of “the grand style.” It is less clearly so when Fordun (ii. 9) says that in Scotland “duabus utuntur linguis, Scotica videlicet et Theuthonica.” For he writes at a time when men were just beginning to be unwilling to give the English name to the Teutonic speech of Scotland. But in earlier times we may be sure that, when men said either “Teutonice” or “Saxonice” instead of “Anglice,” the unusual word was chosen mainly as being finer. Still, in the great mass of instances, the use of the word “Saxon,” affected and archaistic as it is, is still accurate. It is rarely used out of the strictly Saxon districts, while “Anglus” and its derivatives are freely used out of the strictly Anglian districts. The title of “Rex Saxonum,” so common in the age of Ælfred, was, as I have elsewhere said (see p. 54), the most accurate which he could assume. Still it appears only as a Latin title; in his vernacular will and his vernacular laws he is only “King of the West-Saxons.” (See p. 52, and Cod. Dipl. ii. 114.) It might be thought to have an English equivalent in the Abingdon Chronicle under 867, where we read, “Her feng Æþered Æþelbryhtes broþor to Seaxna rice,” but as all the other copies have “West-Seaxna rice,” it is most likely a slip of the pen.

The name “Anglo-Saxon,” though rare, is a genuine and ancient 541description of the nation. There are some, though rare, vernacular examples of its use (see below, pp. 549, 556), to which I shall have to refer again. It is also used rather more commonly in Latin, as by Asser (M. H. B. 483 A), by Florence of Worcester (A. 1066), by Simeon of Durham (X Scriptt. 137). In the Latin charters, especially those of Eadwig, it is not uncommon (see the list in pp. 554–558). So in a charter of Eadward the Elder which has been quoted already (Cod. Dipl. v. 168, 169), as he calls the land “Angul-Saxonia,” so he twice calls himself “Angul-Saxonum rex.” The word is not uncommon in foreign writers; it occurs for instance in the singular passage of Lambert of Herzfeld (1066) in which Harold is called “Rex Angli-Saxonum.” To go back to earlier writers, it is found in Paul Warnefrid (iv. 23), where, describing the manners of the Lombards, he says, “Vestimenta eis erant laxa et maxime lintea, qualia Angli-Saxones habere solent.” In c. 37, “Cunibertus rex Hermilindam e Saxonum Anglorum genere duxit uxorem.” Here the name Eormenhild, cognate with the royal Kentish names Eormenred, Eormenburh, Eormengyth, and Eormengild, seems to show almost for certain from what part of England the Lombard King brought his wife. But presently in vi. 15 the West-Saxon Ceadwalla appears as “Cedoaldus rex Anglorum-Saxonum,” though in the heading he is “Theodebaldus rex Anglorum.” (These passages show how fast the Anglian name was spreading over the Saxon and Jutish districts.) The compound name is used also by Widukind in a very amusing passage (i. 8; cf. p. 567), where, having mentioned how certain Saxons settled in Britain, he adds, “Et quia illa insula in angulo quodam maris sita est, Anglisaxones usque hodie vocitantur.” So Prudentius of Troyes (Pertz, i. 449) calls Æthelwulf “Edilvulfus rex Anglorum-Saxonum.” Elsewhere (i. 451) he gives him his usual title of “Rex Occidentalium Saxonum.” In another passage (i. 452) he records how in 860 a Danish fleet sailed “ad Anglo-Saxones.” And in a third, under the year 844 (Pertz, i. 441), “Nortmanni Britanniam insulam ea quam maxime parte quam Angli-Saxones incolunt impetentes.” So in the Annals of Quedlinburg (Pertz, iii. 32), “Angli-Saxones in Britannia fidem percipiunt;” in those of Weissemburg, 1066 (Pertz, iii. 71), “Comes Willihelmus qui et Basthart (see vol. ii. p. 582) Anglos-Saxones et regem illorum occidit regnumque obtinuit.” In the Annales Altahenses, 1066 542(Pertz, xx. 817), we hear of “Angli-Saxonici.” In the Life of Saint Boniface (Pertz, ii. 338) London or “Lundenwich” is so called “Anglorum Saxonumque vocabulo;” and in Aimon of Fleury (Pertz, ix. 375) Lewis the son of Charles the Simple flies “ad Anglo-Saxones.” All these passages remind us of the “Prisci Latini,” and all are in the plural. Orderic too once or twice uses expressions to the same effect. Thus he (666 A) makes certain Normans say “Saxones Anglos prostravimus.” Elsewhere he makes Wimund (525 B) speak of the original English conquerors as “Angli-Saxones.” Again, speaking in his own person (722 B), he recounts the Norman exploits, and adds, “Hoc Itali et Guinili Saxonesque Angli usque ad internecionem experti sunt.” And again in 887 B, where he is talking of Welsh matters and the prophecies of Merlin, he speaks of “Saxones Anglos, qui tunc pagani Christicolas Britones oppugnabant.” But these unusual phrases are clearly mere flourishes, just as when he calls the Byzantine Empire “Ionia” and its inhabitants “Danai” and “Pelasgi.” The passage reminds one of the comment of William of Poitiers (137), where, after describing the valour of the English at Senlac, he adds, “Gens equidem illa natura semper in ferrum prompta fuit, descendens ab antiqua Saxonum origine ferocissimorum hominum.” But he never calls the English of his own time “Saxons.”

“Anglo-Saxon” then, unlike “Saxon,” is a description which is fully justified by ancient authority. But it is quite clear that it is a description which never passed into common use. It is found mainly in charters and as a peculiarity of one or two writers, who doubtless thought that it had a grander or more learned sound than the usual name. The name by which our forefathers really knew themselves was “English” and none other. “Angli,” “Engle,” “Angel-cyn,” “Englisc,” are the true names by which the Teutons of Britain knew themselves and their language. The people are the English, their tongue is the English tongue, their King is the King of the English. The instances of any other use are to be found in a foreign language, and are easily accounted for by exceptional causes. And even these exceptional usages had quite died away before the stage of our history with which we are immediately concerned. The people whom William overcame at Senlac, and over whom he was crowned King at Westminster, knew themselves and were 543known to their conquerors by the name of English and by the name of English alone.

But it is sometimes argued that, though our forefathers confessedly called themselves English, yet we ought, in speaking of them, to call them something else; that, though Ælfred called his own tongue English, we ought to correct him and call it Saxon. Now the presumption is surely in favour of calling any people by the name by which they called themselves, especially when that name had gone on in uninterrupted use to our own days. Our national nomenclature has never changed for a thousand years. In the days of Ælfred, as now, the Englishman speaking in his own tongue called himself an Englishman. In the days of Ælfred, as now, his Celtic neighbour called him a Saxon. As we do not now speak of ourselves by the name by which Welshmen and Highlanders speak of us, some very strong reason indeed ought to be brought to show that we ought to speak of our forefathers, not as they spoke of themselves, but as Welshmen and Highlanders spoke of them. But the reason commonly given springs out of mere misconception and leads to further misconceptions. From some inscrutable cause, people fancy that the word English cannot be rightly applied to the nation, its language, or its institutions, till after the Norman element has been absorbed into it; that is, they fancy that nothing can be called English till it has become somewhat less English than it was at an earlier time. The tongue which Ælfred, in the days of its purity, called English, we must not venture to call English till the days when it had received a considerable infusion of French. This notion springs from an utterly wrong conception of the history of our nation. The refusal to call ourselves and our forefathers a thousand years back by the same name springs from a failure to take in the fact that our nation which exists now is the same nation as that which migrated from Germany to Britain in the fifth century. In the words of Sir Francis Palgrave, “I must needs here pause, and substitute henceforward the true and antient word English for the unhistorical and conventional term Anglo-Saxon, an expression conveying a most false idea in our civil history. It disguises the continuity of affairs, and substitutes the appearance of a new formation in the place of a progressive evolution.” (Normandy and England, iii. 596.) People 544talk of the “English” as a new nation which arose, in the thirteenth century perhaps, as a mixed race of which the “Saxons” or “Anglo-Saxons” were only one element among several. Now in a certain sense, we undoubtedly are a mixed race, but not in the sense in which popular language implies. We are a mixed race in the sense of being a people whose predominant blood and speech has incorporated and assimilated with itself more than one foreign infusion. But we are not what our High-Dutch kinsmen call a Mischvolk, a mere colluvies gentium, a mere jumble of races in which no one element is predominant. People run over the succession of the various occupants of Britain—Romans, Britons, Saxons, Danes, Normans—sometimes as if they were races each of which ate up the one before it, sometimes as if they were, each in the same sense, component elements of the modern English nation. The correct statement of the case is much clearer and simpler. A Low-Dutch people, which took as its national name the name of one of its tribes, namely the Angles, settled in Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. It has occupied the greater part of Britain ever since. It has ever since kept its unbroken national being, its national language, its national name. But it has at different times assimilated several foreign elements. The conquered Welsh were, as far as might be, slaughtered or driven out; but a small Welsh infusion into our language, and therefore no doubt a small Welsh infusion into our blood, is owing to the fact that the women were largely spared. A small Welsh element was thus assimilated. The Danish element, far greater in extent than the Welsh, hardly needed assimilation; the ethnical difference between the Englishman and the Dane was hardly greater than the ethnical difference between one tribe of Englishmen and another. Lastly came the Norman, or rather French, element, which was also gradually assimilated, but not till it had poured a most important infusion, though still only an infusion, into our institutions and our language. Thus, besides the kindred Danes, we have assimilated two wholly foreign elements, British and French, what our forefathers called Bret-Welsh and Gal-Welsh. But these elements are not coequal with the original substance of the nation. In all these cases, the foreign element was simply incorporated and assimilated into the existing Low-Dutch stock. The small Welsh element, the large Danish and French elements, were absorbed in 545the predominant English mass. The Briton and the Norman gradually became Englishmen. The kindred Dane of course became an Englishman with far greater ease. All adopted the English name; all adopted, while to some extent they modified, the English tongue. If we confine the name “English” to the men, the speech, the laws, of the time after the last assimilation had become complete, if we talk of “Saxons” as only one coequal element among others, we completely misrepresent the true history of our nation and our language. Such a way of speaking cuts us off from our connexion with our forefathers; it wipes out the fact that we are the same people who came into this island fourteen hundred years back, and not another people. We have absorbed some very important elements from various quarters, but our true substance is still the same. We are like a Roman gens, some of whose members, by virtue of the law of adoption, were not Fabii or Cornelii by actual blood, but which none the less was the Fabian or Cornelian gens. If we allow ourselves to use, as people constantly do, the words “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon” as chronological terms, we altogether wipe out the fact of the unbroken life of our nation. People talk of “Saxons” and “Anglo-Saxons” as of races past and gone. Sometimes, especially in architectural disquisitions, they seem to fancy that all “the Saxons” lived at one time, forgetting that Harold is removed from Hengest by as many years as Charles the First is removed from Harold. A man, a word, a book, a building, earlier than 1066 is called “Saxon;” whether the same man, word, book, or building, after 1066 is “Norman,” I have never been able to find out. Waltheof, born before 1066, was of course a “Saxon;” what were the children whom he begot and the buildings which he built after 1066? This chronological use of the word “Saxon” implies one of two alternatives; either the “Saxons” were exterminated by the Normans, or else the “Saxons” turned into Normans. People talk of “the Saxon Period” and “the Norman Period,” as if they followed one another like the periods of geology, or like Hesiod’s races of men. The “Norman Period” is a phrase which may be admitted to express a time when Norman influences were politically predominant. We may speak of a Norman period, as we may speak of an Angevin period or an Hanoverian period. But, if we are to talk of a “Saxon period” 546at all, it is a period which began in 449 and which has not ended in 1877.

The most grotesque instance of this confused sort of nomenclature is to be found in the technical language of unscientific philologers. The gradual result of the Norman Conquest on the English language was twofold. The English language, like other languages, especially other Low-Dutch languages, was, at the time of the Conquest, already beginning to lose, in popular speech at least, the fulness and purity of its ancient inflexions. This process the Norman Conquest hastened and rendered more complete. It also brought in a great number of foreign words into the language, many of which supplanted native words. The result of these two processes is that the English of a thousand years back, like the Scandinavian or the High-Dutch of a thousand years back, is now unintelligible except to those who specially study it. But the English language has never either changed its name or lost its continuity. In the eyes of the scientific philologer, it is the same English tongue throughout all its modifications. But by unscientific philologers, the language, from some utterly mysterious cause, is not called English until the two processes of which I speak are accomplished. Before those processes begin, it is “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon;” while they are going on, it is “Semi-Saxon”—a name perhaps the most absurd to be found in the nomenclature of any human study. It is manifest that, with such a nomenclature as this, the true history of the English language and its relation to other Teutonic languages never can be understood.

One word as to the name “Anglo-Saxon.” I have shown that it is a real ancient name, used, though very rarely, in English documents, and somewhat more commonly in Latin ones. But it was always a mere formal description; it never became the familiar name of the nation. The meaning of the word also is commonly completely misconceived. In modern use “Anglo-” is a prefix which is used very freely, and which is certainly used in more than one meaning. We have heard of “Anglo-Saxons,” “Anglo-Normans,” “Anglo-Americans,” “Anglo-Indians,” “Anglo-Catholics.” I cannot presume to guess at the meaning of the prefix in the last formation; but I conceive “Anglo-Normans” to mean Normans settled in England, and “Anglo-Americans” to mean Englishmen settled in America. By “Anglo-Saxons,” I conceive, 547in the vulgar use of the word, is meant Saxons who settled in England (meaning of course in Britain), as opposed to the Old-Saxons who stayed in Germany. It is as when Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 708 C) inaccurately talks of an “adventus Saxonum in Angliam,” while the accurate Bæda (Hist. Eccl. i. 23) talks of the “adventus Anglorum in Brittaniam.” And it would seem that this really was the sense in which the compound name was used by some of the foreign writers. Indeed, as soon as the Teutonic part of Britain came to be commonly known by the name of “Anglia,” some such phrase as “Anglo-Saxones” would be, from a continental point of view, not an unnatural description of the Saxons of the island as distinguished from those of the mainland. It is plain that all remembrance of continental “Angli” must have passed away from the mind of Widukind when he made the grotesque derivation—one not all peculiar to himself—which was quoted in p. 541. But this is not the meaning of the word “Anglo-Saxon” as used by Asser, Florence, and King Æthelstan. “King of the Anglo-Saxons,” as a title of Æthelstan or Eadred, meant simply “King of the Angles and Saxons,” a way of describing him which was clearly more correct, though far less usual, than the common style of “Rex Anglorum.” In the ancient Coronation Service (see vol. iii. chap. xi. and Appendix E; Selden’s Titles of Honour, 116), in the same prayer we twice read “Anglorum vel (= et) Saxonum,” once “Anglo-Saxonum.” The latter form is clearly a mere abbreviation, perhaps a mere clerical error. That, under a purely Saxon dynasty, the title of “Rex Anglorum” became regular and universal, that “Rex Saxonum” died completely out, that “Rex Anglo-Saxonum” was always rare, is the most overwhelming proof that “English” was the real and only recognized name of the united nation. “Anglo-Saxon” then, in certain positions, is a perfectly correct description. But it is dangerous to use it, because it is so extremely liable to misconstruction. Again, its correct use is so very narrow, that the term becomes almost useless. It has no real meaning except in the plural. It is quite correct to call Æthelstan “King of the Anglo-Saxons,” but to call this or that subject of Æthelstan “an Anglo-Saxon” is simply nonsense. I have as yet only once lighted on the use of the word in the singular, namely in the Vita Alchuini, 11 (Jaffé, Monumenta Alcuiniana, p. 25), where a 548certain priest is described as “Engelsaxo.” See Mullinger, Schools of Charles the Great, 113. As a chronological term “Anglo-Saxon” is equally objectionable with “Saxon.” The “Anglo-Saxon period,” so far as there ever was one, is going on still.

I speak therefore of our forefathers, not as “Saxons” or even as “Anglo-Saxons,” but as they spoke of themselves, as Englishmen—“Angli,” “Engle,” “Angel-cyn.” I call their language, not “Saxon” or even “Anglo-Saxon,” but, as Ælfred called it, “English.” I thus keep to the custom of the time of which I speak, and I also avoid the misconception and confusion which must follow any other way of speaking. But the different shapes which names have taken in later times allow us to make an useful distinction between the two uses of the same word. In Latin it was necessary to use the single word “Anglus” to express both the whole nation and one particular part of it. But we can now speak of the whole nation as “English,” while we can speak of the tribe from which the nation borrowed its name as “Anglian.” When I wish pointedly to distinguish the men, the language, or the institutions of the time before 1066 from those of any time after 1066, I speak distinctively of “Old-English,” as our kinsmen speak of “Alt-Deutsch.”

I now leave the subject with a reference to the golden words of Sir Francis Palgrave, England and Normandy, iii. 630–2.

NOTE B. pp. 28, 133. The Bretwaldadom and the Imperial Titles.

It is almost impossible, after the connexion between them which Sir Francis Palgrave so earnestly strove to establish, to treat the question of the Bretwaldas apart from the question of the Imperial titles borne by the English Kings of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The unbroken connexion between the two is the very life and soul of his theory. And in discussing the matter we must never forget that it is to Sir Francis Palgrave, more than to any other scholar, that we owe the assertion of the great truth, without which all mediæval history is an insoluble puzzle, that the Roman Empire did not come to an end in the year 476, but that the Empire and Imperial ideas continued to be the very life of European politics for ages after. On this head I must refer my readers 549to Mr. Bryce’s brilliant Essay on the Holy Roman Empire, where the whole doctrine is drawn out with wonderful clearness and power. (See also Historical Essays, First Series, p. 126.) But Sir Francis Palgrave, as usual, made too much of his theory; his very learning and ingenuity carried him away. The Imperial doctrine itself, as put forth by him, was greatly exaggerated, and connecting, as he did, the Bretwaldadom with the later Imperial style, he was disposed to make as much as possible of the Bretwaldadom. Mr. Kemble, on the other hand, is equally disposed to make as little as possible of the Bretwaldadom, and I must say that he slurs over the question of the Imperial titles in a strange way. In both parts of the controversy, Sir Francis Palgrave may have given a wrong explanation; but he has at least given a very elaborate and ingenious explanation. Mr. Kemble leaves passages which must have some meaning without any explanation at all. For my own part, I cannot help adding that, years ago, when I first began these studies, I was altogether carried away by the fascination of Sir Francis Palgrave’s theories. I soon saw their exaggerated character, and how utterly unfounded a great part of them were. I was thus led to go too far the other way, and altogether to cast aside the notion of any Imperial sovereignty in our Kings. Later thought and study have at last brought me to an intermediate position, for which I trust that stronger grounds will be found than for either of the extremes.

The name Bretwalda comes from the well-known passage in the Chronicles under the year 827, where it is found only in the Winchester version, all the others having different spellings, Brytenwalda, Bretanenwealda, Brytenwealda, Brytenweald. The only other place that I know where any of these forms or anything like them occurs is in a charter of Æthelstan in 934, in which that King is described (Cod. Dipl. v. 218) as “Ongol-Saxna cyning and Brytænwalda eallæs ðyses iglandæs;” the Latin equivalent (p. 217) is “Angul-Saxonum necnon et totius Britanniæ rex, gratia Dei regni solio sublimatus.” Mr. Kemble (ii. 13, 20) argues that the reading Bretwalda is a false one, and that the meaning wielder, ruler, or Emperor of Britain, or of Britons, is altogether wrong. He takes the true reading to be Brytenwealda, which he derives from the adjective bryten, so as to mean wide ruler, quoting the word Bryten-cyning and other similar cognates as compound forms. As a piece 550of Teutonic scholarship Mr. Kemble is most likely right, but I doubt whether his correction of the etymology is of much strictly historical importance. When the entry in the Chronicles was made, the title must have been familiar, and it must have conveyed some meaning. And the forms Bretwalda and Bretanenwealda seem clearly to show that those who used those forms meant them, rightly or wrongly, to mean wielder of Britain. In the charter of Æthelstan again, though the Latin and the English do not exactly translate one another, I think it is plain that Britanniæ Rex was meant to be the equivalent to Brytænwalda. I have therefore no scruple in keeping to the more usual form and in attaching to it the commonly received meaning. Less correct as a matter of scholarship, I conceive it to be more correct as a matter of history.

But the passage in the Chronicles, as is well known, is founded on an equally well-known passage in Bæda (ii. 5). Bæda there reckons up seven Kings, Ælle of Sussex, Ceawlin of Wessex, Æthelberht of Kent, Rædwald of East-Anglia, Eadwine, Oswald, and Oswiu of Northumberland, as having a supremacy, if not over all Britain, yet at least beyond their own immediate kingdoms. This supremacy he first calls Imperium and then Ducatus. The latter somewhat lowly form may perhaps be a warning against attaching any exaggerated importance to the other. The Chroniclers translate the “Imperium hujusmodi” of Bæda by the words “þus micel rice.” They record Ecgberht’s conquest of Mercia, and say that “he wæs se eahteþa cyning se þe Bretwalda wæs.” They then give Bæda’s list of seven, with Ecgberht for the eighth. It is of course an obvious difficulty that several Kings, especially of Mercia, who seem to have been at least as powerful as any of those on the list, such as Penda and Offa, and Æthelbald, whom Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 728 D) speaks of as “rex regum,” are not found on the list. The writer of the entry, a subject of Ecgberht or one of his successors, no doubt simply copied Bæda’s list and added the name of Ecgberht, unwilling perhaps to record the glories of princes of the rival kingdom. Now this objection quite upsets the old notion with which Mr. Kemble makes himself so merry, of a regular Federal monarchy under an elective Emperor or Bretwalda; nor do I attempt to be wise above what is written or to define anything with precision as to the nature of a supremacy of which we have such slight records. Still the passages both 551in Bæda and the Chronicles must have a meaning. They show that those seven Kings did exercise a supremacy of some kind beyond the limits of their own kingdoms, which supremacy Ecgberht was held to have continued or to have revived. This supremacy is equally a fact whether those seven princes bore any special title or not. That the Bretwaldadom of Æthelberht carried with it some real dominion beyond the limits of Kent is shown by the ease with which Augustine went and held a synod in a distant part of England and a part still heathen. (See Bæda, ii. 2.) This could hardly be except by virtue of a safe conduct from the common over-lord. Indeed Bæda’s words are explicit—“adjutorio usus Ædilbercti regis.” The supremacy of Ecgberht needs no comment, and Mr. Kemble himself (ii. 19) calls attention to the fact that Ducatus, one of the words used by Bæda, is used by Ecgberht himself in three charters (Cod. Dipl. vi. 79, 81, 84), in which Ecgberht dates the year of his Ducatus ten years later than the beginning of his reign as King, exactly like the years of the Regnum and the Imperium of the later Emperors.

I believe then there was a real, though not an abiding or a very well defined, supremacy which was often, perhaps generally, held by some one of the Teutonic princes of Britain over as many of his neighbours, Celtic and Teutonic alike, as he could extend it over. I believe that this fact was remembered in the days of Ecgberht and of Æthelstan, and that Æthelstan probably looked on himself as the successor of Ceawlin in his wider no less than in his narrower dominion. What I cannot bring myself to believe is that Ceawlin looked on himself as the successor of Maximus and Carausius. Sir Francis Palgrave (i. 398) really seems to have believed that Ælle the South-Saxon, the first recorded Bretwalda, was called to the post of Emperor of Britain by the choice of the Welsh princes. Now it is not easy to see in what Ælle’s Bretwaldadom consisted. It is possible that the Jutes of Kent, and the settlers who had already begun to make the east coast of Britain a Teutonic land, may have invested him with some sort of general leadership for the better carrying on of the Conquest. It is possible that he may have brought under tribute some Welsh tribes which he did not root out, and that he may so far have presented a dim foreshadowing of the glories of Æthelstan and Eadgar. But the days of the Commendation had not yet come. It is utterly incredible that Ælle held 552any authority over any Welsh tribe, save such as he won and held at the point of the sword. It is utterly incredible that any Welsh congress ever assembled to make him Cæsar, Augustus, Tyrant, Bretwalda, or anything else. Cnut and William indeed were chosen Kings of the English by electors, many of whom must have shared as unwillingly in their work as any Welsh prince could have shared in the work of investing Ælle with an Imperial crown. But the times were utterly different; Cnut and William were not mere destroyers; they took possession of an established kingdom, and it was not their policy to destroy or to change one whit more than was absolutely necessary for their own purposes. But Ælle, who did to Anderida as Joshua did to Jericho and to Ai, was little likely indeed to receive an Imperial diadem at the hands of the surviving Gibeonites. The dream of a transmission of Imperial authority from the vanquished Briton to his Teutonic conqueror seems to me the vainest of all the dreams which ingenious men have indulged in.

What then was the Bretwaldadom? As we may fairly assert that the passages which I have already quoted imply a real supremacy of some kind, so, on the other hand, we may be equally sure that whatever they imply was something of purely English growth, something in no way connected with, or derived from, any older Welsh or Roman dominion. Nothing is proved by the fact that Æthelberht imitated the coinage of Carausius and put a wolf and twins on his money. Nothing was more common than for the Teutonic states everywhere, and for the Saracen states too, to imitate the coinage which supplied them with their most obvious models. But on a coin of Carausius the wolf and twins had a most speaking meaning; on a coin of Æthelberht they had no meaning at all. It may be that Eadwine assumed some ensigns of dignity in imitation of Roman pomp; the tufa may have the special meaning attached to it, or it may not; Eadwine, with the Roman Paulinus at his elbow, might well indulge in a certain Imperial show, without any need of traditions handed on from Maximus and Carausius. These are, I believe, the only attempts at evidence to prove that the Bretwaldadom had a Roman origin; and they prove about as much as King Ælfred’s notion (see his Laws, Thorpe, i. 58) that the immemorial Teutonic (or rather Aryan, see Il. ix. 629) practice of the wergild was introduced by 553Christian Bishops in imitation of the mild-heartedness of Christ. The title of Bretwalda, or Brytenwealda, as borne by Æthelstan, was most likely equivalent to Imperator or Basileus; but if it was used by Ælle or Ceawlin, I cannot think that it had any such meaning in their day.

It does not however seem that the supremacy of the early Bretwaldas necessarily reached over the whole of Britain or even over the whole of the Teutonic kingdoms in Britain. A marked predominance in the island, a distinct superiority over other states than his own, seems to have been enough to win for a prince a place on the list as given by Bæda and the Chronicler, though there might be other states over which his dominion did not reach. The supremacy of Ælle, and even that of Ceawlin, must have been very far from reaching over all Britain. The supremacy of Æthelberht is expressly limited by Bæda (ii. 5) to the English states south of the Humber; “Tertius in regibus gentis Anglorum cunctis australibus eorum provinciis quæ Humbræ fluvio et contiguis ei terminis sequestrantur a borealibus, imperavit.” This excludes all the Celts and also the Northumbrians. And it is worth noting that at least this same extent of dominion is elsewhere (v. 23) attributed by Bæda to Æthelbald of Mercia, whose name does not appear on his list; “Hæ omnes provinciæ [all England east of Severn and Hereford west of it] cæteræque australes ad confinium usque Hymbræ fluminis, cum suis quæque regibus, Merciorum regi Ædilbaldo subjectæ sunt.” On the other hand, the dominion of Eadwine is distinctly said not to have taken in Kent, and it seems implied that it did not take in the Picts and Scots; “Aeduini ... majore potentia cunctis qui Brittaniam incolunt, Anglorum pariter et Brettonum populis præfuit, præter Cantuariis tantum.” Sir Francis Palgrave indeed (ii. cccix.) attributes to Eadwine a dominion over the Picts and Scots. The words of Bæda however seem to me to exclude it; I understand him as attributing to Eadwine a dominion over the Britons only, that is the Welsh (probably of Strathclyde), as distinguished from the Picts and Scots. And the words which follow might seem to imply that Oswiu was the first to extend the power of Northumberland beyond the Forth. After describing the dominion of Eadwine he adds, “Sextus Oswald et ipse Nordanhymbrorum rex Christianissimus, iisdem finibus regnum tenuit; 554septimus Osuiu frater ejus, æqualibus pene terminis regnum nonnullo tempore coercens, Pictorum quoque atque Scottorum gentes, quæ septemtrionales Brittaniæ fines tenent, maxima ex parte perdomuit ac tributarias fecit.” So afterwards (iii. 24), “Osuiu ... qui gentem Pictorum maxima ex parte regno Anglorum subjecit.” Yet elsewhere (iii. 6) he attributes to Oswald also a dominion over Picts and Scots; “Denique omnes nationes et provincias Brittaniæ, quæ in quatuor linguas, id est Brettonum, Pictorum, Scottorum, et Anglorum, divisæ sunt, in ditione accepit.” It should be remembered that there was a family connexion between the Pictish royal family and that of Bernicia, and the words just quoted might imply a voluntary acceptance of Oswald on the part of the northern tribes. The peculiarity of Ecgberht’s position was that he had received a formal submission from all the English princes in Britain, and that he was able to do what no other Bretwalda had done, to hand on his power to his children. This dominion Eadward and Æthelstan won back and strengthened after the Danish invasion, and extended it over Scotland and Strathclyde. Now begins the use of the Imperial style, and I accordingly go on to give some examples of the various titles assumed by our Kings from Æthelstan to Cnut. One such instance, that in which Æthelstan uses the title of “Brytenwealda,” I have already quoted (see above, p. 367). Among the others I select such as either illustrate the use of the Latin Imperial titles, or which distinctly claim a dominion beyond the English kingdom, or which are remarkable on some other ground. I shall abstain from quoting those which present nothing beyond the mere use of the word Basileus, which is almost as common as Rex. Those which are found in charters marked by Mr. Kemble with an asterisk I mark with an asterisk also.

1. Ego Æðelstanus rex Anglorum per omnipatrantis dexteram totius Britaniæ regni solio sublimatus. Cod. Dipl. ii. 159; cf. v. 193.

*2. Quinto anno ex quo nobilissime gloriosus Rex Anglo-saxones regaliter gubernabat, tertioque postquam authentice Northanhumbrorum Cumbrorumque blanda mirifici conditoris benevolentia patrocinando sceptrinæ gubernaculum perceperat virgæ, ii. 160.

Ego Æþelstan rex et rector totius Britanniæ cæterarumque Deo concedente gubernator provinciarum. ii. 161; cf. v. 215.

555*3. Ego Æðelstanus ipsius [altitonantis sc.] munificentia Basileus Anglorum, simul et Imperator regum et nationum infra fines Brittanniæ commorantium. ii. 164.

*4. Ego Æðelstanus divinæ dispensationis providentia tam super Britannicæ gentis quam super aliarum nationum huic subditarum imperium elevatus Rex. ii. 167.

5. Ego Æðelstanus florentis Brytaniæ monarchia præditus rex. ii. 173.

6. Ego Æðelstanus rex monarchus totius Bryttanniæ insulæ, flante Domino. ii. 204.

7. Ego Æþelstanus divina mihi adridente gratia rex Anglorum et curagulus totius Bryttanniæ. ii. 215.

8. Ego Æðelstanus Angulsaxonum rex non modica infulatus sublimatus dignitate. v. 187.

9. Ego Æðelstan, Christo conferente rex et primicerius totius Albionis, regni fastigium humili præsidens animo. v. 201, 204.

10. Ego Æðelstanus, omnicreantis disponente clementia Angligenarum omniumque gentium undique secus habitantium rex. v. 214.

11. Ego Æðelstanus ... favente superno numine Basileus industrius Anglorum cunctarumque gentium in circuitu persistentium. v. 229.

12. Æðelstanus, divina favente clementia, rex Anglorum et æque totius Britanniæ orbis curagulus. v. 231.

*13. Ego Eadmundus divina favente gratia Basyleos Anglorum cæterarumque provinciarum in circuitu persistentium primatum regalis regiminis obtinens. ii. 220.

14. Ego Eadmundus rex Anglorum necnon et Merciorum. ii. 265.

15. Eadmundi regis qui regimina regnorum Angulsaxna et Norðhymbra, Paganorum Brettonumque septem annorum intervallo regaliter gubernabat. ii. 268.

16. Hoc apparet proculdubio in rege Anglorum gloriosissimo beato Dei opere pretio Eadredo, quem Norðhymbra Paganorumque ceu cæterarum sceptro provinciarum rex regum Omnipotens sublimavit, quique præfatus Imperator semper Deo grates dignissimas largâ manu subministrat. ii. 292.

17. Ego Eadred rex divina gratia totius Albionis monarchus et primicerius. ii. 294.

18. Eadredus rex Anglorum, gloriosissimus rectorque, Norþanhymbra 556et Paganorum Imperator, Brittonumque propugnator, ii. 296.

19. En onomatos cyrion doxa. Al wísdóm ge for Gode ge for werolde is gestaðelad on ðæm hefonlícan goldhorde almæhtiges Godes per Jesum Christum, cooperante gratiâ Spiritûs Sancti. He hafað geweorðad mid cynedóme Angulseaxna Eádred cyning and cásere totius Britanniæ Deo gratias· for ðem weolegað and árað gehádade and lǽwede ða ðe mid rihte magon geærnian. &c., &c. ii. 303.

20. Ego Eadredus Basileos Anglorum hujusque insulæ barbarorum. ii. 305.

21. Ego Eadred gratia Dei Occidentalium Saxonum rex. v. 323.

22. Ego Eadwig industrius Anglorum rex cæterarumque gentium in circuitu persistentium gubernator et rector, primo anno imperii mei. ii. 308; cf. 329, 348.

23. Ego Eadwig divina dispositione gentis Angligenæ et diversarum nationum industrius rex. ii. 316.

24. Ego Eadwig egregius Angulsaxonum Basileus cæterarumque plebium hinc inde habitantium. ii. 318; cf. v. 344, 354.

25. Ego Eadwig totius Albionis insulæ illustrissimus archons. ii. 323; cf. iii. 24.

26. Eadwig numine cœlesti gentis Gewissorum, Orientaliumque necnon Occidentalium etiam Aquilonalium Saxonum archons. ii. 324; cf. v. 349.

27. Eadwi Rex, nutu Dei Angulsæxna et Norðanhumbrorum Imperator, Paganorum gubernator, Breotonumque propugnator, ii. 325.

*28. Anno secundo imperii Eadwiges totius Albionis insulæ imperantis. ii. 341.

29. Ego Eadwi rex omnium gentium huic insulæ cohærentium. v. 341.

30. Ego Eadwig non solum Angul-Saxonum Basileus, verum etiam totius Albionis insulæ gratia Dei sceptro fungens, v. 361.

31. Ego Eadwig imperiali Anglo-Saxonum diademate infulatus, v. 379.

32. Ego Eadwig rex Saxonum. v. 395.

33. Ego Eadgar Britanniæ Anglorum monarchus. ii. 374.

*34. Ego Eadgarus Anglorum Basileus, omniumque regum insularum oceani quæ Britanniam circumjacent, cunctarumque 557nationum quæ infra eum includuntur Imperator et dominus ... monarchiam totius Angliæ ... Anglorum imperio ... Ego Eadgar Basileus Anglorum et Imperator regum gentium. ii. 404–6.

35. Ic Eádgár cyning éac þurh his [Godes] gife ofer Engla þeóde nú úp árǽred, and he hæfð nú gewẏld tó minum anwealde Scottas and Cumbras and éac swylce Bryttas and eal ðǽt ðis igland him on innan hæfd. iii. 59.

36. Ego Eadgar divina allubescente gratia totius Albionis Imperator Augustus. iii. 64.

*37. Signum Eadgari et serenissimi Anglorum Imperatoris. iii. 109.

38. Ego Eadgar gratia Dei rex Merciorum cæterarumque circumquaque nationum. vi. 3.

39. Ego Eadgarus gentis Anglorum et barbarorum atque gentilium Rex ac prædux. vi. 69.

*40. Ego Æðelred Dei gratia Anglorum rex imperiosus. iii. 204.

*41. Ego Æðelredus famosus totius Brittannicæ insulæ Imperator. iii. 251.

42. Ego Æðelredus totius Albionis Dei providentia Imperator. iii. 290.

43. Ego Æþelred rex totius insulæ. Ego Æþelred rex et rector angul sexna. iii. 316, 317.

44. Ego Æðelred gentis gubernator Angligenæ totiusque insulæ corregulus Britannicæ et cæterarum insularum in circuitu adjacentium. iii. 323.

45. Ego Æðelredus ipsius [celsitonantis Dei] opitulante gratia Brittaniarum Rex. iii. 337.

*46. Ego Æðelredus Anglorum Induperator.

Ic Æðelred mid Godes gyfe Angelþeóde cyning and wealdend eác óðra iglanda ðe hér ábútan licgað. iii. 348.

*47. Ego gratia summi Tonantis Angligenûm, Orcadarum, necne in gyro jacentium monarchus Æðelredus. iii. 346.

*48. Ego Æðelredus totius Britanniæ Induperator. iii. 355.

49. Prædicta Augusta [Ælgifu-Emma]. iii. 358.

*50. Æðelred rex Anglo-Saxoniæ atque Norðhymbrensis gubernator monarchiæ, paganorumque propugnator, ac Bretonum cæterarumque provinciarum Imperator. vi. 166.

51. Æðelredus, gratia Dei sublimatus rex et monarchus totius Albionis. vi. 167.

55852. Ego Cnut totius Britanniæ monarchus. vi. 179.

53. Ego Imperator Knuto, a Christo Rege regum regiminis Anglici in insula potitus. iv. 1.

54. Ego Knut telluris Britanniæ totius largiflua Dei gratia subpetente subthronizatus rex ac rector. iv. 7.

55. Ego Cnut Basileon Angelsaxonum disponente clementia creantis. iv. 18.

*56. Ic Cnut þurh Godes geve Ænglelandes kining and ealre ðáre eglande ðe ðǽrtó licgeð. iv. 23.

57. Ego Cnut rex totius Albionis cæterarumque gentium triviatim persistentium Basileus. iv. 35.

58. Ego Cnut, misericordia Dei Basileus, omnis Britaniæ regimen adeptus. iv. 45.

Of these forms, Nos. 10, 11, 13 are used over and over again with various slight changes. The forms “totius Britanniæ” or “Albionis rex” or “Basileus” occur constantly. They are distinctly more common than the simple “Anglorum rex.” “Anglorum Basileus” and forms to the like effect are also common. In fact a charter which does not in one way or the other assert a dominion beyond the simple royalty of the English nation is rather the exception. On the other hand we now and then, as in Nos. 21, 32, come upon forms which are startling from their very simplicity. No. 32, I suppose, belongs to the days when Eadwig was reduced to the kingdom of Wessex. Meanwhile Eadgar in his Mercian charter, No. 38, seems to claim, what doubtless was the case, the external dominion of the crown as belonging to himself rather than to his West-Saxon brother. Nos. 14, 15, 16, 18, 27, 50 are remarkable for the use of the word “Angli” and “Angulseaxe” in a sense excluding Northumberland. In No. 14 indeed “Angli” excludes the Mercians. It might be almost rendered “Saxons.” So completely had “Anglus” become the national name, even in the most purely Saxon parts of the country.

Some of these titles call for some special notice. Brytenwealda I have already spoken of. No. 19 is remarkable as the only one in which the title of Cæsar occurs in any shape. Casere is the regular English description of the continental Emperors, but I know no other instance of its application to an English King. (Perhaps the most striking instance of its use is where Alfred in his Boetius 559calls Odysseus “án cyning þæs nama Aulixes, se hæfde twa þioda under þam kasere ... and þæs kaseres nama wæs Agamemnon.”) This solitary English use of the word is a remarkable contrast to the fact that Kaiser altogether displaced König as the title of the German sovereign. In fact none of these titles ever came into common use, even in Latin, much less in English. Basileus, so common in charters, is very rare anywhere else. It occurs twice in Florence, once (975) where Eadgar is called “Anglici orbis Basileus,” and again (1016) where Eadric at Sherstone is made to talk of “dominus vester Eadmundus Basileus;” and once in the Ramsey History, c. 87, where the writer speaks of “Ædgari victoriosissimi Anglorum Basilei munificentia regalis.” Imperator, less rare than Cæsar, is less usual than Basileus. Prædux in No. 39 reminds one of the ducatus of Bæda and of Ecgberht’s charters (see above, p. 551). The oddest titles of all are Primicerius and Curagulus or Coregulus. Probably Curagulus means caretaker, but with the idea of Rex or Regulus floating in the mind of the scribe, which accounts for the spelling Coregulus. I am uncertain whether the words monarchus, monarchia, are to be reckoned as strictly Imperial. They are so used by Dante in his famous treatise “De Monarchia;” but it is clear that they have no such special meaning in the rhetoric of Dudo. They may have been used with equal vagueness in the kindred rhetoric of our charters. Thus for instance in a doubtful grant of Eadgar, dated 958, in possession of the Chapter of Wells, Eadgar is made to call himself “Rex Merciorum et Norðanhymbrorum atque Brettonum;” and afterwards, “divina favente gratia totius regni Merciorum monarchiam obtinens.”

That of these titles Casere, Basileus, and Imperator are meant to be Imperial in the strictest sense I have no doubt. If the title of Basileus stood alone, it might possibly be merely an instance of the prevalent fondness for Greek titles; the King might be called Basileus only in the same vague way in which his Ealdormen are called satrapæ and archontes. Yet even this would be unlikely; satrapa and archon were not established titles, assumed by a single potentate in a special sense, and which the diplomacy of the age confined to that potentate. But Basileus was simply Greek for Imperator. To be addressed as Imperator and Basileus by the ambassadors of Nikêphoros (Einhard, an. 812. “Laudes et 560dixerunt, Imperatorem eum et Basileum appellantes”) is reckoned among the most brilliant triumphs of Charles the Great. It was the formal acknowledgment of the claims of the Western Cæsar at the hands of his Eastern colleague or rival. So, later in the ninth century, the title of Basileus became the subject of a curious diplomatic controversy between the rival claimants of the dignity which it denoted, Basil of the New, and Lewis of the Old, Rome, and the Western disputant went very deep into the matter indeed. (See the letter of Lewis, “Imperator Augustus Romanorum,” to Basil, “æque Imperator Novæ Romæ,” in the Chronicle of Salerno, cap. 93 et seqq.; Muratori, t. ii. p. ii. p. 243. See Comparative Politics, 49, 353.) So Liudprand (Legatio, c. 2) complains that the Nikêphoros of his day refused the title to Otto; “Ipse enim vos non Imperatorem, id est βασιλέα sua lingua, sed ob indignationem ῥῆγα, id est Regem nostra vocabat.” So late as John Kinnamos, lib. v. 9 (pp. 228, 229, ed. Bonn), Frederick Barbarossa is only ῥὴξ Ἀλαμανῶν; the Eastern Emperor alone is βασιλεύς and αὐτοκράτωρ. That the titles Casere and Imperator are strictly Imperial hardly needs proof; the only question is whether we are to look for a strictly Imperial meaning in every instance of the use of the noun imperium and the verb imperare.

The use of Basileus seems more common in England than anywhere else; yet we find it in Abbo (i. 43) of Charles the Third;

“Urbs mandata fuit Karolo nobis Basileo,

Imperio cujus regitur totus prope kosmus,

Post Dominum, regem dominatoremque potentem.”

Imperator (see Ducange, in voc.) seems to have been used by several Kings of Castile, on precisely the same ground on which it was used in England, namely that they were Emperors, independent of Rome or Byzantium, but holding an Imperial power over princes within their own peninsula. So Robert de Monte, 1153 (Pertz, vi. 503), “Quia principatur regulis Arragonum et Galliciæ, Imperatorem Hispaniarum appellant.” The West-Frankish and French instances which Ducange quotes seem very doubtful. Charles the Bald, it must be remembered, really was Emperor in his last years. The oddest thing of all is the fact that the Saxon Kings Henry and Otto were saluted Imperator by their soldiers in the sense of the days of the Roman Republic. See Widukind, i. 39; iii. 49. Henry was “pater patriæ, rerum dominus et Imperator ab 561exercitu appellatus;” Otto “triumpho celebri rex factus gloriosus, ab exercitu pater patriæ Imperatorque appellatus est.” (See p. 143.) In this sense not only Cæsar, but Cicero also was Emperor. Perhaps the strangest description of all is that of Charles the Fat in Will. Malms. ii. 111, “Ego Karolus imperator, gratuito Dei dono rex Germanorum et patricius Romanorum, atque imperator Francorum.”

It is worth noticing that, though some of the most distinctly Imperial descriptions are found in charters whose genuineness is undoubted, yet the proportion of them which are found in doubtful or spurious charters is remarkably large. This fact in no way tells against the Imperial theory, but rather in its favour. A forger will naturally reproduce whatever he thinks most characteristic of the class of documents which he is imitating; but, in so doing, he is likely somewhat to overdo matters. A forger, thus attempting to copy the style of a charter of Eadgar or Æthelred, perhaps actually reproducing a genuine charter from memory, would naturally fill his composition with the most high-sounding of all the titles that he had ever seen in any genuine charter. The most purely Imperial style would thus find its way into forgeries in greater abundance than into genuine charters. Still the spurious documents are, in this way, evidence just as much as the genuine ones. The doubtful and spurious charters have therefore a certain value; their formulæ are part of the case, and I have not scrupled to add them to my list.

With regard to the assertion of the Imperial character of English royalty in later times, the doubtful title of “monarcha” or “monarches” still goes on. Thus in the charter of William Rufus to John of Tours, preserved in manuscript at Wells, the King is described as “Willelmus Willelmi regis filius, Dei dispositione monarches Britanniæ.” So, long after, in a letter from Henry the Sixth to James the Second of Scotland (correspondence of Thomas Bekynton, ii. 141), the English King is made to say, “verum et notorium est supremum jus et directum dominium regni Scotiæ ad regem Angliæ utpote totius Britanniæ monarcham de jure pertinere.” So in i. 119 of the same collection, where Henry the Sixth petitions Pope Eugenius the Fourth for the canonization of Ælfred, the West-Saxon King is described as “Sanctus et Deo devotissimus rex Aluredus, qui incliti regni Angliæ primus monarcha erat.” It was also held necessary at 562various times to deny any superiority of the continental Emperors over England. Thus it was declared in Edward the Second’s reign (1330), “Quod regnum Angliæ ab omni subjectione Imperiali sit liberrimum” (Selden, Titles of Honour, p. 21. b. i. c. 2). And in 1416 a renunciation of all supremacy was required from Sigismund, King of the Romans, before he was allowed to land in England (see Selden, u. s.; Lingard, iii. 505; Bryce, 207. But the account in Redman, p. 49, and Elmham, Liber. Metr. p. 133, is much less explicit). So late as Elizabeth’s reign, Sir Thomas Smith, in his Commonwealth of England (10), describing the union of the English kingdoms into one, goes on to explain that “neither anyone of those Kings, neither he who first had all, tooke any investiture at the hands of the Emperor of Rome, or of any other superiour or forraine Prince, but held of God to himselfe, and by his sword, his people, and crowne, acknowledging no Prince in earth his superiour, and so it is kept and holden at this day.” But beside this denial of all Imperial supremacy anywhere else, we also find the Imperial character of our sovereigns from Edward the First to Elizabeth from time to time directly asserted. Thus there are two cases in which the title of Emperor is given to Edward the First, in both cases with distinct reference to his supremacy over Scotland. The elder Robert Bruce (Palgrave, Documents, p. 29) claimed the kingdom from Edward the First as Emperor. “Sire Robert de Brus ... prie a nostre Seignur le Rey, come son sovereyn Seigneur e son Empeur.” So when the question is raised whether the controversy between the candidates for the Scottish crown should be judged by the Imperial law or by any other, one of the Prelates consulted (“episcopus Bibliensis,” perhaps a Bishop of Byblos in partibus) answers that the King of England must follow the law of his own realm because “he is Emperor here” (Rishanger, Riley, p. 255). “Dixit quod dominus rex secundum leges per quas judicat subjectos suos debet procedere in casu isto, quia hic censetur Imperator.” So Professor Stubbs (Const. Hist. ii. 491) quotes a statute of 1397 in which Richard the Second is described as “entier emperour de son roialme.” The title is also challenged for Henry the Fifth in a negociation at the siege of Rouen. In the riming Chronicle of John Page (Historical Collections of a Citizen of London, Camden Society, 1876) an English knight is made to say of his own King,

563“And he ys kyng excellent,

And unto non othyr obedyent,

That levythe here in erthe be ryght,

But only unto God almyght,

With-yn hys owne Emperoure,

And also kyng and conqueroure.”

In Henry the Eighth’s time the words “Empire” and “Imperial Crown” are constantly used in a way which cannot fail to be of set purpose. The Statute of Appeals of 1537, in renouncing all jurisdiction on the part of the Roman Pontiff, clothed the renunciation in words whose force can hardly be misunderstood, and which seem designed expressly to exclude the supremacy of the Roman Cæsar as well. The emphatic words run thus; “Whereas by divers and sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world; governed by one supreme head and King, having the dignity and royal estate of the Imperial Crown of the same ... without restraint, or provocation to any foreign prince or potentate of the world.” So again, “to keep it from the annoyance as well of the See of Rome as from the authority of other foreign potentates attempting the diminution or violation thereof” (Selden, p. 18; Froude, Hist. Eng. i. 410–412). In an Irish Act of the same reign a further step is taken, and the King is distinctly spoken of as Emperor. As Selden (u. s.) puts it, “The Crown of England in other Parliaments of later times is titled the Imperial Crown; the Kings of England being also in the express words of an Irish Parliament titled Kings and Emperours of the Realm of England and of the Land of Ireland, and that before the title of Lord of Ireland was allied with King.” As for Elizabeth, at her coronation her herald formally proclaimed her as “most worthy Empress from the Orcade isles to the mountains Pyrenee.” (See Strickland’s Life of Elizabeth, p. 166, where a very strange interpretation is put on the words.) “The mountains Pyrenee” are a flourish which seems to have come from the days of Henry the Second, when Gilbert Foliot (Ralph of Diss, X Scriptt. 542) speaks of “dominationis suæ loca quæ ab boreali oceano Pirenæum usque porrecta sunt.” (So William of Newburgh, i. 94.) And the special mention of the “Orcade isles” might seem to come out of a charter of Æthelred (Cod. 564Dipl. iii. 346); “Angligenum, Orcadarum necne in gyro jacentium monarchus.” So in 1559, in the debate on restoring to the Crown the ecclesiastical jurisdiction surrendered under Mary, those who opposed Elizabeth’s spiritual claims still pointedly admitted her Imperial position in temporal matters. Archbishop Heath says, “She being our Sovereign Lord and Lady, our King and Queen, our Emperor and Empress, other Kings and Princes of duty ought to pay tribute unto her, she being free from them all” (Strype’s Annals, I. Append. No. 6). And in the first English translation of Camden’s Britannia (London, 1625), the title of the book is given as “The true and Royall history of the famous Empresse Elizabeth, Queen of England.”

Lastly, a pamphlet was published in 1706, when the Union with Scotland was under debate, headed, “The Queen an Empress, and her three kingdoms an Empire,” proposing a curious scheme for a British Empire, with subordinate Kings, Princes, and a Patriarch of London. It is of course an imitation of the constitution of the Empire, but the writer refers once or twice to the days of Eadgar for precedents.

The Imperial position of the English King seemed naturally (see p. 134) to carry with it the Papal position of the English Primate. Britain is another world, a world beyond the sea, distinct from the “orbis Romanus.” On this head I have collected a good many extracts in Comparative Politics, 351. So Eumenius Constantio, Pan. Vet. v. 11; “Quam Cæsar, ille auctor vestri nominis, eum Romanorum primus intrasset, alium se orbem terrarum scripsit reperisse, tantæ magnitudinis arbitratus, ut non circumfusa oceano sed complexa ipsum oceanum videretur.” (Cf. R. de Diceto, i. 438, ed. Stubbs.) As another world then, Britain is entitled to its own Cæsar, “mundi dominus” within his own four seas, and no less to its own Pontiff. As Florence (see above, p. 559) calls Eadgar “Anglici orbis Basileus,” and as in No. 12 of our extracts we heard of “totius Britanniæ orbis,” evidently in this sense, so Pope Urban (Eadmer, Vit. Ans. ii. c. 4) salutes Anselm with an analogous title, as “comparem vel ut alterius orbis apostolicum et patriarcham jure venerandum,” or as William of Malmesbury (Gest. Pont. ap. Scriptt. p. Bed. 127) puts it still more strongly, “Includamus hunc in orbe nostro, quasi alterius orbis papam.” The same idea, one degree 565less strongly expressed, is found in William of Jumièges’ (vi. 9) description of Lanfranc as “gentium transmarinarum summus pontifex.” This of course connects itself with the not uncommon description of England and the English King as “partes transmarinæ,” “rex transmarinus,” &c. See for instance Flodoard, A. 945. So, on the other side, in the Fulda Annals, 876 (Pertz, i. 389), “Karolus ... ablato regis nomine, se Imperatorem et Augustum omnium regem cis mare consistentium appellare præcepit.”

I have thus, I trust, brought together quite evidence enough to show what was the meaning and purpose of the Imperial style which was anciently adopted by our Kings, and distinct traces of which still survive in more than one familiar expression to this day. I do not doubt that other scholars, in their several lines of study, must often light on other passages bearing on the subject. I will wind up with one more, not the least remarkable of the number, that in which Abbot Baldric, the poetical panegyrist of the great men of his day, describes (Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. iv. 257) the great William as one

“Qui dux Normannis, qui Cæsar præfuit Anglis.”

NOTE C. p. 30. The Early Relations between England and the Continent.

The notices of Britain between the time of the English Conquest and the conversion of the English to Christianity are indeed few and far between. They are chiefly to be found in an episode of Prokopios (Bell. Goth. iv. 20), from which I have made two quotations in the text (pp. 22, 30). That the Brittia of Prokopios is Britain, and not, as Dr. Latham (Dict. Geog., art. Britannicæ Insulæ) fancies, Heligoland, Rugen, or some other island, I have no kind of doubt, and Mr. Kemble seems not to have entertained any. The difficulty is what his Brettania is. It strikes me that he had heard both of the continental and the insular Britannia, and that he fancied them to be two islands. His Brittia therefore 566is Britain and his Brettania is Britanny. (Cf. Zeuss, Die Deutschen, 362; “Βριττία, Britannia, und Βριταννία, Hibernia, wahrscheinlich durch Vermengung mit Britannia cismarina, Bretagne.”) John Kinnamos (ii. 12, p. 67 ed. Bonn), ranks Βρίττιοι καὶ Βρετανοί among the Crusaders. Allowing for the primary error of fancying Britanny to be an island, his geographical description is really not so monstrous as might be thought. His well-known story about the souls of the dead being ferried over to Brittia, and his confused and marvellous account of the Roman wall, show how strange and mysterious a land Britain had already become. But the two passages which I have quoted are distinct and intelligible. For an island inhabited by Angles, Frisians, and Britons we need not go far afield.

Prokopios tells us nothing of the process by which these three nations came into the island. There is, as far as I know, only one foreign notice of the English Conquest, which is however probably contemporary with one stage or another of it. This is in the Chronicon Imperiale of Prosper (see Dict. Biog. and Potthast’s Wegweiser in Prosper), written either in the fifth or in the sixth century. Here we have two entries (Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. i. 198, 199; M. H. B. lxxxii.); the former saying that “hac tempestate [the time of Constantine the Tyrant, 407–411; cf. Zôsimos, vi. 5], præ valitudine Romanorum, vires funditus attenuatæ Britanniæ.” The other says that, some time before the death of Aëtius in 454, “Britanniæ usque ad hoc tempus variis cladibus eventibusque laceratæ, in ditionem Saxonum rediguntur.” I am however not sure that Prokopios has not a dark and confused allusion to the Armorican migration when he speaks of vast numbers of people coming from Britain to settle in the land of the Franks, on the strength of which it was that the Frankish Kings claimed the dominion of the island (τοσαύτη ἡ τῶνδε τῶν ἐθνῶν πολυανθρωπία φαίνεται οὖσα ὥστε ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος κατὰ πολλοὺς ἐνθένδε μετανιστάμενοι ξὺν γυναιξὶ καὶ παισὶν ἐς Φράγγους χωροῦσιν. οἱ δὲ αὐτοὺς ἐνοικίζουσιν ἐν γῆς τῆς σφετέρας τὴν ἐρημοτέραν δοκοῦσαν εἶναι, καὶ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν νῆσον προσποιεῖσθαί φασιν). In an earlier passage Prokopios makes Belisarios (ii. 6) make the Goths the offer of Bretannia as an island much larger than Sicily. This is evidently in mockery, and it seems to imply that both Britain and Britanny were looked on as lands which had quite passed out of all practical reckoning on the part of the Empire.

567Prokopios goes on, in the same chapter, to tell a long story, which is discussed by Mr. Kemble (Saxons in England, i. 23; cf. Zeuss, Die Deutschen, 362), of an English princess (παρθένου κόρης, γένους Βριττίας ... ἧσπερ ἀδελφὸς βασιλεὺς ἦν τότε Ἀγγίλων τοῦ ἔθνους), who was betrothed to Radiger, son of the King of the Varni, who, on his father’s death, instead of fulfilling his engagement, married his father’s widow, a sister of Theodberht, King of the Franks, who reigned from 534 to 537. The incestuous marriage, which was repeated in after days by Eadbald of Kent and Æthelbald of Wessex, is expressly said to have been contracted in obedience to the dying commands of Radiger’s father (cf. Soph. Trach. 1199–1207), by the advice of his chief men, and in conformity with the custom of the nation (καθάπερ ὁ πάτριος ἡμῖν ἐφίησι νόμος). The English princess however gathers a vast fleet and army, takes with her one of her brothers, not the King, as its commander, sails to the mouth of the Rhine, fights a battle, defeats Radiger, and compels him to send away his step-mother and marry her. The tale, which is told in great detail, is doubtless mythical in its details; but we may, with Mr. Kemble, accept it as pointing to the possibility of some intercourse, both peaceful and warlike, between the insular and the continental Teutons. But I cannot follow Mr. Kemble when he goes on (i. 25) to build up, on the expressions of a German ecclesiastical writer, a theory of insular Saxons aiding the Frank Theodoric in a war with the Thuringians. The author of the Translation of Saint Alexander (Pertz, ii. 674) is not speaking of any particular detachment of Saxons from Britain coming over to Germany to take a part in a particular war. By a strange perversion, this writer of the ninth century derives the continental Saxons, as a nation, from the English in Britain; “Saxonum gens, sicut tradit antiquitas, ab Anglis Britanniæ incolis egressa, per Oceanum navigans Germaniæ litoribus studio et necessitate quærendarum sedium appulsa est.” On this the editor remarks, “More solito traditio res gestas invertit, ita ut Saxones non e Saxonia Britanniam, sed ex Britannia Saxoniam appulisse dicantur.” The legend is no doubt a corruption of the legendary origin of the Saxons given by Widukind, i. 3–6. On the sense in which the English had a better right to the name of “Old-Saxons” than the Saxons on the continent, see Zeuss, Die Deutschen, 188.

568It is worth remarking that Jordanes, though he devotes his second chapter to a description of Britain, simply gives an account patched up from Cæsar, Livy, Strabo, and Dio, and seems to describe the Britons as still the inhabitants of the island, without any reference to the settlement of the English. He makes another reference to Britain in his fifth chapter, but it is of a purely mythical kind.

I doubt whether there is any mention of England in Gregory of Tours, except in the two passages where he records the marriage of Æthelberht with the daughter of Chariberht. He does not use the words Saxon, Angle, or Britain, but he speaks of Kent as if the name were familiarly known. “Charibertus ... filiam habuit quæ postea in Cantiam, virum accipiens, est deducta” (iv. 26). So afterwards (ix. 26) he speaks of “filiam unicam quam in Cantia regis cujusdam filius matrimonio copulavit.”

Coming down later among continental writers, there is a well known passage in the Annals of Einhard (A. 786) in which he speaks of the English Conquest and of the Armorican migration as its consequence. Charles leads his army “in Brittanniam cismarinam,” and the Annalist goes on to explain; “Nam quum ab Anglis ac Saxonibus Brittannia insula fuisset invasa, magna pars incolarum ejus mare trajiciens in ultimis Galliæ finibus Venetorum et Coriosolitarum regiones occupavit.” There is another mention of the Armorican migration in Ermoldus Nigellus, iii. 11 (Pertz, ii. 490). Lantpreht (Lambert), whose command lies in Britanny, is thus described;

“Prævidet hic fines, quos olim gens inimica

Trans mare lintre volans ceperat insidiis.

Hic populus veniens supremo ex orbe Britanni,

Quos modo Brittones Francica lingua vocat.

Nam telluris egens, vento jactatus et imbri,

Arva capit prorsus, atque tributa parat.

Tempore nempe illo hoc rus quoque Gallus habebat,

Quando idem populus fluctibus actus adest.”

On the whole it would seem that a certain amount of intercourse was kept up between the Franks in Gaul and the Southern English states, but that to the world in general Britain had become an unknown land about which any fables might be put forth.

569

NOTE D. p. 38. The Relations of Charles the Great with Mercia and Northumberland.

All the passages bearing on the relations of Charles the Great with Mercia, Northumberland, and Scotland are collected by Sir Francis Palgrave, English Commonwealth, i. 484 et seqq. The cream of the matter is contained in the account given by Einhard, A. 808; “Interea rex Nordanhumbrorum de Brittania insula, nomine Eardulf, regno et patria pulsus, ad Imperatorem dum adhuc Noviomagi moraretur venit, et patefacto adventûs sui negotio, Romam proficiscitur Romaque rediens, per legatos Romani pontificis et domni Imperatoris in regnum suum reducitur.” One of the legates was “Aldulfus diaconus de ipsa Brittania, natione Saxo,” spoken of in p. 534. That Eardwulf became the man of Charles there seems no doubt. Pope Leo says “vester semper fidelis exstitit.” The submission of the Scots is also mentioned by Einhard in the Life of Charles, c. 16; “Scotorum quoque reges sic habuit ad suam voluntatem per munificentiam inclinatos, ut eum numquam aliter nisi dominum, seque subditos et servos ejus, pronunciarent.” One would suppose that the Scots both of Ireland and of Britain are included. This mention of the Scots comes between the dealings of Charles with Alfonso of Gallicia and those with Haroun al Rashid. The relation both of the Scots and of the Northumbrians seems to have been a relation of commendation, a term on which I shall presently have much to say. The Scots doing homage to Charles on account of his gifts is not unlike the homage which we shall find done by certain French princes to Eadward the Confessor.

The relations between Charles and Offa, and their temporary difference, are also fully explained in the passages collected by Sir Francis Palgrave. A number of important letters will be found in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, iii. 486 et seqq.; Jaffé, Monumenta Alcuiniana, 155, 167, 290, et al. There is a long mythical account of it in the Vita Offæ Secundi, pp. 13 et seqq. From thence Sir F. Palgrave quotes the story that Archbishop Janberht had promised to admit a Frankish army into 570England (Vita Offæ, 21). This is doubtless a good deal exaggerated, but notice should be taken of a very remarkable expression in the account given in Cod. Dipl. i. 281 of the relations between Offa’s successor Cenwulf and Archbishop Wulfred. It is plain that a deep impression had been made on the minds of Englishmen by the dealings of Charles in the matters of Eardwulf, Ealhwine, and Janberht; “Tunc in eodem concilio cum maxima districtione illi episcopo mandavit quod omnibus rebus quæ illius dominationis sunt dispoliatus debuisset fieri, omnique de patria ista esse profugus, et numquam nec verbis domni Papæ nec Cæsaris seu alterius alicujus gradu huc in patriam iterum recipisse.” Cenwulf clearly held that neither the Bishop of Rome nor the Emperor of Rome either had any jurisdiction in his realm of Mercia. The odd description of Offa as the Western and Charles as the Eastern potentate comes from a very suspicious source, namely the Life of Offa, p. 21; “Ego Karolus regum Christianorum orientalium potentissimus, vos, O Offane, regum occidentalium Christianorum potentissime, cupio lætificare,” &c. But the expression is singular enough to be worth quoting, if only on account of its very singularity, as it is the sort of thing which one can hardly fancy a forger inventing.

The influence of Charles in English affairs is strangely exaggerated in a passage of John of Wallingford (Gale, 529); “Rex Pipinus obiit regni ejus anno xii. Successitque Karolus filius ejus anno ab Incarnatione Domini DCCLXIX. Porro iste, sicut alia regna, sic et Angliam tempore hujus regis Offæ sibi subegit.”

The description of Offa in the Chronicle of Saint Wandrille (Pertz, ii. 291) as “Rex Anglorum sive Merciorum potentissimus” should be noticed.

NOTE E. p. 48. The Changes in Nomenclature produced by the Danish Settlement.

Mr. Kemble has gone (Saxons in England, i. 77–84) very minutely into the subject of the old divisions of England, and he has collected a great number of names, some of which can be easily identified, while others can only be guessed at and some are 571quite hopeless. But it is plain (see Kemble, i. 78, 79) that the West-Saxon names, Wilsætas, Sumorsætas, Dornsætas, are all older than Ælfred’s time, while the names of the present Mercian shires are later than Ælfred, and have supplanted earlier names, as appears from Mr. Kemble’s list of old Mercian shires (i. 81), some of which are quite unintelligible. One or two very obvious instances will be enough for my purpose. Thus the principality of the Hwiccas has long formed two whole shires, Worcester and Gloucester, and part of another, Warwick. The Magesætas seem to be divided between Herefordshire and Shropshire. Lincolnshire contains several principalities, Gainas, Lindisfaras, &c., but the traces of their original independence are not wholly lost even at the present day.

In Wessex most of the shires, Berkshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devonshire, are clearly not called from towns. Somerset and Dorset have cognate towns in Somerton and Dorchester; but they are merely cognate; the shire is not called after the town. But Hampshire, the County of Southampton, is simply Hamtunscír, from the town of Hampton. Hampshire was the first conquest; no doubt it had originally no local name like the other shires, but was simply Westseaxe or Westseaxnarice. When therefore it became a mere shire, it had to take a new name, and was named from the town. It may be asked why the shire which contained the capital was called from the town of Hampton and not from the royal city of Winchester. I can only suggest that some prerogative of the crown or some privilege of the citizens may have kept the capital more distant from the body of the shire than Hampton was.

Wiltshire is a case intermediate between Hampshire and Somerset. The Wilsætas are a tribe, and have their chief town Wilton. But the form Wiltunscír shows that the shire is immediately called from the town, whence the t in the modern form Wiltshire.

In Mercia, on the other hand, all the shires are now called from towns with one, perhaps two exceptions. Shropshire seems to be rather cognate with Shrewsbury than directly derived from it, and alongside of Scrobbesbyrigscír the Scrobsœtas continue to be heard of. Rutland, at once the smallest and the most modern of Mercian shires, is, oddly enough, the only one which has a distinct territorial name, not even cognate with that of any town. Rutland, as a distinct shire, is later than Domesday, where it appears, strangely 572enough, as a kind of appendage to Nottingham. How it gained the rank of a shire, while the adjoining and larger district of Holland did not, would be an interesting question for local antiquaries.

I have no doubt that the Mercian shires were mapped out afresh after the reconquest. That the redistribution was not made by the Danish invaders is plain from the fact that the boundary laid down between Guthrum and Ælfred is not attended to in marking out the divisions of the shires. We may conceive that the work was begun by Ælfred, or rather perhaps by Æthelred and Æthelflæd in that part of Mercia which was assigned to them by the peace with Guthrum, and that it was further carried on by Eadward the Elder after the recovery of Danish Mercia. In this we may see the groundwork of the legendary belief that Ælfred first divided England into shires and hundreds. With the shires within his own kingdom there was no need to meddle. Gneist (Englische Verwaltungsrecht, i. 56) enlarges on the share of Ælfred in this matter, but leaves out Eadward.

As for the nomenclature of towns and villages, it would seem that places were more commonly named directly after individuals in the course of the Danish Conquest than they had been by the earlier English occupiers. At least, among the names given during the English occupation, those which are formed from the proper name itself are less common than those which are formed from the patronymic ending in -ing. These last again raise the question, how far they are called after historical individuals and how far they are tribe-names called after some mythical patriarch. This last view will be found discussed at length by Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 59 and Appendix A. (See also Comparative Politics, 395.) Names like Tooting, Bensington, Gillingham, give the typical forms. On the other hand (see Kemble’s note, p. 60), it should be remembered that this familiar form ing, being so familiar, has often swallowed up others; thus Ethandún, Æbbandún, Huntandún, forms of quite different origin, have been corrupted into Edington, Abingdon, Huntingdon. Birmingham again has been thought to to be a corruption of Bromicham, but Mr. Kemble (i. 457) admits it as a genuine patronymic from the Beormingas. On the other hand, Glæstingabyrig, a genuine patronymic, has been corrupted into Glastonbury, and a wrong derivation given to the name.

573An exact parallel to the Danish system of nomenclature is supplied by a later and less known, though very remarkable, settlement of the same kind, the Flemish occupation of Pembrokeshire in the twelfth century. The villages in the Teutonic part of that county bear names exactly analogous to those of Lincolnshire, only ending in the English ton instead of the Danish by. Such are Johnston, Williamston, Herbrandston, and a crowd of others.

NOTE F. p. 54. Æthelred and Æthelflæd of Mercia.

The Chronicles speak of Æthelred as Ealdorman of that part of Mercia which was kept by Ælfred, in 886, when London was entrusted to his keeping. See also the extract from Asser in Florence, where he is described as “Merciorum comes.” He married Ælfred’s daughter Æthelflæd, and he appears, even in the older state of things in Mercia, to have held a special position under Burhred, as in a charter in Cod. Dipl. ii. 99, confirmed by “Burhred rex Merciorum,” he describes himself as “Æðelred Deo adjuvante Merciorum dux,” a title which suggests those of “Francorum” and “Anglorum dux.” His reappointment by Ælfred must have been one of the King’s first acts after the peace with Guthrum, as we find a charter of his of the year 880 in Cod. Dipl. ii. 107, in which his style runs thus; “Ego Æðelred, gratia Domini largiflua concedente, dux et patricius gentis Merciorum cum licentia et impositione manûs Ælfredi regis, una cum testimonio et consensu seniorum ejusdem gentis episcoporum vel principum, pro redemptione animarum nostrarum et pro sospitate necnon et stabilitate regni Merciorum.” So in a charter of 883 (Cod. Dipl. ii. 110), which begins in Latin and goes on in English, and which even in the English part comes nearer than usual to the inflated style of the Latin documents; “Ic Æðelræd ealdorman inbyrdendre Godes gefe gewelegod and gewlenced mid sume dæle Mercna rices ... mid Ælfredes cyninges leafe and gewitnesse, and mid ealra Myrcna witena godcundra hada and woroldcundra.” The words “sume dæle” seem to mark Æthelred as holding a smaller territorial jurisdiction under Ælfred than he had held 574under Burhred, and the formula reminds one of Cnut’s style (Florence 1031); “Rex totius Angliæ et Denemarciæ et Norreganorum et partis Suanorum.” Mercia however is still a kingdom, like Ireland up to 1801, and Æthelred looks very like a Lord Lieutenant holding an Irish Parliament. Heming’s Worcester Cartulary (93) records another Mercian Gemót held by Æthelred; “Þa ðe gere gebeon Æðelred alderman alle Mercna weotan to somne to Gleaweceastre biscopas and aldermen and all his duguðe, and þæt dyde be Ælfredes cyninges gewitnesse and leafe.”

The position of Æthelred in Mercia is thus described by William of Malmesbury (ii. 125); “Ille [Elfredus] duo regna Merciorum et West-Saxonum conjunxerit, Merciorum nomine tenus, quippe commendatum duci Etheredo, tenens.” He had already said (ii. 121), “Londoniam, caput regni Merciorum [“caput regni, Merciorum”?] cuidam primario Etheredo in fidelitatem suam cum filia Ethelflædi concessit.” This use of “regnum” is like the use of the same word as applied to Bavaria under the Agilolfing Dukes. (See Waitz, iii. 302.)