clesiastical History, a truly splendid monument of his literary zeal and industry. A greater still would have been the complete version of the Scriptures, which some writers say he executed; but it is by no means clearly ascertained that he really translated the whole Bible, or even any considerable portion of it.15

We may well wonder how the necessary leisure for all these literary exertions could be found by a monarch who, in the course of not a very long life, is recorded to have fought fifty six battles; and who, even when no longer engaged among the ruder troubles of war, had so many public cares to occupy his time and thoughts. To add to all the other disadvantages he had to struggle with, he is stated to have been attacked, ere he had completed his twentieth year, with an agonizing internal disease, which, although it did not incapacitate him for the performance of any of his royal functions, tormented him so unremittingly as hardly to leave him an entire day's exemption from misery during the remainder of his life; or if it ever, to use the affecting language of Asser, was through the mercy of God withdrawn from him for a day, or a night, or even a single hour, it would yet continue to make him wretched by the thought of the excruciating distress he would have to suffer when it returned.

Alfred, who was, if ever any one was, literally the Father of his country, presiding over and directing the whole management of affairs, almost as if the people had been indeed his family, accomplished what he did chiefly by the golden rule of doing every thing at its own time. The method which he took, in the want of a better time-piece, to measure the flight of the hours by means of graduated wax candles, inclosed in lanthorns to protect them from the wind, is well known. He usually divided the day and night, we are told, into three portions, of eight hours each: the first of which he devoted to religious meditation and study, the second to public affairs, and the third to rest and necessary refreshment. Alfred died, as is generally stated, on the 26th of October, 901; but some authorities place his decease a year, and some two years earlier. By his wife Elswitha he had three sons, the second of whom, Edward, succeeded him on the throne—the eldest having died in his father's life-time—and three daughters. England has had no monarch, or patriot, of whom she has more reason to be proud, nor indeed does the history of any nation record a more perfect character, than this Anglo-Saxon sovereign.

Edward.

REIGNED FROM 901 TO 925.

EDWARD, surnamed the Elder, was the son and successor of Alfred, and the first of that name that sat on the English throne. His father's exertions had left him an authority so firmly established that the efforts of his enemies were unable to overturn it; his accession, however, was the immediate signal for civil discord, and his title was challenged by his cousin Ethelwald, son of king Ethelbald, the elder brother of Alfred,

"See Hearne's notes upon Spelman, p. 213.

who claimed the crown as his hereditary right. Arming his partisans, he took possession of Wimburn, where he seemed determined to maintain the contest and wait the issue of his pretensions. But the memory of Alfred was grateful to the English nation, and when Edward marched his army to the town, the heroism of the ambitious prince sunk at the prospect of certain destruction, and making his escape, he fled first to Normandy, and then into Northumberland, where the turbulent Danes joined his standard, and proclaimed him their sovereign at York. This activity gave his hostilities an importance that endangered the public peace, and threatened the nation with a renewal of those convulsions, from which the valour and policy of Alfred had so lately rescued them. At the head of the rebels he made an incursion into the counties of Gloucester, Oxford, and Wilts; but their ravages were checked by the approach of Edward with an army, who pursued them into the fens of Lincolnshire, and retaliated the injuries they had committed by spreading the like devastations in East Anglia. Sated with vengeance and loaded with spoil, the king directed his troops to retire; but the order was disobeyed by the men of Kent, who ventured from their cupidity of plunder, to stay behind the rest, and took up their quarters at Bury. The Danes attacked and overpowered them with a superior force, but they made a desperate defence; and though the battle was lost, the issue proved fortunate to Edward, for the bravest of the rebel chiefs, and among them Ethelwald himself, perished in the action. His fate released the king from the trouble of a dangerous competitor, and a peace on advantageous terms was concluded with the AngloDanes.1

This truce, however, was of short duration, and in the year 910, the flame of war was again rekindled between the rival parties. The Northumbrians, assisted by the Danes in Mercia, exercised their depredations in different parts of the country, while Edward, to divert the forces of those freebooters, collected a fleet of one hundred ships to attack them by sea, hoping when this armament arrived on their coast, they must at least remain at home and provide for their defence. Concluding that the principal strength of the king was embarked in this naval expedition, the rebels advanced into the country to the Avon, committing spoil and pillage without apprehension. But an army was also prepared to chastise their temerity, and at Wodensfield they were surprised into a pitched battle, when they were defeated with the slaughter of many thousands. The event of this action established the superiority of Edward over his factious neighbours, and while his arms continued to be successful in assaulting and repulsing their inroads, he was not less provident in putting his kingdom in a posture of defence. The possession of the north of England from the Humber to the Tweed, and of the eastern districts from the Ouse to the sea, gave him an extensive frontier on which invasion was easy; but a line of fortresses was erected to secure those places where hostilities were most practicable. The garrisons were filled with a sufficiency of troops, who, when the invaders approached, were ready to march out in junction with the provincial forces to repel them; by this plan of vigilance and energy, Edward secured the protection of his kingdom. At once Chron. Sax. 100.-Hunt. p. 352.

? This victory was long a favourite subject of song with the national poets.

to strengthen the boundary of Mercia, and coerce the Welsh on the western limit, he fortified the towns of Chester, Eddesbury, Stafford, Warwick, Cherbury, Buckingham, Towcester, Malden, Huntingdon, Manchester, Leicester, and Nottingham. In the year 918, his strength was tried by foreign invasion, the Northmen from Armorica entered the Severn with a fleet led by two earls, and having disembarked, they commenced their devastations in North Wales and Herefordshire. But Edward had intrusted armed bodies to watch the whole territory from Cornwall to the Avon, and falling in with the two divisions in Somersetshire, they overtook and destroyed them.3 The miserable remnant sheltered themselves in a neighbouring island till, spent with famine, they escaped to South Wales, and thence to Ireland.

Conscious of his now consolidated power, Edward resolved to abolish the separate government of Mercia, which had lost its warrior-queen, Ethelfleda, in 920, and the same year it was incorporated with Wessex. The young regent Elfwina was brought off, and by this measure he advanced one step nearer to the monarchy of England. To counteract this gradual accumulation of power, the Anglo-Danes renewed their incursions, but they were again defeated in two signal battles at Tempsford and Malden. These triumphs led to the submission of other districts; and the East Angles not only swore to Edward "that they would will what he should will," and promised immunity to all under his protection, but the Danish army at Cambridge chose him for their special lord and patron. The influence of these successive examples of submission soon spread itself. Stamford and its vicinity acknowledged Edward's dominion, as did Northumberland, whose two rival princes, Reginald and Sidroc, he expelled. Several tribes of the Britons, with their kings, were also subdued by him; and even the Scots, who, during the reign of Egbert, had augmented their power by the final subjugation of the Picts, were compelled to bow to his supremacy.5 In all these fortunate achievements of his reign, Edward was greatly assisted by the prudence and activity of his sister Ethelfleda, queen of Mercia. He died-according to the Saxon chronicle-at Forrington, in Berkshire, in the year 925, though other authorities say 924.

This prince must be ranked amongst the illustrious founders of the English monarchy. He executed with vigour the military plans of his father, and not only secured the Anglo-Saxons from a Danish sovereignty, but even prepared the way for that destruction of the AngloDanish power which his descendant achieved. Inferior to his father in knowledge and learning, he yet equalled him in military talent; though the opposition through which he had to struggle, was by no means so formidable as that which Alfred had to encounter and overcome in ascending the throne. Edward had many children. His first marriage produced two sons, Ethelward and Edwin, and six daughters. Four of

'Chron. Sax. 102, 105.

Chron. Sax. 109.

'The Saxon Chronicle says that Edward built and fortified a town at Badecanwyllan in Peacland, which Lingard conceives must have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bathgate in West Lothian: for the Chronicle proceeds to tell us that it was on occasion of Edward's building this fortress that "the king of the Scots, and all the people of the Scots, and the king of the Strathclyde Gaels, and all the Strathclyde Gaels, chose him for their father and lord." 110.

the princesses graced the dignity of continental potentates; and the maiden fair may smile at their homely accomplishments which embraced the use of the needle and the distaff. By a second marriage he had two sons, Edmund and Edred, who in course of time succeeded to his crown; and three daughters, one of whom, a lady of exquisite beauty, was wedded to the prince of Aquitain.

Athelstan.

BORN A. D. 895.-DIED A. D. 946.

ATHELSTAN, the son of Edward the Elder, was the twenty-fourth king of the West Saxons, and crowned at Kingston on the Thames. He was the first-born of Edward,-the first of an early attachment to a shepherd's daughter; but this stain on his descent was not reckoned so considerable in those times as to exclude him from the throne, especially as he was, at his accession, of mature age, and endowed with talents that fitted him for the government of a nation so much exposed to foreign attacks and intestine convulsions. Brompton and some others would lead us to infer that his birth was legitimate, but this account is rejected by many ancient and most of our modern writers. The circumstances of his nativity are somewhat romantic, yet' well attested. The shepherdess Edgina, when a girl, dreamed that a light resembling the moon, shone from her person, so brilliantly that it illuminated all England. This vison she innocently related to an old woman who had nursed prince Edward in the court of his father, Alfred. The aged dame, struck with the extraordinary beauty of the child, and the curious particulars of the dream, took her home and kept her as her own daughter. Some time afterwards, prince Edward happening to pay a visit to his nurse, took notice of the fair Edgina, fell in love with her, and had by her this son, whom, on account of his mother's dream, he named Athelstan, or 'the most noble:' light being, according to the interpreters of these superstitions, a symbol of majesty. His birth occurred in the year 895, six years before the death of his grandfather, Alfred, who took great pains with his education, recommending him in his infancy to the care of his daughter, the celebrated Ethelfleda, and soon after to that of her husband, Ethered, one of the ablest captains of the age in which he lived. When young Athelstan was of years to be introduced at court, he was brought thither by his tutor. The king was so interested in his appearance, so pleased with his beauty, spirit, and manners, that he invested him prematurely with the dignity of knighthood, giving him a purple robe, a belt set with jewels, and a Saxon sword in a golden scabbard.1

The blessing or prediction of Alfred, and the circumstance of his being destined for the throne by his father's will, obtained for Athelstan from the thanes of Mercia and Wessex, the preference to Edward's other children, who, though legitimate, were of too tender an age for so important a charge. But scarcely was he seated in the regal authority, when a dangerous conspiracy was formed against him by Alfred, a discontented nobleman, whose intention was to seize the 'Malm. 29.

The

person of his sovereign at Winchester, and put out his eyes. plot, however, was discovered, and its author apprehended; but he steadfastly denied it; and the king, to show his strict regard for justice, sent him to Rome there to purge himself by oath, before the altar of St Peter, a place deemed so holy, that no one was presumed wicked enough to swear falsely and escape the immediate vengeance of heaven. The papal chair was then filled by John X., before whom the conspirator, either conscious of his innocence, or regardless of the superstition to which he appealed, ventured to make the oath required of him. But if we may believe the legends of the monks, who were artful enough either to invent or to give credibility to their miracles-no sooner had. he pronounced the fatal words, than he fell into convulsions, and being carried by his servants to the English school, died there on the third day in great torment. The pope denied his lady christian burial until such time as he had acquainted Athelstan, at whose request it was afterwards granted. The evidence of his guilt being now so clearly ascertained, the king confiscated his estate and made a present of it to the monastery of Malmesbury.

Having, by the suppression of this piece of domestic treason, secured his dominion over his English subjects, Athelstan set himself next to make provision against the insurrections of the Danes, which had created so much disturbance to his predecessors. For this purpose he marched into Northumberland, then ruled by Sithric, a Danish nobleman; but finding the inhabitants impatient of the English yoke, and perhaps from the circumstances of his birth and the existence of legitimate brothers, dreading to provoke a doubtful war, he preferred courting his alliance rather than encountering his enmity, and attached him to his interests by giving him the title of king, and his sister Editha in marriage. This policy, however, proved accidentally the source of dangerous consequences. Sithric, on espousing the princess, had consented, as a condition, to renounce Paganism and embrace Christianity; but in a few months repenting of his conversion, he put away his wife and resumed his idolatry. This insult roused Athelstan and the Anglo-Saxons to arms; but before the invasion was effected, Sithric died. His two sons who succeeded him determined to maintain by force the religion and the independence of their father; but they were soon driven from their territories by Athelstan, and fled, the warlike Anlaf into Ireland, and Godfrid into Scotland, where his pretensions to the sovereignty for some time received the countenance of Constantine, who then enjoyed the crown of that kingdom. Messengers were despatched to the king of Scots to demand back the fugitive prince; and in case of refusal, preparations were made for invading his dominions. But from reasons not well-explained, Athelstan thought fit to accommodate this quarrel, and made peace with Constantine; though others relate that he defeated and took Constantine prisoner, but out of generous compassion immediately set him at liberty, saying, there was more honour in making a king, than in being a king. This latter narrative, however, is by no means probable, and seems to be confounded with a subsequent invasion. Godfrid contrived by the friendly warning of his protector to effect his escape, and made a fruitless effort to

Malm. 28, 29.