and State. For the rest he trusted to time, and time justified his trust. The fusion was marked by a memorable change in the name of the land. Slowly as the conquering tribes had learned to know themselves by the one national name of Englishmen, they learned yet more slowly to stamp their name on the land they had won. It was not till Eadgar's day that the name of Britain passed into the name of Englaland, the land of Englishmen, England. The same vigorous rule which secured rest for the country during these years of national union, toid on the growth of material prosperity. Commerce sprang into a wider life. The laws of Æthelred, which provide for the protection and regulation of foreign trade, only recognize a state of things which grew up under Eadgar. It was in Eadgar's day that London rose to commercial greatness.

VII.

CNUT, THE GREAT DANISH KING.-FREEMAN.

[On the accession of the second Æthelred, named the Unready, the Danish wars began again, and soon passed into their third phase-an attempt on the part of the King of all Denmark to subjugate the kingdom of England. The fatal policy was adopted of buying off the invaders. This led to more frequent invasions, and to ever-increasing demands for money, until at length the country was exhausted and could pay no more; while, under the enervating influences of the time, the English military system seems to have utterly broken down. The Conquest, nearly finished by Swegen, was completed by his son Cnut, who thus became King of all England. He won his success by unscrupulous means, but a great change came over him as soon as his power was firmly established.]

THIS gradual change in the disposition of Cnut makes him one of the most remarkable, and, to an Englishman, one of the most interesting, characters in history. There is no other instance—unless Rolf, in Normandy, be admitted as a forerunner on a smaller scale—of a barbarian conqueror, en

tering a country simply as a ruthless pirate, plundering, burning, mutilating, slaughtering, without remorse, and then, as soon as he is seated on the throne of the invaded land, changing into a beneficent ruler and lawgiver, and winning for himself a place side by side with the best and greatest of its native sovereigns. Cnut never became a perfect prince like Ælfred. An insatiable ambition possessed him throughout life, and occasional acts of both craft and violence disfigure the whole of his career. He always found some means, by death, by banishment, by distant promotion, of getting rid of any one who had once awakened his suspicions. Reasons of State were as powerful with him, and led him into as many unscrupulous actions as any more civilized despot of later times. But Englishmen were not disposed to canvass the justice of wars in which they won fame and plunder, while no enemy ever set foot on their own shores. They were as little disposed to canvass the justice of banishments and executions when, for many years, it was invariably a Dane, never an Englishmen, who was the victim. The law by which the Dane settled in England presently became an Englishman, received its highest carrying out in the person of the illustrious Danish king. As far as England and Englishmen were concerned, Cnut might seem to have acted on the principle of the Greek poet, that unrighteousness might be fittingly practiced in order to obtain a crown, but that righteousness. should be practiced in all other times and places. The throne of Cnut, established by devastating wars, by unrighteous executions, perhaps even by treacherous assassinations, was, when once established, emphatically the throne of righteousness and peace. As an English king, he fairly ranks among the noblest of his predecessors.

His best epitaph is his famous letter to his people on his Roman pilgrimage. Such a pilgrimage was an ordinary devotional observance, according to the creed of those times. But in the eyes of Cnut it was clearly much more than a mere

perfunctory ceremony. The sight of the holy places stirred him to good resolves in matters both public and private, and, as a patriotic king, he employed his meeting with the pope, the emperor, and the Burgundian king, to win from all of them concessions which were profitable to the people of his various realms. No man could have written in the style in which Cnut writes to all classes of his English subjects, unless he were fully convinced that he possessed and deserved the love of his people. The tone of the letter is that of an absent father writing to his children. In all simplicity and confidence, he tells them the events of his journey, with what honors he had been received, and with what presents he had been loaded by the two chiefs of Christendom, and what privileges for his subjects, both English and Danish, he had obtained at their hands. He confesses the errors of his youth, and promises reformation of any thing which may still be amiss. All grievances shall be redressed; no extortions shall be allowed; King Cnut needs no money raised by injustice. These are surely no mere formal or hypocritical professions; every word plainly comes from the heart.

The same spirit reigns in the opening of his laws. The precept to fear God and honor the king here takes a more personal and affectionate form. First, above all things, are men one God ever to love and worship, and one Christendom with one consent to hold, and Cnut king to love with right truthfulness. The laws themselves embrace the usual subjects, the reformation of manners, the administration of justice, the strict discharge of all ecclesiastical duties, and the strict payment of all ecclesiastical dues. The feasts of the two new national saints, Eadward the King and Dunstan the Primate, are again ordered to be observed, and the observance of the former is again made to rest in a marked way on the authority of the Witan. The observance of the Lord's Day is also strongly insisted on; on that day there is to be no marketing, no hunting; even the holding of folkmotes is forbidden,

except in cases of absolute necessity. All heathen superstition is to be forsaken, and the slave-trade is again denounced. The whole fabric of English society is strictly preserved. The king legislates only with the consent of his Witan. The old assemblies, the old tribunals, the old magistrates, retain their rights and powers. The king, as well as all inferior lords, is to enjoy all that is due to him; the royal rights, dif fering somewhat in the West-Saxon and the Danish portions of the kingdom, are to be carefully preserved, and neither extended nor diminished in either country. No distinction, except the old local one, is made between Danes and Englishmen, and no sort of preference is made in favor of Cnut's own Danish followers.

And as Cnut's theory was, so was his practice. No king was more active in what was then held to be the first duty of kingship, that of constantly going through every portion of his realm to see with his own eyes whether the laws which he enacted were duly put in force. In short, after Cnut's power was once fully established, we hear no complaint against his government from any trustworthy English source. His hold upon the popular affection is shown by the number of personal anecdotes of which he is the hero. The man who is said, in the traditions of other lands, to have ordered the cold-blooded murder of his brother-in-law, and that in a church at the holy season of Christmas, appears in English tradition as a prince whose main characteristic is devotion mingled with goodhumor. In the best-known tale of all, he rebukes the impious flattery of his courtiers, and hangs his crown on the image of the crucified Saviour. He bursts into song as he hears the chant of the monks of Ely, and rejoices to keep the festivals of the Church among them. He bountifully rewards the sturdy peasant who proves the thickness of the ice over which the royal sledge has to pass.

In ecclesiastical matters Cnut mainly, though not exclusively, favored the monks. His ecclesiastical appointments,

especially that of the excellent Archbishop Æthelnoth, who had baptized or confirmed him, do him high honor. He was also, after the custom of the age, a liberal benefactor to various ecclesiastical foundations. He made provision for all the holy places which had in any way suffered during his own or his father's wars. Nor was his bounty confined to England, or even to his own dominions. On his Roman pilgrimage the poor and the churches of every land through which he passed shared his bountiful alms.

Such, then, was Cnut's internal government of England. The conqueror had, indeed, changed into a home-born king. At no earlier time had the land ever enjoyed so long a term of such unmixed prosperity.

VIII.

THE CLERGY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES.--STEVENSON.

[It is almost impossible to estimate too highly the influence of the clergy during the five hundred years that followed the conversion of the English to Christianity. Foremost in Church and State, they were the civilizers and educators of the English people. They fostered agriculture and the arts; they protected the poor and weak against the rich and powerful; they were the only barrier against the brute force of the times, and in a thousand channels they made their influence felt for good. Their very success, however, demoralized them, and we shall find them, in the later ages, working rather for the interests of their own order than for the good of the nation.]

THROUGHOUT the earlier ages the clergy represented the true principles of democracy. In the best sense of the word. they were popular. They were of the people and for the people. They mediated between the commonalty and the nobles; they were a barrier and a protection of the weak against the strong at a time when the throne was none, But for that interposition there would have been more grinding oppression, and more revolting cruelty. Men who laughed