IX. 684. force, and he succeeded in drawing the youth of C HA P. Wessex to his standard. 14 In Selsey he obtained money and horses from Wilfrid, the bishop 15, and directed his first onset on the king of Sussex, whom he surprized and destroyed, and whose kingdom he desolated. The royal generals, who had been warring in Kent, returned, and expelled the invader 16, who profited by his expulsion to secure to himself the crown of Wessex. This accession of strength he wielded triumphantly against Sussex, which lost its defenders, and yielded to the fortune of his arms." Ceadwalla also captured the Isle of Wight; but stained his prosperity with cruelty. 18 686. For two years, Ceadwalla and his brother Mollo plundered Kent, which had been harassed by Sussex, and weakened by incapable rulers. The natives viewed the spoilers for some time with fruitless indignation. Town after town was ravaged. Rousing themselves at last, the men of Kent collected into a competent body, and attacked them with auspicious valour. Mollo, with twelve sol- Mollo's cadiers, was surprised in a cottage. The invaded tastrophe. 14 Malmsbury, p. 14. 15 Malmsb. De Gest. Pontif. lib. iii. p. 265. 16 Bede, lib. iv. c. 15. Flor. Wig. p. 255. 17 Bede, ib. Flor. Wig. 255. Langhorn Chron. 241, 242. Sussex is said by Bede to have contained the land of 7000 families, lib. iv. c. 13. 18 During this conquest he formed the inhuman project of destroying its inhabitants, and of repeopling it from his own province. Bede, lib. iv. c. 15. 19 Hunting. lib. iv. p. 335. Malmsbury mentions the civil wars, which also afflicted Kent, lib. i. p. 11. In the preceding year, pestilentiâ depopulata est Britannia. Chron. Petri de Burgo, p. 4. BOOK people brutally surrounded them with flames, and they were reduced to ashes. 20 III. 686. IN obeying the impulse of a headlong wrath, the Kentish men forgot that cruelty makes even the injured odious, and justifies punishment; it much oftener stimulates revenge than deters it. The brother of Mollo was on the throne of Wessex, and in the following year spread a torrent of vindictive calamities through Kent, which it mourned in all its districts. 21 THE Roman missionaries and the ecclesiastics whom they educated, had not only succeeded in establishing Christianity in England, but they raised so strong a feeling of piety in some of its AngloSaxon sovereigns, as to lead them to renounce the world. It was not only the widowed queen of Edwin, who gave the first precedent of an AngloSaxon lady of that rank taking the veil2; nor Oswy devoting his daughter Elfleda to a convent, who exhibited this religious zeal; but several of the sovereigns themselves, from its impulse, abanCeadwal doned their thrones. Thus, in 688, Ceadwalla travelled to Rome as on a pilgrimage of piety, where he was baptised by the pope, and died, before he was thirty, in the following week.24 Thus also some years afterwards, in 709, two other AngloSaxon kings, Cenred of Mercia, and Offa of Es la's death. 20 Malmsbury, p. 11. Sax. Chron. p. 46. Huntingdon, p. 336. W. Thorn, in his Chronica, places the catastrophe at Canterbury, p. 1770. x Script. 21 Sax. Chron. 46. Hunting. 336. 23 Bede, lib. iii. c. 29. 24 Sax. Chron. 46. Bede, lib. v. c. 7. Sergius gave him the name of Peter. An epitaph in Latin verse was inscribed on his tomb, which Bede quotes. IX. 686. sex, probably affected by the example of Cead- CHAP. walla, quitted that dignity which so many myriads covet, went to Rome, and became monks there. 25 And thus, also, at no long interval, a greater sovereign than either, Ina of Wessex, obeyed the same impression, took the same journey, and found his grave in the same venerated city. Offa is described as a most amiable youth, who was induced to abdicate his power from the purest motives of devotion. It is remarked by an old chronicler, that the examples of these two kings produced a thousand imitations.26 688. cession. INA Succeeded Ceadwalla in Wessex. He was Ina's acthe son of Cenred, who was the nephew of Cynegils. 2 His father was living at the period of his accession. other an uninter- THE Saxon octarchy, amidst all its vicissitudes, presented in one province or the rupted succession of great men. Egbert, talents were never wanting on some of the Anglo-Saxon thrones. The direction of the royal capacity varied; in some kings valour, in others military conduct; in some piety, in some learning, in some legislative wisdom, predominated. The result was, that the Anglo-Saxons, though fluctuating in the prosperity of their several districts, yet, considered as a nation, went on rapidly improving in civilisation and power. MUCH of the fame of Ina has been gained by his His laws. legislation. He published a collection of laws which yet remains 28, and he deserves the gratitude 25 Bede, lib. v. c. 19. 26 Hunt. 337. 27 Sax. Chron. 47. Bede, lib. v. c. 7. 28 Wilkins's Leges Saxonicæ, p. 14-27. The first paragraph III. 688. BOOK of mankind in common with every other law-giver. Whoever applies himself to mark the useful limits of human action, to set boundaries to individual selfishness, to establish the provisions of justice in defence of the weak or injured, and to rescue the criminal from punishments of caprice or favour, is a character entitled to the veneration of mankind. A declamation against laws is a satire upon wisdom the most benevolent. Laws must partake of the ignorance and spirit of the age which gave them birth. An Ina must legislate as an Ina, and for the people of an Ina. If the subsequent improvements of mankind discover that prior regulations have been defective, succeeding legislators will correct those provisions, which the progress of society has made obsolete or improper. What they may devise, their posterity, who will have changed into new beings, may mould into a fitter correspondence with their own necessities; but to abolish all laws, because laws are not all perfect, would be to unchain the tiger passions of mankind, and to convert society into an African desert, or a Cytherean brothel. 694. Kent devastated. THE wrath of the West Saxons for the fate of Mollo had not relented. With inhumanity, as great as that which they professed to chastise, they continued to desolate Kent. At length, their hostilities were appeased by the homicidal mulct of thirty thousand marks of "gold. Wihtred, from of these announces his father Cenred as one of the counsellors by whose advice he promulgated them. 29 Sax. Chron. 47, 48. Malmsbury, 14. Others make the payment smaller; as Polychronicon, p. 243., 3000 pounds; Flor. Wig., p. 260., 3750 pounds. Wihtred, unable to resist Ina, proposed the expiatory fine. Huntingd. 337. IX. the line of Ethelbert, had obtained the crown of CHA P. Kent, and terminated the miseries which the people had suffered from the invasion and a turbulent inter-regnum. 80 31 694. 697. Mercians THE Mercian nobility displayed the ferocity of the age, in destroying Ostrida, the wife of Ethelred, destroy their reigning king.31 The cause of her fate is not their known. The reason adduced by Langhorn 32, that queen. her sister had murdered Peada, is unlikely, because this event had occurred near forty years before. Ethelred exhibited another instance of the spirit of religion among the Anglo-Saxon kings. He voluntarily descended from the throne, to become monk and abbot of Bardney 3; he was succeeded by his nephew, Cenred. 34 33 OSRED, the son of Alfred, and but eight years old at his father's death, had been besieged by the usurper Eadulf already noticed, with his guardian Berthfrid, in Bebbanburh, the metropolis of this northern kingdom. 35 After their deliverance and the dethronement of the usurping competitor, 30 Sax. Chron. 48. Huntingd. 337. 31 Bede, lib. v. c. ult. Sax. Chron. 49. Flor. Wig. 260. Matt. West. 250. She was sister to Ecgfrid, and daughter of Oswy. I observe her name signed to a charter of Peterborough monastery in 680. 1 Dugd. Monast. 67. Ego Ostrich regina Ethelredi. 32 Chron. Reg. Angl. p. 256. 33 In this capacity he died in 716. Chron. Petri de Burgo, 6. 34 Malmsbury, 28. Eddius Vit. Wilf. 35 Malmsb. de Pontif. lib. iii. p. 268. c. 57. p. 85. Hoveden describes Bebbanburh to have been a city munitissima non admodum magna, sed quasi duorum vel trium agrorum spatium, habens unum introitum cavatum, et gradibus miro modo exaltatum. On the top of the mountain was the church. Annal. pars prior, 403. The city was built by Ida. 704. |