Chapter IV - England Under Athelstan and the Six Boy-Kings

by Charles Dickens

　　Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded that king. Hereigned only fifteen years; but he remembered the glory of hisgrandfather, the great Alfred, and governed England well. Hereduced the turbulent people of Wales, and obliged them to pay hima tribute in money, and in cattle, and to send him their best hawksand hounds. He was victorious over the Cornish men, who were notyet quite under the Saxon government. He restored such of the oldlaws as were good, and had fallen into disuse; made some wise newlaws, and took care of the poor and weak. A strong alliance, madeagainst him by Anlaf a Danish prince, Constantine King of theScots, and the people of North Wales, he broke and defeated in onegreat battle, long famous for the vast numbers slain in it. Afterthat, he had a quiet reign; the lords and ladies about him hadleisure to become polite and agreeable; and foreign princes wereglad (as they have sometimes been since) to come to England onvisits to the English court.

　　When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years old, his brother Edmund,who was only eighteen, became king. He was the first of six boy-kings, as you will presently know.

　　They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a taste forimprovement and refinement. But he was beset by the Danes, and hada short and troubled reign, which came to a troubled end. Onenight, when he was feasting in his hall, and had eaten much anddrunk deep, he saw, among the company, a noted robber named Leof,who had been banished from England. Made very angry by theboldness of this man, the King turned to his cup-bearer, and said,'There is a robber sitting at the table yonder, who, for hiscrimes, is an outlaw in the land - a hunted wolf, whose life anyman may take, at any time. Command that robber to depart!' 'Iwill not depart!' said Leof. 'No?' cried the King. 'No, by theLord!' said Leof. Upon that the King rose from his seat, and,making passionately at the robber, and seizing him by his longhair, tried to throw him down. But the robber had a daggerunderneath his cloak, and, in the scuffle, stabbed the King todeath. That done, he set his back against the wall, and fought sodesperately, that although he was soon cut to pieces by the King'sarmed men, and the wall and pavement were splashed with his blood,yet it was not before he had killed and wounded many of them. Youmay imagine what rough lives the kings of those times led, when oneof them could struggle, half drunk, with a public robber in his owndining-hall, and be stabbed in presence of the company who ate anddrank with him.

　　Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was weak and sickly in body,but of a strong mind. And his armies fought the Northmen, theDanes, and Norwegians, or the Sea-Kings, as they were called, andbeat them for the time. And, in nine years, Edred died, and passedaway.

　　Then came the boy-king Edwy, fifteen years of age; but the realking, who had the real power, was a monk named Dunstan - a cleverpriest, a little mad, and not a little proud and cruel.

　　Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, whither the body ofKing Edmund the Magnificent was carried, to be buried. While yet aboy, he had got out of his bed one night (being then in a fever),and walked about Glastonbury Church when it was under repair; and,because he did not tumble off some scaffolds that were there, andbreak his neck, it was reported that he had been shown over thebuilding by an angel. He had also made a harp that was said toplay of itself - which it very likely did, as Aeolian Harps, whichare played by the wind, and are understood now, always do. Forthese wonders he had been once denounced by his enemies, who werejealous of his favour with the late King Athelstan, as a magician;and he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot, and thrown into amarsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause a great deal oftrouble yet.

　　The priests of those days were, generally, the only scholars. Theywere learned in many things. Having to make their own convents andmonasteries on uncultivated grounds that were granted to them bythe Crown, it was necessary that they should be good farmers andgood gardeners, or their lands would have been too poor to supportthem. For the decoration of the chapels where they prayed, and forthe comfort of the refectories where they ate and drank, it wasnecessary that there should be good carpenters, good smiths, goodpainters, among them. For their greater safety in sickness andaccident, living alone by themselves in solitary places, it wasnecessary that they should study the virtues of plants and herbs,and should know how to dress cuts, burns, scalds, and bruises, andhow to set broken limbs. Accordingly, they taught themselves, andone another, a great variety of useful arts; and became skilful inagriculture, medicine, surgery, and handicraft. And when theywanted the aid of any little piece of machinery, which would besimple enough now, but was marvellous then, to impose a trick uponthe poor peasants, they knew very well how to make it; and did makeit many a time and often, I have no doubt.

　　Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the most sagaciousof these monks. He was an ingenious smith, and worked at a forgein a little cell. This cell was made too short to admit of hislying at full length when he went to sleep - as if that did anygood to anybody! - and he used to tell the most extraordinary liesabout demons and spirits, who, he said, came there to persecutehim. For instance, he related that one day when he was at work,the devil looked in at the little window, and tried to tempt him tolead a life of idle pleasure; whereupon, having his pincers in thefire, red hot, he seized the devil by the nose, and put him to suchpain, that his bellowings were heard for miles and miles. Somepeople are inclined to think this nonsense a part of Dunstan'smadness (for his head never quite recovered the fever), but I thinknot. I observe that it induced the ignorant people to consider hima holy man, and that it made him very powerful. Which was exactlywhat he always wanted.

　　On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy-king Edwy, it wasremarked by Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury (who was a Dane bybirth), that the King quietly left the coronation feast, while allthe company were there. Odo, much displeased, sent his friendDunstan to seek him. Dunstan finding him in the company of hisbeautiful young wife Elgiva, and her mother Ethelgiva, a good andvirtuous lady, not only grossly abused them, but dragged the youngKing back into the feasting-hall by force. Some, again, thinkDunstan did this because the young King's fair wife was his owncousin, and the monks objected to people marrying their owncousins; but I believe he did it, because he was an imperious,audacious, ill-conditioned priest, who, having loved a young ladyhimself before he became a sour monk, hated all love now, andeverything belonging to it.

　　The young King was quite old enough to feel this insult. Dunstanhad been Treasurer in the last reign, and he soon charged Dunstanwith having taken some of the last king's money. The GlastonburyAbbot fled to Belgium (very narrowly escaping some pursuers whowere sent to put out his eyes, as you will wish they had, when youread what follows), and his abbey was given to priests who weremarried; whom he always, both before and afterwards, opposed. Buthe quickly conspired with his friend, Odo the Dane, to set up theKing's young brother, Edgar, as his rival for the throne; and, notcontent with this revenge, he caused the beautiful queen Elgiva,though a lovely girl of only seventeen or eighteen, to be stolenfrom one of the Royal Palaces, branded in the cheek with a red-hotiron, and sold into slavery in Ireland. But the Irish peoplepitied and befriended her; and they said, 'Let us restore the girl-queen to the boy-king, and make the young lovers happy!' and theycured her of her cruel wound, and sent her home as beautiful asbefore. But the villain Dunstan, and that other villain, Odo,caused her to be waylaid at Gloucester as she was joyfully hurryingto join her husband, and to be hacked and hewn with swords, and tobe barbarously maimed and lamed, and left to die. When Edwy theFair (his people called him so, because he was so young andhandsome) heard of her dreadful fate, he died of a broken heart;and so the pitiful story of the poor young wife and husband ends!Ah! Better to be two cottagers in these better times, than kingand queen of England in those bad days, though never so fair!

　　Then came the boy-king, Edgar, called the Peaceful, fifteen yearsold. Dunstan, being still the real king, drove all married priestsout of the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced them by solitarymonks like himself, of the rigid order called the Benedictines. Hemade himself Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater glory; andexercised such power over the neighbouring British princes, and socollected them about the King, that once, when the King held hiscourt at Chester, and went on the river Dee to visit the monasteryof St. John, the eight oars of his boat were pulled (as the peopleused to delight in relating in stories and songs) by eight crownedkings, and steered by the King of England. As Edgar was veryobedient to Dunstan and the monks, they took great pains torepresent him as the best of kings. But he was really profligate,debauched, and vicious. He once forcibly carried off a young ladyfrom the convent at Wilton; and Dunstan, pretending to be very muchshocked, condemned him not to wear his crown upon his head forseven years - no great punishment, I dare say, as it can hardlyhave been a more comfortable ornament to wear, than a stewpanwithout a handle. His marriage with his second wife, Elfrida, isone of the worst events of his reign. Hearing of the beauty ofthis lady, he despatched his favourite courtier, Athelwold, to herfather's castle in Devonshire, to see if she were really ascharming as fame reported. Now, she was so exceedingly beautifulthat Athelwold fell in love with her himself, and married her; buthe told the King that she was only rich - not handsome. The King,suspecting the truth when they came home, resolved to pay thenewly-married couple a visit; and, suddenly, told Athelwold toprepare for his immediate coming. Athelwold, terrified, confessedto his young wife what he had said and done, and implored her todisguise her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, that hemight be safe from the King's anger. She promised that she would;but she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a queenthan the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her bestdress, and adorned herself with her richest jewels; and when theKing came, presently, he discovered the cheat. So, he caused hisfalse friend, Athelwold, to be murdered in a wood, and married hiswidow, this bad Elfrida. Six or seven years afterwards, he died;and was buried, as if he had been all that the monks said he was,in the abbey of Glastonbury, which he - or Dunstan for him - hadmuch enriched.

　　England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by wolves,which, driven out of the open country, hid themselves in themountains of Wales when they were not attacking travellers andanimals, that the tribute payable by the Welsh people was forgiventhem, on condition of their producing, every year, three hundredwolves' heads. And the Welshmen were so sharp upon the wolves, tosave their money, that in four years there was not a wolf left.

　　Then came the boy-king, Edward, called the Martyr, from the mannerof his death. Elfrida had a son, named Ethelred, for whom sheclaimed the throne; but Dunstan did not choose to favour him, andhe made Edward king. The boy was hunting, one day, down inDorsetshire, when he rode near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida andEthelred lived. Wishing to see them kindly, he rode away from hisattendants and galloped to the castle gate, where he arrived attwilight, and blew his hunting-horn. 'You are welcome, dear King,'said Elfrida, coming out, with her brightest smiles. 'Pray youdismount and enter.' 'Not so, dear madam,' said the King. 'Mycompany will miss me, and fear that I have met with some harm.Please you to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here, in thesaddle, to you and to my little brother, and so ride away with thegood speed I have made in riding here.' Elfrida, going in to bringthe wine, whispered an armed servant, one of her attendants, whostole out of the darkening gateway, and crept round behind theKing's horse. As the King raised the cup to his lips, saying,'Health!' to the wicked woman who was smiling on him, and to hisinnocent brother whose hand she held in hers, and who was only tenyears old, this armed man made a spring and stabbed him in theback. He dropped the cup and spurred his horse away; but, soonfainting with loss of blood, dropped from the saddle, and, in hisfall, entangled one of his feet in the stirrup. The frightenedhorse dashed on; trailing his rider's curls upon the ground;dragging his smooth young face through ruts, and stones, andbriers, and fallen leaves, and mud; until the hunters, tracking theanimal's course by the King's blood, caught his bridle, andreleased the disfigured body.

　　Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, Ethelred, whomElfrida, when he cried out at the sight of his murdered brotherriding away from the castle gate, unmercifully beat with a torchwhich she snatched from one of the attendants. The people sodisliked this boy, on account of his cruel mother and the murdershe had done to promote him, that Dunstan would not have had himfor king, but would have made Edgitha, the daughter of the deadKing Edgar, and of the lady whom he stole out of the convent atWilton, Queen of England, if she would have consented. But sheknew the stories of the youthful kings too well, and would not bepersuaded from the convent where she lived in peace; so, Dunstanput Ethelred on the throne, having no one else to put there, andgave him the nickname of The Unready - knowing that he wantedresolution and firmness.

　　At first, Elfrida possessed great influence over the young King,but, as he grew older and came of age, her influence declined. Theinfamous woman, not having it in her power to do any more evil,then retired from court, and, according, to the fashion of thetime, built churches and monasteries, to expiate her guilt. As ifa church, with a steeple reaching to the very stars, would havebeen any sign of true repentance for the blood of the poor boy,whose murdered form was trailed at his horse's heels! As if shecould have buried her wickedness beneath the senseless stones ofthe whole world, piled up one upon another, for the monks to livein!

　　About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, Dunstan died. He wasgrowing old then, but was as stern and artful as ever. Twocircumstances that happened in connexion with him, in this reign ofEthelred, made a great noise. Once, he was present at a meeting ofthe Church, when the question was discussed whether priests shouldhave permission to marry; and, as he sat with his head hung down,apparently thinking about it, a voice seemed to come out of acrucifix in the room, and warn the meeting to be of his opinion.This was some juggling of Dunstan's, and was probably his own voicedisguised. But he played off a worse juggle than that, soonafterwards; for, another meeting being held on the same subject,and he and his supporters being seated on one side of a great room,and their opponents on the other, he rose and said, 'To Christhimself, as judge, do I commit this cause!' Immediately on thesewords being spoken, the floor where the opposite party sat gaveway, and some were killed and many wounded. You may be pretty surethat it had been weakened under Dunstan's direction, and that itfell at Dunstan's signal. His part of the floor did not go down.No, no. He was too good a workman for that.

　　When he died, the monks settled that he was a Saint, and called himSaint Dunstan ever afterwards. They might just as well havesettled that he was a coach-horse, and could just as easily havecalled him one.

　　Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to be rid of thisholy saint; but, left to himself, he was a poor weak king, and hisreign was a reign of defeat and shame. The restless Danes, led bySweyn, a son of the King of Denmark who had quarrelled with hisfather and had been banished from home, again came into England,and, year after year, attacked and despoiled large towns. To coaxthese sea-kings away, the weak Ethelred paid them money; but, themore money he paid, the more money the Danes wanted. At first, hegave them ten thousand pounds; on their next invasion, sixteenthousand pounds; on their next invasion, four and twenty thousandpounds: to pay which large sums, the unfortunate English peoplewere heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still came back and wantedmore, he thought it would be a good plan to marry into somepowerful foreign family that would help him with soldiers. So, inthe year one thousand and two, he courted and married Emma, thesister of Richard Duke of Normandy; a lady who was called theFlower of Normandy.

　　And now, a terrible deed was done in England, the like of which wasnever done on English ground before or since. On the thirteenth ofNovember, in pursuance of secret instructions sent by the King overthe whole country, the inhabitants of every town and city armed,and murdered all the Danes who were their neighbours.

　　Young and old, babies and soldiers, men and women, every Dane waskilled. No doubt there were among them many ferocious men who haddone the English great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, inswaggering in the houses of the English and insulting their wivesand daughters, had become unbearable; but no doubt there were alsoamong them many peaceful Christian Danes who had married Englishwomen and become like English men. They were all slain, even toGunhilda, the sister of the King of Denmark, married to an Englishlord; who was first obliged to see the murder of her husband andher child, and then was killed herself.

　　When the King of the sea-kings heard of this deed of blood, heswore that he would have a great revenge. He raised an army, and amightier fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed to England; and inall his army there was not a slave or an old man, but every soldierwas a free man, and the son of a free man, and in the prime oflife, and sworn to be revenged upon the English nation, for themassacre of that dread thirteenth of November, when his countrymenand countrywomen, and the little children whom they loved, werekilled with fire and sword. And so, the sea-kings came to Englandin many great ships, each bearing the flag of its own commander.Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins, beasts of prey,threatened England from the prows of those ships, as they cameonward through the water; and were reflected in the shining shieldsthat hung upon their sides. The ship that bore the standard of theKing of the sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty serpent;and the King in his anger prayed that the Gods in whom he trustedmight all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its fangs intoEngland's heart.

　　And indeed it did. For, the great army landing from the greatfleet, near Exeter, went forward, laying England waste, andstriking their lances in the earth as they advanced, or throwingthem into rivers, in token of their making all the island theirs.In remembrance of the black November night when the Danes weremurdered, wheresoever the invaders came, they made the Saxonsprepare and spread for them great feasts; and when they had eatenthose feasts, and had drunk a curse to England with wildrejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their Saxonentertainers, and marched on. For six long years they carried onthis war: burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, granaries;killing the labourers in the fields; preventing the seed from beingsown in the ground; causing famine and starvation; leaving onlyheaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where they had found rich towns.To crown this misery, English officers and men deserted, and eventhe favourites of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seizedmany of the English ships, turned pirates against their owncountry, and aided by a storm occasioned the loss of nearly thewhole English navy.

　　There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, who was trueto his country and the feeble King. He was a priest, and a braveone. For twenty days, the Archbishop of Canterbury defended thatcity against its Danish besiegers; and when a traitor in the townthrew the gates open and admitted them, he said, in chains, 'I willnot buy my life with money that must be extorted from the sufferingpeople. Do with me what you please!' Again and again, he steadilyrefused to purchase his release with gold wrung from the poor.

　　At last, the Danes being tired of this, and being assembled at adrunken merry-making, had him brought into the feasting-hall.

　　'Now, bishop,' they said, 'we want gold!'

　　He looked round on the crowd of angry faces; from the shaggy beardsclose to him, to the shaggy beards against the walls, where menwere mounted on tables and forms to see him over the heads ofothers: and he knew that his time was come.

　　'I have no gold,' he said.

　　'Get it, bishop!' they all thundered.

　　'That, I have often told you I will not,' said he.

　　They gathered closer round him, threatening, but he stood unmoved.Then, one man struck him; then, another; then a cursing soldierpicked up from a heap in a corner of the hall, where fragments hadbeen rudely thrown at dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at hisface, from which the blood came spurting forth; then, others ran tothe same heap, and knocked him down with other bones, and bruisedand battered him; until one soldier whom he had baptised (willing,as I hope for the sake of that soldier's soul, to shorten thesufferings of the good man) struck him dead with his battle-axe.

　　If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of this noblearchbishop, he might have done something yet. But he paid theDanes forty-eight thousand pounds, instead, and gained so little bythe cowardly act, that Sweyn soon afterwards came over to subdueall England. So broken was the attachment of the English people,by this time, to their incapable King and their forlorn countrywhich could not protect them, that they welcomed Sweyn on allsides, as a deliverer. London faithfully stood out, as long as theKing was within its walls; but, when he sneaked away, it alsowelcomed the Dane. Then, all was over; and the King took refugeabroad with the Duke of Normandy, who had already given shelter tothe King's wife, once the Flower of that country, and to herchildren.

　　Still, the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings, couldnot quite forget the great King Alfred and the Saxon race. WhenSweyn died suddenly, in little more than a month after he had beenproclaimed King of England, they generously sent to Ethelred, tosay that they would have him for their King again, 'if he wouldonly govern them better than he had governed them before.' TheUnready, instead of coming himself, sent Edward, one of his sons,to make promises for him. At last, he followed, and the Englishdeclared him King. The Danes declared Canute, the son of Sweyn,King. Thus, direful war began again, and lasted for three years,when the Unready died. And I know of nothing better that he did,in all his reign of eight and thirty years.

　　Was Canute to be King now? Not over the Saxons, they said; theymust have Edmund, one of the sons of the Unready, who was surnamedIronside, because of his strength and stature. Edmund and Canutethereupon fell to, and fought five battles - O unhappy England,what a fighting-ground it was! - and then Ironside, who was a bigman, proposed to Canute, who was a little man, that they two shouldfight it out in single combat. If Canute had been the big man, hewould probably have said yes, but, being the little man, hedecidedly said no. However, he declared that he was willing todivide the kingdom - to take all that lay north of Watling Street,as the old Roman military road from Dover to Chester was called,and to give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men beingweary of so much bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon becamesole King of England; for Ironside died suddenly within two months.Some think that he was killed, and killed by Canute's orders. Noone knows.