favourably received; and Ethelbert, to whose superior power the little state was subject, began the erection of St. Paul's church at London, its metropolis.1 AUGUSTIN did not long live to contemplate the great advantages which he had introduced into England. He died the year of his mission into Essex. Ethelbert survived him eleven years. This King's son Eadbald restored the Saxon paganism in Kent, and drove out the Christian ecclesiastics. The three sons of Sabert imitated him in Essex. But this persecution was of a short duration. A simple contrivance of Laurence, the successor of Augustin, affected the mind of Eadbald with alarm. He appeared before the king, bleeding from severe stripes; and boldly declared that he had received them in the night from St. Peter, because he was meditating his departure from the island. The idea was exactly level with the king's intellect and superstition. A strong sensation of fear that the same discipline might be inflicted, by the same invisible hand, on himself, changed his feelings, and he became a zealous friend to the new faith. The exiled bishops were recalled, and the old Saxon rites were abolished for ever in Kent and Essex.16 LAURENCE enjoyed his triumph but two years; and, on his death, Mellitus, who had converted Essex, received his dignity: a man of noble family, and of such an active spirit, that the gout, with which he was severely afflicted, was no impediment to his unabated exertions for the mental and moral improvement of the Saxon nation. All these early prelates enjoyed their rank but for a brief 15 Bede, lib. ii. c. 3. 16 Ibid. lib. ii. c. 5, 6. CHAP. VI. 604. 604. BOOK period. In five years Mellitus, died, and Justus, his friend and companion from Rome, was made his successor."7 As Gregory had chosen the men who were best adapted to accomplish his purpose, it is probable that those he selected were advanced in life.18 17 Bede, lib. ii. c. 7, 8. Gregory has also a claim to our grateful remembrance for his improvement in church music. He reformed the chant of St. Ambrose, and enlarged its plan by introducing four new modes or tones into the canto fermo; he formed the Roman or Gregorian chant which his missioned monks introduced into England. On particular occasions it is still used in the Roman Catholic Church, especially during Lent, and it is felt to have a breadth, a dignity, and a simplicity, which render it acceptable even to modern composers. He first separated the chanters from the regular clergy, and led the way to our present system of notation, by substituting the first seven Roman letters for the notes of the octave, in place of the more complicated Greek notes. Choron. Hist. of Music; and see Hogarth's Musical History. 18 Gregory appears, from his works and extensive correspondence, to have been a man of no common energies, acting in the sincerest spirit of Christianity. He, like Alfred the Great, is an instance how much an active-minded man may do amid great bodily infirmities. For this indefatigable pope was seldom in comfortable health. In one letter from Rome he writes: "I have been almost eleven months confined to my bed. I am so oppressed with the gout that life is a heavy punishment. I faint daily through pain, and breathe after death as my remedy. Among the clergy and people of the city, scarce a freeman or a slave is exempt from fevers." L. 7. Ep. 127. To Eulogius, of Alexandria, he mentioned in the following year, "I have been near two years confined to my bed in constant pain: often have I been forced by its violence to return to my bed when I had scarcely left it. Thus I am dying daily, and yet I am alive." In another letter, he speaks of a distressing headach; and, in another, of a grievous burning heat, which spread over all his body and deprived him of his spirits and comfort. In his preface to Job, and elsewhere, he mentions other illnesses, as severely and almost continually afflicting him. CHAP. VII. Expedition of the EAST ANGLIANS to the RHINE.-EDWIN's Asylum in VII. THE kingdom of East Anglia becomes remarkable CHAP. by an incident which Procopius has preserved, and which occurred in the sixth century. exhibits the adventuring spirit of our early Saxon princes. It Expedition Anglians to the conti nent. BETWEEN the Rhine and the Northern Ocean, the 534-547. Varni inhabited.' Their king solicited a princess of East Anglia for his son, and the hand of the lady was promised. On his death-bed it occurred to him, that an alliance with the Francs, his neighbours, would be more profitable to his people than the friendship of the Angles, who were separated from the Varni by the sea. In obedience to the political expediency, Radiger, the prince, married his father's widow, his step-mother, because she was sister of Theodbert the Franc. The rejected East Anglian would not brook the indignity; she demanded revenge for the slight, because in the estimation of her countrymen the purity of female chastity was sullied if the maiden once wooed was not wedded. Her brother and the East Anglian The Editor of the great collection des Historiens des Gaules, Paris, 1741, remarks (referring to Valesius), that Procopius erred when he placed the Varni on the right bank of the Rhine, and that he is more credible when he places them nearer the Danes, vol. ii. p. 42. BOOK III. 547. 617. warriors thought her quarrel just; a large fleet sailed from England under her auspices, and landed on the Rhine. A part of the army encamped round her; the rest, with one of her brothers, defeated the Varni, and penetrated the country. Radiger fled. The Angles returned to the lady, glorying in their victory. She received them with disdain. They had done nothing, as they had not brought Radiger to her feet. Again her selected champions sallied forth, and Radiger at last was taken in a wood. The captive entered her tent, to receive his doom. But the heart of the East Anglian was still his own. He pleaded his father's commands, and the solicitations of his chiefs. The conquering beauty smiled forgiveness. To accept her hand, and to dismiss her rival, was the only punishment she awarded. Joyfully the prince obeyed, and the sister of Theodbert was repudiated. 2 THIS event is the only one in the history of East Anglia which can interest our notice until the reign of Redwald. Before this prince it had arrogated no dominating precedence in England. The intemperate ambition of Ethelfrith propelled it Ethelfrith into consequence. This king of the Northumbrian seizes De ira. Angles, dissatisfied with his inherited Bernicia, and his trophies in Scotland and Wales, invaded Deira, to which Edwin the son of Ella, at the age of three years, had succeeded; and by expelling the little infant, converted the Saxon states in England into an hexarchy. Edwin was carried 2 Procopius Goth. Hist. lib. iv. p. 468-471. Gibbon places this incident between 534 and 547, which were the extreme terms of the reign of Theodbert, vol. iii. c. 38. p. 627. to North Wales, and was generously educated by CHAP. Cadvan.3 VII. 617. East An glia. As Edwin grew up, he was compelled to leave Wales; and for many years wandered about in secret, through various provinces, to escape the unceasing pursuit of Ethelfrith. Reaching East Edwin in Anglia, he went to the court of Redwald, and avowing himself, besought his hospitable protection. Redwald received him kindly, and promised what he asked. Impatient that Edwin should be alive, Ethelfrith sent repeated messengers, with presents to the East Anglian sovereign, requiring him to surrender the youth, and adding menaces if he refused. Redwald remembered the unvarying successes of Ethelfrith, and fearful of encountering his hostility, promised either the death or the surrender of Edwin. A friend to the young exile discovered his intentions, and counselled him to fly. But Edwin, weary of living like a fugitive, replied, "I cannot do this. I have made a compact with Redwald, and I will not be the first to break it, while he has done me no evil, nor has yet discovered any enmity. If I am to perish, he that betrays or destroys me will be disgraced, not myself. And whither should I fly, who have been wandering already so long, through so many provinces of Britain, without a shelter? How can I escape elsewhere the toils of my persecutor?" His friend left him. Edwin remained sitting before the palace, reflecting on his misfortunes and darkening projects. In this anxious state night approached, and he believed he saw an unknown 3 Alured Beverl. lib. vi. p. 90. Redwald was son of Titel, and grandson of Uffa. Fl. Wig. 233. |