BOOK
IV.

CHAP. V.

The Reigns of ETHELBALD and Ethelbert.

Education.

· ALFRED'S

BY wresting the sceptre of Wessex from the hand of his father, Ethelbald gained a very 856-860. short interval of regal pomp. His father survived the disappointment of his hope and the diminution of his power but two years, and Ethelbald outlived him scarcely three more. Ethelwulf, by his will, left landed possessions to three of his sons; and it is a proof of his placable disposition, that Ethelbald was one; the others were Ethelred and Alfred; the survivor of the three was to inherit the bequest.' His other son, his daughter, and kinsmen, and also his nobles, partook of his testamentary liberality. His will displayed both the equity and the piety of his mind. 2

SOON after Ethelwulf's decease, Ethelbald married his widow, Judith, in defiance of religious institutions and the customs of every Christian state. 3

1 See Alfred's will, published by Mr. Astle, which recites this devise.

2 He ordered throughout all his lands, that in every ten manors one poor person, either a native or a foreigner, should be maintained in food and clothing, as long the country contained men and cattle. He left the pope an hundred mancusses, and two hundred to illuminate St. Peter's and St. Paul's churches at Rome on Easter eve and the ensuing dawn. Asser, 13.

3 Asser, 23. But this author, and they who follow him, are wrong in stating that this was against the custom of the pagans; for Eadbald, king of Kent, had done the same in 616; and the Saxon Chronicle, in mentioning that event, says, he lived " on hethenum theape spa, that he hæfde his fæden lape to pive," p. 26.

V.

On the exhortations of Swithin, he is represented CHA P. to have dismissed her, and to have passed the remainder of his short life in reputation and justice. 4 He died in 860.

856.

third mar

SOME time after the death of Ethelbald, Judith Judith's sold her possessions in England, and returned to riage. her father; she lived at Senlis with regal dignity. Here she was seen by Baldwin, surnamed the Arm of Iron, whom she married. He was descended from the count, who had cultivated and occupied Flanders. The pope reconciled him with the king of France, her father, who gave to Baldwin all the region between the Scheld, the Sambre, and the sea, and created him count of the empire, that he might be the bulwark of the French kingdom against the Northmen. 7

5

BALDWIN built Bruges in 856, as a fortress to coerce them, and died in 880, having enjoyed his honours with peculiar celebrity."

4 Matt. West. 310. Rudborne, 204.

3 Annales Bertiniani Bouquet, tom. vii. p. 77.- The Genealogia comitum Flandriæ scripta seculo 12, says, A. 792, Lidricus Harlebecensis comes videns Flandriam vacuam et incultam et nemorosam occupavit eam. Ibid. p. 81., he was the great grandfather of Baldwin. Previous to Baldwin, Flanders was in the hands of foresters, Espinoy's Recherches, p. 5.

The pope's letters to Charles, and his queen, Hermentrudes, are in Mirai opera diplomatica, i. p. 132. Hincmar's letter to the pope, stating what he had done in obedience to his order, is in the same work, p. 25. The pope hints to Charles, that if his anger lasted, Baldwin might join the Northmen.

7 Meyer Annales Flandriæ, 13. For the same purpose, Theodore was made the first count of Holland at this time, ibid.

8 The author of the Life of S. Winnoc, written in the eleventh century, says, Flanders never had a man his superior in talent and warlike ability, 7 Bouquet, p. 379.

BOOK

IV.

860. Ethelbert

On the death of Ethelbald, the kingdom of Wessex became the possession of Ethelbert, his brother, who had been already reigning in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex.

accedes. In his days, the tranquillity of England was

again endangered; a large fleet of the northern vikingr suddenly appeared off Winchester and ravaged it; but as they were retiring with their plunder, they were overtaken and chased to their ships by the earls of Hampshire and Berkshire.

THEIR Commander led them from England to France; with above 300 ships they ascended the Seine, and Charles averted their hostilities from his own domains by money. The winter forbidding them to navigate the sea, they dispersed themselves along the Seine and the adjacent shores in different bands. Such incursions induced the Flemings to build castles and fortified places.

9

10

While the

IN 864, they wintered in Thanet. Kentish men were offering money, to be spared from their ravages, they broke from their camp at night, and ravaged all the east of the country. His death. Ethelbert was, like his brother, taken off prematurely, after a short, but honourable reign of six years, and was buried in Shireburn. "1 He left some children 12, but Ethelred, his brother, acceded in their stead.

866.

9 Annales Bertiniani.

One expression of these annals is curious: it says, that the Northmen divided themselves, secundum suas sodalitates, as if they had been an union of different companies associated for the expedition.

10 Ob tam furibundas septentrionalium barbarorum incursiones Flandri in suis pagis castellis que munitiones facere ceperunt. Meyer. Ann. Fland. 12.

11

Asser, 14.

12 They are mentioned in Alfred's will. About this time,

V.

866. Alfred's youth- and

DURING the reigns of his brethren, Alfred was CHA P. quietly advancing into youth and manhood. When an illustrious character excites our attention, it is natural to enquire whether any unusual circumstances distinguished his early years. This education. curiosity arises, not from the expectation of beholding an extraordinary being, acting to astonish us in the features and dress of infancy, because it is probable, that in the beginning of life no indications of future greatness appear. Healthy children are in general sprightly; and the man destined to interest ages by his mature intellect, cannot be distinguished amid the universal animation and activity of his delighted play-fellows. But as the evolution of genius, and its luxuriant fertility, depend much upon the accidents of its experience, it becomes important to notice those events which have occurred to an illustrious individual, during the first periods of life, that we may trace their influence in producing or determining the tendencies of his manly character, and in shaping his future fortunes. The minds of all men, in every portion of their lives, are composed of the impressions received, and the ideas retained from their preceding experience. As the events of childhood affect its future youth, those of its youth influence its manhood, and that also impresses its subsequent age. Hence they who wish to study the formation of great characters must attentively consider the successive circumstances of their previous stages of life.

THE first years of Alfred's life were marked by

Ruric, a prince of the Waregi, obtained the empire of Russia, and fixing his seat at Novogardia, which he adorned with buildings, occasioned all Russia to have that name. Chronicon Theod. Kiow, cited by Langb. i. p. 554.

IV.

866.

BOOK incidents unusual to youth. When he was but four years old, he was sent by his father to travel by land through France, and over the Alps to Rome, accompanied with a large retinue. He was brought back in safety from this journey; and in his seventh year he attended his father in a similar expedition, and resided with him a year in that distinguished city. Although Alfred at these periods was but a child, yet the varied succession of scenes and incidents, and the new habits, privations, alarms, and vicissitudes with which such dangerous and toilsome journeys must have abounded, could not occur to his perception without powerfully exciting and instructing his young intellect. His residence twice at Rome, in which so many monuments of ancient art were then visible to rouse the enthusiasm and interest the curiosity of the observer, must have left impressions on his mind, not likely to have forsaken it, of the superiority and civilisation of the people, whose celebrity was every where resounded, and whose noble works he was contemplating. 13 The survey of the ruins of the Capitol has excited some to the arduous toil of literary composition, and their remembrance may have produced in the mind of Alfred that eagerness for knowledge which so usefully distinguished his maturer years.

In his eighth year he received a new train of associations from his residence in the court of France,

13 Besides the remains of ancient taste, Alfred must have seen there the most perfect productions of the time, as the pope was perpetually receiving a great variety of rich presents from Constantinople, and every other Christian country. See many of these mentioned in Anastasius.

14 Mr. Gibbon mentions that he conceived the first idea of writing his history while sitting on the ruins of the Capitol.

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