In person the Angles and Saxons and other Low-Dutch peoples were tall, fair-haired, and blue-eyed. In battle they wore mail-coats made of iron rings, and helmets crested with carven boars' heads; they carried long ashen spears, and iron swords whose hilts were often richly worked in gold or silver, and sometimes graven with old stories written in the strange old letters of the North, which were called Runes. For the English had letters even then, though they were little used for writing, and were looked upon as charms; rude people always think the things which they only half understand have some magic in them. In the absence of paper or any substitute for it, letters cannot come into general use. But their having letters at all would of itself be enough to prove that they were not mere savages. They knew also how to make pottery, and, as the account of their armour shows, they were skilful workers in metals. Such then, we may suppose, were the English at the time they came to Britain. We know little of their history until the time when they received Christianity, nearly a hundred and fifty years after their first conquest. At that time Roman civilisation was extinguished, and Christianity driven into a corner with the Welsh; and some seven or eight little Anglian and Saxon kingdoms were constantly fighting with each other, or with the Welsh, the Strathclydians, and the Picts. About fifty years after the English settled in Britain, some tribes of Scots passed over from Ireland into Caledonia, and took up their abode in the western islands Settlement and highlands. From them Scotland has received of the Scots the name which Ireland lost. This immigration Britain. of the Scots had afterwards an important influence on affairs in England, as the next chapter will show. in North APPROXIMATE DATES OF THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS. Hengist and Horsa bring the Jutes to Kent Ella conquers Sussex Cerdic founds the kingdom of Wessex A.D. 449 See Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents. C CHAPTER III. THE English, as has been said, were heathens when they came to this country. But they had a religion and a morality Religion of of their own; they believed in gods who would the Teutons. reward the brave and punish evil-doers in the next life. Only a few scattered hints about their religion have been handed down to us; but those few hints are enough to prove that the English and other Low-Dutch folk worshipped the same gods as the Scandinavians, that is the people of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. In the language of the Norwegian colony of Iceland a number of ancient poems have been preserved, which tell us a good deal about this religion. These poems should be studied by all who wish to understand the deepest thoughts of our forefathers; here I can only give an outline of the religion of the North. The chief god of these nations was Odin, called in OldEnglish Woden, the father of gods and men; his name is still preserved in the fourth day of the week, Wednesday (O.-E. Wodnesdaeg), as well as in many names of places in England. All the English kings were said to be descended from Woden. Woden and Frigga his wife, and a multitude of other gods and goddesses dwelt in a heavenly hall called Valhalla, and there they received the souls of the brave who had fallen in battle, and feasted them with ale and boar's flesh. But evil men were sent for punishment to a dreary hall in the cold north, full of poisonous serpents. All who died of sickness or old age went to Niflheim, a land of ice and fogs. The gods would listen to the prayers of men; they would give victory and success and the power of song to those who asked it of them; but they were not all-powerful; the power of evil was destined to outwit them, and one day they themselves would perish in the great crash and burning of the world; though one ancient song tells vaguely of a new heaven and earth which should arise, more glorious, after this disaster. There were three great feasts in the year, at which solemn sacrifices were offered to the gods, and human victims were often slain upon the altars; slaves and captives taken in war were generally chosen. This fierce religion heightened the fierceness of the warfare between the English and the Welsh, who were already Christians. The Welsh regarded their conquerors with such bitter hatred that they never made any attempt to convert them to Christianity, and there is no saying how long the English might not have remained heathen, if Pope Gregory I., in the year 597, had not sent missionaries to bring them to the faith of Christ. Church. Gregory was Pope or Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604. In his time the popes of Rome had not yet risen to the position of universal bishops and supreme heads of the Church, though they were tending towards it. All men were agreed that there must be one and only one visible, united Position of Church, but all had not yet made up their minds the Roman that the Bishop of Rome was to be the head of that Church. The Church of the Welsh, for example, and that of Ireland, owed no obedience to Rome. The Pope himself did not dare to call himself universal bishop; 'whosoever calls himself so is Antichrist,' said Gregory I. Still it was natural that Rome, which had been the ruling city of the one universal Empire, the queen of the West, should be the chief centre of the one universal Church, and that the Bishop of Rome should become the head of the Church, and all other bishops should bow to his authority. This was what did come to pass in time, but at the time of which I am now speaking it seemed very uncertain; for things had sadly changed with Rome. She had no emperor now; the emperor was at Constantinople; Italy was invaded by barbarians, Rome herself was scourged by plague and famine. The Bishop of Constantinople tried to set himself up as Universal Bishop and Head of the Church, and that the popes afterwards won the day in this struggle was largely due to the great influence which Pope Gregory I. gained by his wisdom and his powerful character. With so much work on his hands, with thousands of starving Romans clamouring for bread, with a barbarian king leading his armies up to the very walls of the city, with rebellious bishops denying his authority, and with important affairs in the churches of Gaul and Spain calling for his attention, Gregory yet found time to think about a handful of heathen tribes in Britain. Pope Gregory's mission to England. There is a pretty story told that Gregory was first stirred up to the thought of converting England long before he became pope, by seeing some fair-haired English boys on sale as slaves in the market-place of Rome; they had been carried off by pirates. Touched by their beauty, he asked who they were and where they came from, and if they were Christians. Hearing that they were Angles, he declared that they had the faces of angels, and that the praises of God should be sung in that land. From that day he never forgot the thought; and when he was made Bishop of Rome (590) as soon as he had leisure to give his mind to it, he sent a monk named Augustine, with several others, to preach the word of God to the English nation. At that time the king of Kent, Ethelbert, had a Christian wife, Bertha, daughter of one of the kings of the Franks in Gaul. The monks, who were in such fear of the barbarous nation to which they were sent, that at one time they nearly gave up the journey altogether, were received by Ethelbert in a friendly manner. They landed in what was then the island of Thanet; after a few days the king came to the island and sent for them to appear before him. He would not receive them in a house for fear they should bewitch him, which the heathen thought could be done more easily in a building; so sitting in the open air, he awaited their coming. They came marching in procession, bearing a silver cross and a picture of the Saviour, and singing prayers for the salvation of the English. When Augustine had preached before the king, Ethelbert said in answer: Your words are very fair, but as they are new to us, and very uncertain, I cannot so far approve them as to forsake what I and the whole English nation have so long followed. But because you have come here as strangers from afar, and wish to make known to us those things which you consider to be true and good, we will not hurt you, but will supply you with whatever you need; nor do we forbid you to preach and to gain as many as you can to your religion.' And he allowed them to dwell in the royal city of Canterbury. Before long he himself believed and was baptized, and after him great numbers of his nation. But he did not compel any to become Christians, having learned (as Bede tells us) from his teachers in salvation that the service of Christ should be willing and not forced. Thus Christianity came to Kent, and from Kent it spread to the other English kingdoms. The story of the conversion of Northumbria is interesting and important. Conversion King Edwin, of Northumbria, married Ethel- of Northburgh, daughter of Ethelbert, king of Kent. She umbria. of course, was a Christian, and brought with her as chaplain the Christian bishop Paulinus, whose mind (says Bede) was wholly bent on bringing the nation to the knowledge of the truth. He preached without much success for about a year. Then the king of the West-Saxons sent an assassin with a poisoned sword to murder King Edwin. The king was only saved by a faithful thane, who threw his own body between the murderer and the king, and was slain himself. The same night the king's first child was born. The king gave thanks to his gods for this blessing; but Paulinus told him that it was to his prayers to Christ that he owed the life of his infant daughter and his queen. The king was pleased with his words, and promised that if the Christian's God would give him victory in the war which he meant to begin forthwith against the king of the West-Saxons, he would himself become a Christian. He was victorious; but even then he would not hastily adopt the new faith, but would hear more about it, and consult with his wise men; and he often sat by himself alone thinking of these things. And having called a meeting of his Wise Men, he asked them what they thought of the new doctrine. The heathen chief-priest answered that he was very willing to try it, for though he had served his gods well for many years, he had never had a good turn from them. This was spoken like a heathen; but there was another man there who spoke as follows: 'O king, the life of man while on earth, compared to that which is unknown to us, seems to me like when a sparrow flies swiftly through the hall where thou art sitting at supper with thy thanes in the winter time, when the fire is kindled in the midst, and the hall is warm, but outside wild squalls of rain and sleet are driving past. The sparrow entering at one door flies quickly out at the other; while it is within, it is untouched by the wintry storm, but after a little space of calm it flies hastily away, and passing out of winter into winter again, is lost to thy sight. So the life of man is seen for a little while, but what follows it, or what went before, |