seek him. Dunstan finding him in the company
of his beautiful young wife Elgiva, and her
mother Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous lady,
not only grossly abused them, but dragged the
young King back into the feasting-hall by force.
Some, again, think Dunstan did this because
the young King's fair wife was his own cousin,
and the monks objected to people marrying
their own cousins ; but I believe he did it because
he was an imperious, audacious, ill-conditioned
priest, who, having loved a young lady himself
before he became a sour monk, hated all love
now, and everything belonging to it.
The young King was quite old enough to feel
this insult. Dunstan had been Treasurer in the
last reign, and he soon charged Dunstan with
having taken some of the last King's money.
The Glastonbury Abbot fled to Belgium (very
narrowly escaping some pursuers who were sent
to put out his eyes, as you will wish they had,
when you read what follows), and his abbey was
given to priests who were married; whom he
always, both before and afterwards, opposed.
But he quickly conspired with his friend, Odo
the Dane, to set up the King's young brother,
Edgar, as his rival for the throne ; and, not
content with this revenge, he caused the beauti-
ful queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only
seventeen or eighteen, to be stolen from one of
the Royal Palaces, branded in the cheek with a
red-hot iron, and sold into slavery in Ireland.
But the Irish people pitied and befriended her;
and they said, " Let us restore the girl-queen to
the boy-king, and make the young lovers happy !"
and they cured her of her cruel wound, and sent
her home as beautiful as before. But the villain
Dunstan, and that other villain, Odo, caused
her to be waylaid at Gloucester as she was joy-
fully hurrying to join her husband, and to be
hacked and hewn with swords, and to be bar-
barously maimed and lamed, and left to die.
When Edwy the Eair (his people called him so,
because he was so young and handsome) 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 king and
queen of England in those bad days, though
never so fair !
Then came the boy-king Edgar, called the
Peaceful, fifteen years old. Dunstan, being still
the real king, drove all married priests out of
the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced them
by solitary monks like himself, of the rigid order
called the Benedictines. He made himself
Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater glory ;
and exercised such power over the neighbouring
British princes, and so collected them about the
King, that once, when the King held his court
at Chester, and went on the river Dee to visit
the monastery of St. John, the eight oars of his
boat were pulled (as the people used to delight in
relating in stories and songs) by eight crowned
kings, and steered by the King of England. As
Edgar was very obedient to Dunstan and the
monks, they took great pains to represent him
as the best of kings. But he was really profli-
gate, debauched, and vicious. He once forcibly
carried off a young lady from the convent at
Wilton; and Dunstan, pretending to be very
much shocked, condemned him not to wear his
crown upon his head for seven years — no great
punishment, I dare say, as it can hardly have
been a more comfortable ornament to wear, than
a stewpan without a handle. His marriage with
his second wife, Elfrida, is one of the worst
events of his reign. Hearing of the beauty of
this lady, he despatched his favourite courtier,
Athelwold, to her father's castle in Devon-
shire, to see if she were really as charming as
fame reported. Now, she was so exceedingly
beautiful that Athelwold fell in love with her
himself, and married her ; but he told the King
that she was only rich — not handsome. The
King, suspecting the truth when they came
home, resolved to pay the newly married couple
a visit ; and, suddenly, told Athelwold to pre-
pare for his immediate coming. Athelwold,
terrified, confessed to his young wife what he
had said and done, and implored her to disguise
her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner,
that he might 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 queen than the wife of a courtier. She dressed
herself in her best dress, and adorned herself
with her richest jewels ; and when the King
came, presently, he discovered the cheat. So,
he caused his false friend, Athelwold, to be
murdered in a wood, and married his widow —
A THE LS TAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS.
i3
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—
had much enriched.
England, in one part of this reign, was so
troubled by wolves, which, driven out of the
open country, hid themselves in the mountains
of Wales when they were not attacking travellers
and animals, that the tribute payable by the
Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition
of their producing, every year, three hundred
wolves' heads. And the Welshmen were so
sharp upon the wolves, to save their money,
that in four years there was not a wolf left.
Then came the boy-king, Edward, called the
Martyr, from the manner of his death. Elfrida
had a son, named Ethelred, for whom she
claimed the throne ; but Dunstan did not choose
to favour him, and he made Edward king. The
boy was hunting, one day, down in Dorsetshire,
when he rode near to Corfe Castle, where
Elfrida and Ethelred lived. Wishing to see
them kindly, he rode away from his attendants
and galloped to the castle gate, where he arrived
at twilight, and blew his hunting-horn. " You
are welcome, dear King," said Elfrida, coming
out, with her brightest smiles. " Pray you dis-
mount and enter." " Not so, dear madam,"
said the King. " My company 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 the saddle, to you and to my little
brother, and so ride away with the good speed
I have made in riding here." Elfrida, going in
to bring the wine, whispered an armed ser-
vant, one of her attendants, who stole out of
the darkening gateway, and crept round belvnd
the King's horse. As the King raised the cup
to his lips, saying, " Health ! " to the wicked
woman who was smiling on him, and to his
innocent brother whose hand she held in hers,
and who was only ten years old, this armed
man made a spring and stabbed him in the back.
He dropped the cup and spurred his horse
away; but, soon fainting with loss of blood,
drooped from the saddle, and, in his fall, en-
tangled one of his feet in the stirrup. The
frightened horse dashed on ; trailing his rider's
curls upon the ground ; dragging his smooth
young face through ruts, and stones, and briers,
and fallen leaves, and mud ; until the hunters,
tracking the animal's course by the King's
blood, caught his bridle, and released the dis-
figured body.
Then came the sixth and last of the boy-
kings, Ethelred, whom Elfrida, when he cried
out at the sight of his murdered brother riding
away from the castle gate, unmercifully beat
with a torch which she snatched from one of the
attendants. The people so disliked this boy,
on account of his cruel mother and the murder
she had done to promote him, that Dunstan
would not have had him for king, but would
have made Edgitha, the daughter of the dead
King Edgar, and of the lady whom he stole out
of the convent at Wilton, Queen of England, if
she would have consented. But she knew the
stories of the youthful kings too well, and would
not be persuaded from the convent where she
lived in peace; so, Dunstan put Ethelred on
the throne, having no one else to put there, and
gave him the nickname of The Unready —
knowing that he wanted resolution and firm-
ness.
At first, Elfrida possessed great influence over
the young King, but, as he grew older and came
of age, her influence declined. The infamous
woman, not having it in her power to do any
more evil, then retired from court, and, accord-
ing to the fashion of the time, built churches and
monasteries, to expiate her guilt. As if a church,
with a steeple reaching to the very stars, would
have been any sign of true repentance for the
blood of the poor boy, whose murdered form
was trailed at his horse's heels ! As if she could
have buried her wickedness beneath the sense-
less stones of the whole world, piled up one
upon another, for the monks to live in !
About the ninth or tenth year of this reign,
Dunstan died. He was growing old then, but
was as stern and artful as ever. Two circum-
stances that happened in connexion with him,
in this reign of Ethelred, made a great noise.
Once, he was present at a meeting of the Church,
when the question was discussed whether priests
should have permission to marry ; and, as he
sat with his head hung down, apparently think-
ing about it, a voice seemed to come out of a
crucifix in the room, and warn the meeting to be
of his opinion. This was some juggling of
Dunstan's, and was probably his own voice dis-
guised. But he played off a worse juggle than
that soon afterwards ; for, another meeting being
held on the same subject, and he and his sup-
porters being seated on one side of a great room,
and their opponents on the other, he rose and
said, " To Christ himself, as Judge, do I com-
mit this cause !" Immediately on these words
being spoken, the floor where the opposite party
sat gave way, and some were killed and many
wounded. You may be pretty sure that it had
been weakened under Dunstan's direction, and
that it fell at Dunstan's signal. His part of the
14
A CHILD \S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
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 him Saint Dunstan ever after-
wards. They might just as well have settled
that he was a coach-horse, and could just as
easily have called him one.
Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare
say, to be rid of this holy saint; but, left to
himself, he was a poor weak king, and his reign
was a reign of defeat and shame. The restless
Danes, led by Sweyn, a son of the King of
Denmark who had quarrelled with his father and
had been banished from home, again came into
England, and, year after year, attacked and de-
spoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings
away, the weak Ethelred paid them money ; but,
the more money he paid, the more money the
Danes wanted. At first, he gave them ten
thousand pounds ; on their next invasion, six-
teen thousand pounds ; on their next invasion,
four and twenty thousand pounds : to pay which
large sums, the unfortunate English people were
heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still came
back and wanted more, he thought it would be
a good plan to marry into some powerful foreign
family that would help him with soldiers. So,
in the year one thousand and two, he courted
and married Emma, the sister of Richard Duke
of Normandy ; a lady who was called the Flower
of Normandy.
And now a terrible deed was done in England,
the like of which was never done on English
ground before or since. On the thirteenth of No-
vember, in pursuance of secret instructions sent
by the King over the whole country, the inhabit-
ants 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 was killed. No doubt there were
among them many ferocious men who had done
the English great wrong, and whose pride and
insolence, in swaggering in the houses of the
English and insulting their wives and daughters,
had become unbearable; but no doubt there
were also among them many peaceful Christian
Danes who had married English women and
become like English men. They were all
slain, even to Gunhilda, the sister of the
King of Denmark, married to an English lord ;
who was first obliged to see the murder of her
husband and her child, and then was killed
herself.
When the King of the sea-kings heard of this
deed of blood, he swore that he would have a
great revenge. He raised an army, and a
mightier fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed
to England ; and in all his army there was not
a slave or an old man, but every soldier was a
free man, and the son of a free man, and in the
prime of life, and sworn to be revenged upon
the English nation, for the massacre of that
dread thirteenth of November, when his country-
men and countrywomen, and the little children
whom they loved, were killed with fire and
sword. And so, the sea-kings came to England
in many great ships, each bearing the flag of its
own commander. Golden eagles, ravens, dra-
gons, dolphins, beasts of prey, threatened Eng-
land from the prows of those ships, as they came
onward through the water; and were reflected
in the shining shields that hung upon their
sides. The ship that bore the standard of the
King 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 trusted
might all desert him, if his serpent did not
strike its fangs into England's heart.
And indeed it did. For, the great army land-
ing from the great fleet, near Exeter, went for-
ward, laying England waste, and striking their
lances in the earth as they advanced, or throw-
ing them into rivers, in token of their making
all the island theirs. In remembrance of the
black November night when the Danes were
murdered, wheresoever the invaders came, they
made the Saxons prepare and spread for them
great feasts ; and when they had eaten those
feasts, and had drunk a curse to England with
wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and
killed their Saxon entertainers, and marched on.
For six long years they carried on this war :
burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, â–
granaries ; killing the labourers in the fields ;
preventing the seed from being sown in the
ground ; causing famine and starvation ; leaving
only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where
they had found rich towns. To crown this
misery, English officers and men deserted, and
even the favourites of Ethelred the Unready,
becoming traitors, seized many of the English
ships, turned pirates against their own country,
and aided by a storm occasioned the loss of
nearly the whole English navy.
There was but one man of note, at this
miserable pass, who was true to his country and
the feeble King. He was a priest, and a brave
one. For twenty days, the Archbishop of
Canterbury defended that city against its Danish
besiegers ; and when a traitor in the town threw
the gates open and admitted them, he said, in
chains, " I will not buy my life with money that
must be extorted from the suffering people.
Do with me what you please ! " Again and
CANUTE.
*S
again, lie steadily refused to purchase his release
with gold wrung from the poor.
At'last, the Danes being tired of this, and
being assembled at a drunken 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 beards close to him, to the
shaggy beards against the walls, where men
were mounted on tables and forms to see him
over the heads of others : and he knew that his
time was come.
" I have no gold," said he.
" 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 soldier
picked up from a heap in a corner of the hall,
where fragments had been rudely thrown at
dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at his face,
from which the blood came spurting forth ; then,
others ran to the same heap, and knocked him
down with other bones, and bruised and battered
him; until one soldier whom he had baptised
(willing, as I hope for the s*ake of that soldier's
soul, to shorten the sufferings of the good man)
struck him dead with his battle-axe.
If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the
courage of this noble archbishop, he might have
done something yet. But he paid the Danes
forty-eight thousand pounds, instead, and gained
so little by the cowardly act, that Sweyn soon
afterwards came over to subdue all England.
So broken was the attachment of the English
people, by this time, to their incapable King
and their forlorn country which could not pro-
tect them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all
sides, as a deliverer. London faithfully stood
out, as long as the King was within its walls ;
but, when he sneaked away, it also welcomed
the Dane. Then, all was over ; and the King
took refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy,
who had already given shelter to the King's
wife, once the Flower of that country, and to
her children.
Still, the English people, in spite of their sad
sufferings, could not quite forget the great King
Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn died
suddenly, in little more than a month after he
had been proclaimed King of England, they
generously sent to Ethelred, to say that they
â– would have him for their King again, "if he
would only govern them better than he had
governed them before." The Unready, instead
of coming himself, sent Edward, one of his sons,
to make promises for him. At last, he followed,
and the English declared 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 ; they must have Edmund, one
of the sons of the Unready, who was surnamed
Ironside, because of his strength and stature.
Edmund and Canute thereupon fell to, and
fought five battles — O unhappy England, what
a fighting-ground it was ! — and then Ironside,
who was a big man, proposed to Canute, who
was a little man, that they two should fight it
out in single combat. If Canute had been the
big man, he would probably have said yes, but,
being the little man, he decidedly said no.
However, he declared that he was willing to
divide 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 being weary of so much bloodshed, this
was done. But Canute soon became sole
King of England ; for Ironside died suddenly
within two months. Some think that he was
killed, and killed by Canute's orders. No one
knows.
CHAPTER V.
ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE.
ANUTE reigned eighteen years. He
was a merciless King at first. After
he had clasped the hands of the
Saxon chiefs, in token of the sin-
cerity with which he swore to be
just and good to them in return for
their acknowledging him, he denounced
and slew many of them, as well as many
relations of the late King. " He who brings me
the head of one of my enemies," he used to say,
" shall be dearer to me than a brother." And he
was so severe in hunting down his enemies, that
he must have got together a pretty large family
of these dear brothers. He was strongly inclined
to kill Edmund and Edward, two children, sons
of poor Ironside ; but, being afraid to do so in
England, he sent them over to the King of
Sweden, with a request that the King would be
so good as "dispose of them." If the King of
Sweden had been like many, many other men of
that day, he would have had their innocent
i6
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
throats cut ; but he was a kind man, and brought
them up tenderly.
Normandy ran much in Canute's mind. In
Normandy were the two children of the late
King — Edward and Alfred by name ; and
their uncle the Duke might one day claim the
crown for them. But the Duke showed so little
inclination to do so now, that he proposed to
Canute to marry his sister, the widow of The
Unready ; who, being but a showy flower, and
caring for nothing so much as becoming a queen
again, left her children and was wedded to him.
Successful and triumphant, assisted by the
valour of the English in his foreign wars, and
with little strife to trouble him at home, Canute
had a prosperous reign, and made many im-
provements. He was a poet and a musician.
He grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood
he had shed at first ; and went to Rome in a
Pilgrim's dress, by way of washing it out. He
gave a great deal of money to foreigners on his
journey; but he took it from the English before
he started. On the whole, however, he certainly
became a far better man when he had no oppo-
sition to contend with, and was as great a King
as England had known for some time.
The old writers of history relate how that
Canute was one day disgusted with his courtiers
for their flattery, and how he caused his chair to
be set on the sea-shore, and feigned to command
the tide as it came up not to wet the edge of his
robe, for the land was his ; how the tide came
up, of course, without regarding him ; and how
he then turned to his flatterers, and rebuked
them, saying, what was the might of any earthly
king, to the might of the Creator, who could say
unto the sea, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no
farther ! " We may learn from this, I think, that
a little sense will go a long way in a king; and
that courtiers are not easily cured of flattery,
nor kings of a liking for it. If the courtiers of
Canute had not known, long before, that the
King was fond of flattery, they would have
known better than to offer it in such large
doses. And if they had not known that he was
vain of this speech (anything but a wonderful
speech, it seems to me, if a good child had
made it), they would not have been at such
great pains to repeat it. I fancy I see them
all on the sea-shore together ; the King's chair
sinking in the sand ; the King in a mighty good
humour with his own wisdom ; and the courtiers
pretending to be quite stunned by it !
It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go
" thus far, and no farther." The great command
goes forth to all the kings upon the earth, and
went to Canute in the year one thousand and
thirty-five, and stretched him dead upon his
bed. Beside it, stood his Norman wife. Per-
haps, as the King looked his last upon her, he,
who had so often thought distrustfully of Nor-
mandy, long ago, thought once more of the two
exiled Princes in their uncle's court; and of the
little favour they could feel for either Danes or
Saxons, and of a rising cloud in Normandy that
slowly moved towards England.
CHAPTER VI.
ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARD1CANUTE,
AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
" ANUTE left three sons, by name
Sweyn, Harold, and Hardica-
nute ; but his Queen, Emma, once the
Flower of Normandy, was the mother
of only Hardicanute. Canute had
wished his dominions to be divided
between the three, and had wished Harold
to have England ; but the Saxon people
in the South of England, headed by a nobleman
with great possessions, called the powerful Earl
Godwin (who is said to have been originally a
poor cow-boy), opposed this, and desired to
have, instead, either Hardicanute, or one of the
two exiled Princes who were over in Normandy.
It seemed so certain that there would be more
bloodshed to settle this dispute, that many people
left their homes, and took refuge in the woods
and swamps. Happily, however, it was agreed
to refer the whole question to a great meeting
at Oxford, which decided that Harold should
have all the country north of the Thames, with
London for his capital city, and that Hardi-
canute should have all the south. The quarrel
was so arranged ; and, as Hardicanute was in
Denmark troubling himself very little about any-
thing but eating and getting drunk, his mother
and Earl Godwin governed the south for him.
They had hardly begun to do so, and the
trembling people who had hidden themselves
were scarcely at home again, when Edward, the
elder of the two exiled Princes, came over from
Normandy with a few followers, to claim the
English Crown. His mother Emma, however,
who only cared for her last son Hardicanute,
instead of assisting him, as he expected, opposed
him so strongly with all her influence that he
was very soon glad to get safely back. His
brother Alfred was not so fortunate. Believing
in an affectionate letter, written some time after-