Chapter CXXVI: Appendix: F (4)

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH).

EMANCIPATION, Prussian Edict of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1807-1808.

EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS,
President Lincoln's.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (SEPTEMBER), and 1863 (JANUARY).

EMANUEL,
King of Portugal, A. D. 1495-1521.

Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, A. D. 1553-1580.

EMBARGO OF 1807, The American.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.

EMERICH, King of Hungary, A. D. 1196-1204.

EMERITA AUGUSTA.

A colony of Roman veterans settled in Spain, B. C. 27, by the
emperor Augustus. It is identified with modern Merida, in
Estremadura.

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 34, note.

EMESSA.
Capture by the Arabs (A. D. 636).

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 632-639.

ÉMIGRÉS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791;
1791 (JULY-SEPTEMBER); and 1791-1792.

EMITES, The.

See JEWS: EARLY HEBREW HISTORY.

EMMAUS, Battle of.

Defeat of a Syrian army under Gorgias by Judas Maccabæus,
B. C. 166.

Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, book 12, chapter 7.

EMMENDINGEN, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER). .

EMMET INSURRECTION, The.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1801-1803.

EMPEROR.

A title derived from the Roman title Imperator.

See IMPERATOR.

EMPORIA, The.

See CARTHAGE, THE DOMINION OF.

ENCOMIENDAS.

See SLAVERY, MODERN: OF THE INDIANS;
also, REPARTIMIENTOS.

ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT, The.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1843-1848.

ENCYCLICAL AND SYLLABUS OF 1864, The.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1864.

ENCYCLOPÆDISTS, The.

"French literature had never been so brilliant as in the
second half of the 18th century. Buffon, Diderot, D'Alembert,
Rousseau, Duclos, Condillac, Helvetius, Holbach, Raynal,
Condorcet, Mably, and many others adorned it, and the
'Encyclopædia,' which was begun in 1751 under the direction of
Diderot, became the focus of an intellectual influence which
has rarely been equalled. The name and idea were taken from a
work published by Ephraim Chambers in Dublin, in 1728. A noble
preliminary discourse was written by D'Alembert; and all the
best pens in France were enlisted in the enterprise, which was
constantly encouraged and largely assisted by Voltaire. Twice
it was suppressed by authority, but the interdict was again
raised. Popular favour now ran with an irresistible force in
favour of the philosophers, and the work was brought to its
conclusion in 1771."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century,
chapter. 20 (volume 5).

ALSO IN:
_J. Morley,
Diderot and the Encyclopædists,
chapter 5 (volume 1)._

_E. J. Lowell,
The Eve of the French Revolution,
chapter 16._

ENDICOTT, John, and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623-1629, and after.

ENDIDJAN, Battle of (1876).

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1859-1876.

ENGADINE, The.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499.

ENGEN, Battle of (1800).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY).

ENGERN, Duchy of.

See SAXONY: THE OLD DUCHY.

ENGHIEN, Duc d',
The abduction and execution of.

See FRANCE: 1804-1805.

ENGLAND:
Before the coming of the English.
The Celtic and Roman periods.

See BRITAIN.

ENGLAND: A. D.449-547.
The three tribes of the English conquest.
The naming of the country.

"It was by … three tribes [from Northwestern Germany], the
Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes, that southern Britain was
conquered and colonized in the fifth and sixth centuries,
according to the most ancient testimony. … Of the three, the
Angli almost if not altogether pass away into the migration:
the Jutes and the Saxons, although migrating in great numbers,
had yet a great part to play in their own homes and in other
regions besides Britain; the former at a later period in the
train and under the name of the Danes; the latter in German
history from the eighth century to the present day."

_W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
volume 1, chapter 3._

"Among the Teutonic settlers in Britain some tribes stand out
conspicuously; Angles, Saxons, and Jutes stand out
conspicuously above all. The Jutes led the way; from the
Angles the land and the united nation took their name; the
Saxons gave us the name by which our Celtic neighbours have
ever known us. But there is no reason to confine the area from
which our forefathers came to the space which we should mark
on the map as the land of the continental Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes. So great a migration is always likely to be swollen by
some who are quite alien to the leading tribe; it is always
certain to be swollen by many who are of stocks akin to the
leading tribe, but who do not actually belong to it.
{780}
As we in Britain are those who stayed behind at the time of
the second great migration of our people [to America], so I
venture to look on all our Low-Dutch kinsfolk on the continent
of Europe as those who stayed behind at the time of the first
great migration of our people. Our special hearth and cradle
is doubtless to be found in the immediate marchland of Germany
and Denmark, but the great common home of our people is to be
looked on as stretching along the whole of that long coast
where various dialects of the Low-Dutch tongue are spoken. If
Angles and Saxons came, we know that Frisians came also, and
with Frisians as an element among us, it is hardly too bold to
claim the whole Netherlands as in the widest sense Old
England, as the land of one part of the kinsfolk who stayed
behind. Through that whole region, from the special Anglian
corner far into what is now northern France, the true tongue
of the people, sometimes overshadowed by other tongues, is
some dialect or other of that branch of the great Teutonic
family which is essentially the same as our own speech. From
Flanders to Sleswick the natural tongue is one which differs
from English only as the historical events of fourteen hundred
years of separation have inevitably made the two tongues—two
dialects, I should rather say, of the same tongue—to differ.
From these lands we came as a people. That was our first
historical migration. Our remote forefathers must have made
endless earlier migrations as parts of the great Aryan body,
as parts of the smaller Teutonic body. But our voyage from the
Low-Dutch mainland to the isle of Britain was our first
migration as a people. … Among the Teutonic tribes which
settled in Britain, two, the Angles and the Saxons, stood out
foremost. These two between them occupied by far the greater
part of the land that was occupied at all. Each of these two
gave its name to the united nation, but each gave it on
different lips. The Saxons were the earlier invaders; they had
more to do with the Celtic remnant which abode in the land. On
the lips then of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain, the whole
of the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain were known from the
beginning, and are known still, as Saxons. But, as the various
Teutonic settlements drew together, as they began to have
common national feelings and to feel the need of a common
national name, the name which they chose was not the same as
that by which their Celtic neighbours called them. They did
not call themselves Saxons and their land Saxony; they called
themselves English and their land England. I used the word
Saxony in all seriousness; it is a real name for the Teutonic
part of Britain, and it is an older name than the name
England. But it is a name used only from the outside by Celtic
neighbours and enemies; it was not used from the inside by the
Teutonic people themselves. In their mouths, as soon as they
took to themselves a common name, that name was English; as
soon as they gave their land a common name, that name was
England. … And this is the more remarkable, because the age
when English was fully established as the name of the people,
and England as the name of the land, was an age of Saxon
supremacy, an age when a Saxon state held the headship of
England and of Britain, when Saxon kings grew step by step to
be kings of the English and lords of the whole British island.
In common use then, the men of the tenth and eleventh
centuries knew themselves by no name but English."

_E. A. Freeman,
The English People in its Three Homes
(Lectures to American Audiences,
pages 30-31, and 45-47)._

See ANGLES AND JUTES, and SAXONS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473.
The Beginning of English history.
The conquest of Kent by the Jutes.

"In the year 449 or 450 a band of warriors was drawn to the
shores of Britain by the usual pledges of land and pay. The
warriors were Jutes, men of a tribe which has left its name to
Jutland, at the extremity of the peninsula that projects from
the shores of North-Germany, but who were probably akin to the
race that was fringing the opposite coast of Scandinavia and
settling in the Danish Isles. In three 'keels'—so ran the
legend of their conquest—and with their Ealdormen, Hengest
and Horsa, at their head, these Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet in
the Isle of Thanet. With the landing of Hengest and his
war-band English history begins. … In the first years that
followed after their landing, Jute and Briton fought side by
side; and the Picts are said to have been scattered to the
winds in a great battle on the eastern coast of Britain. But
danger from the Pict was hardly over when danger came from the
Jutes themselves. Their numbers probably grew fast as the news
of their settlement in Thanet spread among their fellow
pirates who were haunting the channel; and with the increase
of their number must have grown the difficulty of supplying
them with rations and pay. The dispute which rose over these
questions was at last closed by Hengest's men with a threat of
war." The threat was soon executed; the forces of the Jutes
were successfully transferred from their island camp to the
main shore, and the town of Durovernum (occupying the site of
modern Canterbury) was the first to experience their rage.
"The town was left in blackened and solitary ruin as the
invaders pushed along the road to London. No obstacle seems to
have checked their march from the Stour to the Medway." At
Aylesford (A. D. 455), the lowest ford crossing the Medway,
"the British leaders must have taken post for the defence of
West Kent; but the Chronicle of the conquering people tells
… only that Horsa fell in the moment of victory; and the
flint-heap of Horsted which has long preserved his name …
was held in aftertime to mark his grave. … The victory of
Aylesford was followed by a political change among the
assailants, whose loose organization around ealdormen was
exchanged for a stricter union. Aylesford, we are told, was no
sooner won than 'Hengest took to the kingdom, and Ælle, his
son.' … The two kings pushed forward in 457 from the Medway
to the conquest of West Kent." Another battle at the passage
of the Cray was another victory for the invaders, and, "as the
Chronicle of their conquerors tells us, the Britons' forsook
Kent-land and fled with much fear to London.' … If we trust
British tradition, the battle at Crayford was followed by a
political revolution in Britain itself. … It would seem …
that the Romanized Britons rose in revolt under Aurelius
Ambrosianus, a descendant of the last Roman general who
claimed the purple as an Emperor in Britain. … The
revolution revived for a while the energy of the province."
The Jutes were driven back into the Isle of Thanet, and held
there, apparently, for some years, with the help of the strong
fortresses of Richborough and Reculver, guarding the two
mouths of the inlet which then parted Thanet from the
mainland.
{781}
"In 465 however the petty conflicts which had gone on along
the shores of the Wantsum made way for a decisive struggle.
… The overthrow of the Britons at Wipped'sfleet was so
terrible that all hope of preserving the bulk of Kent seems
from this moment to have been abandoned; and … no further
struggle disturbed the Jutes in its conquest and settlement.
It was only along its southern shore that the Britons now held
their ground. … A final victory of the Jutes in 473 may mark
the moment when they reached the rich pastures which the Roman
engineers had reclaimed from Romney Marsh. … With this
advance to the mouth of the Weald the work of Hengest's men
came to an end; nor did the Jutes from this time play any
important part in the attack on the island, for their
after-gains were limited to the Isle of Wight and a few
districts on the Southampton Water."

_J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
chapter 1._

ALSO IN:
_J. M. Lappenberg,
History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings,
volume 1, pages 67-101._

-----------------------------------------------------------

A Logical Outline of English History

IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.

Physical or material (Orange).
Ethnological (Dark Blue).
Social and political (Green).
Intellectual, moral and religious (Tan).
Foreign (Black).

5th-7th centuries. Conquest: and settlement by Saxons, Angles and Jutes.

The Island of Britain, separated from the Continent of Europe
by a narrow breadth of sea, which makes friendly commerce easy
and hostile invasion difficult;—its soil in great part
excellent; its northern climate tempered by the humid warmth
of the Gulf Stream; its conditions good for breeding a robust
population, strongly fed upon corn and meats; holding,
moreover, in store, for later times, a rare deposit of iron
and coal, of tin and potter's clay, and other minerals of like
utility; was occupied and possessed by tribes from Northern
Europe, of the strongest race in history; already schooled in
courage and trained to enterprise by generations of sea-faring
adventure; uncorrupted by any mercenary contact with the
decaying civilization of Rome, but ready for the knowledge it
could give.

7th-11th Centuries.

Fused, after much warring with one another and with their
Danish kin, into a nation of Englishmen, they lived, for five
centuries, an isolated life, until their insular and
independent character had become deeply ingrained, and the
primitive system of their social and political
organization—their Townships, their Hundreds, their Shires,
and the popular Moots, or courts, which determined and
administered law in each—was rooted fast; though their king's
power waxed and the nobles and the common people drew farther
apart.

A. D. 1066.—Norman conquest.

Then they were mastered (in the last successful invasion that
their Island ever knew) by another people, sprung from their
own stock, but whose blood had been warmed and whose wit had
been quickened by Latin and Gallic influences in the country
of the Franks.

11th-18th Centuries.

A new social and political system now formed itself in England
as the result:—Feudalism modified by the essential democracy
inherent in Old English institutions—producing a stout
commonality to daunt the lords, and a strong aristocracy to
curb the king.

A. D. 1215. Magna charta.

English royalty soon weakened itself yet more by ambitious
strivings to maintain and extend a wide dominion over-sea, in
Normandy and Aquitaine; and was helpless to resist when barons
and commons came together to demand the signing and sealing of
the Great Charter of Englishmen's rights.

A. D. 1265-1295—Parliament.

Out of the conditions which gave birth to Magna Charta there
followed, soon, the development of the English Parliament as a
representative legislature, from the Curia Regis of the Normans
and the Witenagemot of the older English time.

A. D. 1337-1453—The Hundred Years War.

From the woful wars of a hundred years with France, which
another century brought upon it, the nation, as a whole,
suffered detriment, no doubt, and it progress was hindered in
many ways; but politically the people took some good from
the troubled times, because their kings were more dependant on
them for money and men.

A. D. 1453-1485—War of the Roses

So likewise, they were bettered in some ways by the dreadful
civil Wars of the Roses, which distracted England for thirty
years. The nobles well-nigh perished, as an order, in these
wars, while the middle-class people at large suffered relatively
little, in numbers or estate.

A. D. 1348—The Great Plague.

But, previously, the great Plague, by diminishing the ranks of
the laboring class, had raised wages and the standard of living
among them, and had helped, with other causes, to multiply the
small landowners and tenant farmers of the country, increasing
the independent common class.

A. D. 1327-1377—Immigration of Flemish weavers.

Moreover, from the time of Edward III., who encouraged Flemish
weavers to settle in England and to teach their art to his
people, manufactures began to thrive; trade extended; towns
grew in population and wealth, and the great burgher
middle-class rose rapidly to importance and weight in the
land.

A. D. 1485-1603—Absolutism of the Tudors.

But the commons of England were not prepared to make use of
the actual power which they held. The nobles had led them in
the past; it needed time to raise leaders among themselves,
and time to organize their ranks. Hence no new checks on
royalty were ready to replace those constraints which had been
broken by the ruin of great houses in the civil wars, and the
crown made haste to improve its opportunity for grasping
power. There followed, under the Tudors, a period of
absolutism greater than England had known before.

15th-16th Centuries—Renaissance.

But this endured only for the time of the education of the
commons, who conned the lessons of the age with eagerness and
with understanding. The new learning from Greece and Rome; the
new world knowledge that had been found in the West; the new
ideas which the new art of the printer had furnished with
wings,—all these had now gained their most fertile planting
in the English mind. Their flower was the splendid literature
of the Elizabethan age; they ripened fruits more substantial
at a later day.

The intellectual development of the nation tended first toward
a religious independence, which produced two successive
revolts—from Roman Papacy and from the Anglican Episcopacy
that succeeded it.

This religious new departure of the English people gave
direction to a vast expansion of their energies in the outside
world. It led them into war with Spain, and sent forth Drake
and Hawkins and the Buccaneers, to train the sailors and pilot
the merchant adventurers who would soon make England mistress
of all the wide seas.

A. D. 1608-1688.
The Stuarts.
The Civil War.
The Commonwealth.
The Revolution.

Then, when these people, strong, prosperous and intelligent,
had come to be ripely sufficient for self-government, there
fell to them a foolish race of kings, who challenged them to a
struggle which stripped royalty of all but its fictions, and
established the sovereignty of England in its House of Commons
for all time.

18th-19th Centuries.
Science
Invention.
Material progress.
Economic enlightenment.

Unassailable in its island,—taking part in the great wars of
the 18th century by its fleets and its subsidies
chiefly,—busy with its undisturbed labors at home,—vigorous
in its conquests, its settlements and its trade, which it
pushed into the farthest parts of the earth,—creating wealth
and protecting it from spoliation and from waste,—the English
nation now became the industrial and economic school of the
age. It produced the mechanical inventions which first opened
a new era in the life of mankind on the material side; it
attained to the splendid enlightenment of freedom in trade; it
made England the workshop and mart of the world, and it spread
her Empire to every Continent, through all the seas.

--------- End: A Logical Outline of English History --------------------

ENGLAND: A. D. 477-527.
The conquests of the Saxons.
The founding of the kingdoms of Sussex, Wessex and Essex.

"Whilst the Jutes were conquering Kent, their kindred took
part in the war. Ship after ship sailed from the North Sea,
filled with eager warriors. The Saxons now arrived—Ella and
his three sons landed in the ancient territory of the Regni
(A. D. 477-491). The Britons were defeated with great
slaughter, and driven into the forest of Andreade, whose
extent is faintly indicated by the wastes and commons of the
Weald. A general confederacy of the Kings and 'Tyrants' of the
Britons was formed against the invaders, but fresh
reinforcements arrived from Germany; the city of
Andreades-Ceastre was taken by storm, all its inhabitants were
slain and the buildings razed to the ground, so that its site
is now entirely unknown. From this period the kingdom of the
South Saxons was established in the person of Ella; and though
ruling only over the narrow boundary of modern Sussex, he was
accepted as the first of the Saxon Bretwaldas, or Emperors of
the Isle of Britain. Encouraged, perhaps, by the good tidings
received from Ella, another band of Saxons, commanded by
Cerdic and his son Cynric, landed on the neighbouring shore,
in the modern Hampshire (A. D. 494). At first they made but
little progress. They were opposed by the Britons; but
Geraint, whom the Saxon Chroniclers celebrate for his
nobility, and the British Bards extol for his beauty and
valour, was slain (A. D. 501). The death of the Prince of the
'Woodlands of Dyfnaint,' or Damnonia, may have been avenged,
but the power of the Saxons overwhelmed all opposition; and
Cerdic, associating his son Cynric in the dignity, became the
King of the territory which he gained. Under Cynric and his
son Ceaulin, the Saxons slowly, yet steadily, gained ground.
The utmost extent of their dominions towards the North cannot
be ascertained; but they had conquered the town of Bedford;
and it was probably in consequence of their geographical
position (A. D. 571) with respect to the countries of the
Middle and East Saxons, that the name of the West Saxons was
given to this colony. The tract north of the Thames was soon
lost; but on the south of that river and of the Severn, the
successors of Cerdic, Kings of Wessex, continued to extend
their dominions. The Hampshire Avon, which retains its old
Celtic name, signifying 'the Water,' seems at first to have
been their boundary. Beyond this river, the British princes of
Damnonia retained their power; and it was long before the
country as far as the Exe became a Saxon March-land, or
border. About the time that the Saxons under Cerdic and Cynric
were successfully warring against the Britons, another colony
was seen to establish itself in the territory or kingdom
which, from its geographical position, obtained the name of
East Saxony; but whereof the district of the Middle Saxons,
now Middlesex, formed a part. London, as you well know, is
locally included in Middle Saxony; and the Kings of Essex, and
the other sovereigns who afterwards acquired the country,
certainly possessed many extensive rights of sovereignty in
the city. Yet, I doubt much whether London was ever
incorporated in any Anglo-Saxon kingdom; and I think we must
view it as a weak, tributary, vassal state, not very well able
to resist the usurpations of the supreme Lord or Suzerain,
Æscwin, or Ercenwine, who was the first King of the East
Saxons (A. D. 527). His son Sleda was married to Ricola,
daughter to Ethelbert of Kent, who afterwards appears as the
superior, or sovereign of the country; and though Sleda was
King, yet Ethelbert joined in all important acts of
government. This was the fate of Essex—it is styled a
kingdom, but it never enjoyed any political independence,
being always subject to the adjoining kings."

_F. Palgrave,
History of the Anglo Saxons,
chapter 2._

"The descents of [the West Saxons], Cerdic and Cynric, in 495
at the mouth of the Itchen, and a fresh descent on Portchester
in 501, can have been little more than plunder raids; and
though in 508 a far more serious conflict ended in the fall of
5,000 Britons and their chief, it was not till 514 that the
tribe whose older name seems to have been that of the
Gewissas, but who were to be more widely known as the West
Saxons, actually landed with a view to definite conquest."

_J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
chapter 3._

"The greatness of Sussex did not last beyond the days of its
founder Ælle, the first Bretwalda. Whatever importance Essex,
or its offshoot, Middlesex, could claim as containing the
great city of London was of no long duration. We soon find
London fluctuating between the condition of an independent
commonwealth, and that of a dependency of the Mercian Kings.
Very different was the destiny of the third Saxon Kingdom.
Wessex has grown into England, England into Great Britain,
Great Britain into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom into
the British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before
and since the eleventh century [the interval of the Danish
kings, Harold, son of Godwine, and William the Conqueror, who
were not of the West Saxon house] has had the blood of Cerdic
the West Saxon in his veins. At the close of the sixth century
Wessex had risen to high importance among the English
Kingdoms, though the days of its permanent supremacy were
still far distant."

_E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2, section 1._

{782}

ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633.
The conquests of the Angles.
The founding of their kingdoms.

Northwards of the East Saxons was established the kingdom of
the East Angles, in which a northern and a southern people
(Northfolc and Suthfolc) were distinguished. It is probable
that, even during the last period of the Roman sway, Germans
were settled in this part of Britain; a supposition that gains
probability from several old Saxon sagas, which have reference
to East Anglia at a period anterior to the coming of Hengest
and Horsa. The land of the Gyrwas, containing 1,200 hides …
comprised the neighbouring marsh districts of Ely and
Huntingdonshire, almost as far as Lincoln. Of the East Angles
Wehwa, or Wewa, or more commonly his son Uffa, or Wuffa, from
whom his race derived their patronymic of Uffings or Wuffings,
is recorded as the first king. The neighbouring states of
Mercia originated in the marsh districts of the Lindisware, or
inhabitants of Lindsey (Lindesig), the northern part of
Lincolnshire. With these were united the Middle Angles. This
kingdom, divided by the Trent into a northern and a southern
portion, gradually extended itself to the borders of Wales.
Among the states which it comprised was the little Kingdom of
the Hwiccas, conterminous with the later diocese of Worcester,
or the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, and a part of
Warwick. This state, together with that of the Hecanas, bore
the common Germanic appellation of the land of the Magesætas.
… The country to the north of the Humber had suffered the
most severely from the inroads of the Picts and Scots. It
became at an early period separated into two British states,
the names of which were retained for some centuries, viz.:
Deifyr (Deora rice), afterwards Latinized into Deira,
extending from the Humber to the Tyne, and Berneich (Beorna
rice), afterwards Bernicia, from the Tyne to the Clyde. Here
also the settlements of the German races appear anterior to
the date given in the common accounts of the first Anglian
kings of those territories, in the middle of the sixth
century."

_J. M. Lappenberg,
History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (Thorpe),
volume 1, pages 112-117._

The three Anglian kingdoms of Northumberland, Mercia and East
Anglia, "are altogether much larger than the Saxon and Jutish
Kingdoms, so you see very well why the land was called
'England' and not 'Saxony.' … 'Saxonia' does occur now and
then, and it was really an older name than 'Anglia,' but it
soon went quite out of use. … But some say that there were
either Jutes or Saxons in the North of England as soon or
sooner than there were in the south. If so, there is another
reason why the Scotch Celts as well as the Welsh, call us
Saxons. It is not unlikely that there may have been some small
Saxon or Jutish settlements there very early, but the great
Kingdom of Northumberland was certainly founded by Ida the
Angle in 547. It is more likely that there were some Teutonic
settlements there before him, because the Chronicle does not
say of him, as it does of Hengest, Cissa and Cerdie, that he
came into the land by the sea, but only that he began the
Kingdom. … You must fully understand that in the old times
Northumberland meant the whole land north of the Humber,
reaching as far as the Firth of Forth. It thus takes in part
of what is now Scotland, including the city of Edinburgh, that
is Eadwinesburh, the town of the great Northumbrian King
Eadwine, or Edwin [Edwin of Deira, A. D. 617-633]. … You
must not forget that Lothian and all that part of Scotland was
part of Northumberland, and that the people there are really
English, and still speak a tongue which has changed less from
the Old-English than the tongue of any other part of England.
And the real Scots, the Gael in the Highlands, call the
Lowland Scots 'Saxons,' just as much as they do the people of
England itself. This Northumbrian Kingdom was one of the
greatest Kingdoms in England, but it was often divided into
two, Beornicia [or Bernicia] and Deira, the latter of which
answered pretty nearly to Yorkshire. The chief city was the
old Roman town of Eboracum, which in Old-English is Eoforwic,
and which we cut short into York. York was for a long time the
greatest town in the North of England. There are now many
others much larger, but York is still the second city in
England in rank, and it gives its chief magistrate the title
of Lord-Mayor, as London· does, while in other cities and
towns the chief magistrate is merely the Mayor, without any
Lord. … The great Anglian Kingdom of the Mercians, that is
the Marchmen, the people on the march or frontier, seems to
have been the youngest of all, and to have grown up gradually
by joining together several smaller states, including all the
land which the West Saxons had held north of the Thames. Such
little tribes or states were the Lindesfaras and the Gainas in
Lincolnshire, the Magesætas in Herefordshire, the Hwiccas in
Gloucester, Worcester, and part of Warwick, and several
others. … When Mercia was fully joined under one King, it
made one of the greatest states in England, and some of the
Mercian Kings were very powerful princes. It was chiefly an
Anglian Kingdom; and the Kings were of an Anglian stock, but
among the Hwiccas and in some of the other shires in southern
and western Mercia, most of the people must really have been
Saxons."

_E. A. Freeman,
Old English History for Children,
chapter 5._

ENGLAND: A. D. 560.

Ethelbert becomes king of Kent.

ENGLAND: A. D. 593.

Ethelfrith becomes king of Northumbria.

ENGLAND: A. D. 597-685.
The conversion of the English.

"It happened that certain Saxon children were to be sold for
slaves at the marketplace at Rome; when Divine Providence, the
great clock-keeper of time, ordering not only hours, but even
instants (Luke ii. 38), to his own honour, so disposed it,
that Gregory, afterwards first bishop of Rome of that name,
was present to behold them. It grieved the good man to see the
disproportion betwixt the faces and fortunes, the complexions
and conditions, of these children, condemned to a servile
estate, though carrying liberal looks, so legible was
ingenuity in their faces. It added more to his sorrow, when he
conceived that those youths were twice vassals, bought by
their masters, and 'sold under sin' (Romans vii. 14), servants
in their bodies, and slaves in their souls to Satan; which
occasioned the good man to enter into further inquiry with the
merchants (which set them to sale) what they were and whence
they came, according to this ensuing dialogue:

Gregory.—'Whence come these captives?'
Merchants.—'From the isle of Britain.'
Gregory.—'Are those islanders Christians?'
Merchants.—'O no, they are Pagans.'
Gregory.—'It is sad that the author of darkness should
possess men with so bright faces. But what is the name of
their particular nation?'
Merchants.—'They are called Angli.'
Gregory.—'And well may, for their "angel like faces"; it
becometh such to be coheirs with the angels in heaven. In what
province of England did they live?'
Merchants.—'In Deira.'
Gregory.—'They are to be freed de Dei irâ, "from the anger of
God." How call ye the king of that country?'
Merchants.—'Ella.'
Gregory.—'Surely hallelujah ought to be sung in his kingdom
to the praise of that God who created all things.'

{783}

Thus Gregory's gracious heart set the sound of every word to
the time of spiritual goodness. Nor can his words be justly
censured for levity, if we consider how, in that age, the
elegance of poetry consisted in rhythm, and the eloquence of
prose in allusions. And which was the main, where his pleasant
conceits did end, there his pious endeavours began; which did
not terminate in a verbal jest, but produce real effects,
which ensued hereupon."

_Thomas Fuller,
The Church History of Britain,
book 2, section 1._

In 590 the good Gregory became Bishop of Rome, or Pope, and
six years later, still retaining the interest awakened in him
by the captive English youth, he dispatched a band of
missionary monks to Britain, with their prior, Augustine, at
their head. Once they turned back, affrighted by what they
heard of the ferocity of the new heathen possessors of the
once-Christian island of Britain; but Gregory laid his
commands upon them again, and in the spring of 597 they
crossed the channel from Gaul, landing at Ebbsfleet, in the
Isle of Thanet, where the Jutish invaders had made their first
landing, a century and a half before. They found Ethelbert of
Kent, the most powerful of the English kings at that time,
already prepared to receive them with tolerance, if not with
favor, through the influence of a Christian wife—queen
Bertha, of the royal family of the Franks. The conversion and
baptism of the Kentish king and court, and the acceptance of
the new faith by great numbers of the people followed quickly.
In November of the same year, 597, Augustine returned to Gaul
to receive his consecration as "Archbishop of the English,"
establishing the See of Canterbury, with the primacy which has
remained in it to the present day. The East Saxons were the
next to bow to the cross and in 604 a bishop, Mellitus, was
sent to London. This ended Augustine's work—and Gregory's—
for both died that year. Then followed an interval of little
progress in the work of the mission, and, afterwards, a
reaction towards idolatry which threatened to destroy it
altogether. But just at this time of discouragement in the
south, a great triumph of Christianity was brought about in
Northumberland, and due, there, as in Kent, to the influence
of a Christian queen. Edwin, the king, with many of his nobles
and his people, were baptised on Easter Eve, A. D. 627, and a new
center of missionary work was established at York. There, too,
an appalling reverse occurred, when Northumberland was
overrun, in 633, by Penda, the heathen king of Mercia; but the
kingdom rallied, and the Christian Church was reestablished,
not wholly, as before, under the patronage and rule of Rome,
but partly by a mission from the ancient Celtic Church, which
did not acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. In the end,
however, the Roman forms of Christianity prevailed, throughout
Britain, as elsewhere in western Europe. Before the end of the
7th century the religion of the Cross was established firmly
in all parts of the island, the South Saxons being the latest
to receive it. In the 8th century English missionaries were
laboring zealously for the conversion of their Saxon and
Frisian brethren on the continent.

_G. F. Maclear,
Conversion of the West; The English._

ALSO IN:
_The Venerable Bede,
Ecclesiastical History._

_H. Soames,
The Anglo Saxon Church._

_R. C. Jenkins,
Canterbury,
chapter 2._

ENGLAND:
End of the 6th. Century.
The extent, the limits and the character
of the Teutonic conquest.

"Before the end of the 6th century the Teutonic dominion
stretched from the German ocean to the Severn, and from the
English Channel to the Firth of Forth. The northern part of
the island was still held by Picts and Scots, Celtic tribes,
whose exact ethnical relation to each other hardly concerns
us. And the whole west side of the island, including not only
modern Wales, but the great Kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching
from Dumbarton to Chester, and the great peninsula containing
Cornwall, Devon and part of Somerset, was still in the hands
of independent Britons. The struggle had been a long and
severe one, and the natives often retained possession of a
defensible district long after the surrounding country had
been occupied by the invaders. It is therefore probable that,
at the end of the 6th century and even later, there may have
been within the English frontier inaccessible points where
detached bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious
independence. It is probable also that, within the same
frontier, there still were Roman towns, tributary to the
conquerors rather than occupied by them. But by the end of the
6th century even these exceptions must have been few. The work
of the Conquest, as a whole, was accomplished. The Teutonic
settlers had occupied by far the greater part of the territory
which they ever were, in the strictest sense, to occupy. The
complete supremacy of the island was yet to be won; but that
was to be won, when it was won, by quite another process. The
English Conquest of Britain differed in several important
respects from every other settlement of a Teutonic people
within the limits of the Roman Empire. … Though the literal
extirpation of a nation is an impossibility, there is every
reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of those parts
of Britain which had become English at the 6th century had
been as nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would
doubtless be largely spared, but as far as the male sex is
concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration or personal
slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found
at the hands of our fathers. The nature of the small Celtic
element in our language would of itself prove the fact. Nearly
every Welsh word which has found its way into English
expresses some small domestic matter, such as women and slaves
would be concerned with."

_E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2, section 1._

"A glance at the map shows that the mass of the local
nomenclature of England begins with the Teutonic conquest,
while the mass of the local nomenclature of France is older
than the Teutonic conquest. And, if we turn from the names on
the map to the living speech of men, there is the most
obvious, but the most important, of all facts, the fact that
Englishmen speak English and that Frenchmen speak French.

{784}

That is to say, in Gaul the speech of Rome lived through the
Teutonic conquest, while in Britain it perished in the
Teutonic conquest, if it had not passed away before. And
behind this is the fact, very much less obvious, a good deal
less important, but still very important, that in Gaul tongues
older than Latin live on only in corners as mere survivals,
while in Britain, while Latin has utterly vanished, a tongue
older than Latin still lives on as the common speech of an
appreciable part of the land. Here then is the final result
open to our own eyes. And it is a final result which could not
have come to pass unless the Teutonic conquest of Britain had
been something of an utterly different character from the
Teutonic conquest of Gaul—unless the amount of change, of
destruction, of havoc of every kind, above all, of slaughter
and driving out of the existing inhabitants, had been far
greater in Britain than it was in Gaul. If the Angles and
Saxons in Britain had been only as the Goths in Spain, or even
as the Franks in Gaul, it is inconceivable that the final
results should have been so utterly different in the two
cases. There is the plain fact: Gaul remained a Latin-speaking
land; England became a Teutonic-speaking land. The obvious
inference is that, while in Gaul the Teutonic conquest led to
no general displacement of the inhabitants, in England it did
lead to such a general displacement. In Gaul the Franks simply
settled among a subject people, among whom they themselves
were gradually merged; in Britain the Angles and Saxons slew
or drove out the people whom they found in the land, and
settled it again as a new people."

_E. A. Freeman,
The English People in its Three Homes
(Lectures to American Audiences),
pages 114-115._

"Almost to the close of the 6th century the English conquest
of Britain was a sheer dispossession of the conquered people;
and, so far as the English sword in these earlier days
reached, Britain became England, a land, that is, not of
Britons, but of Englishmen. There is no need to believe that
the clearing of the land meant the general slaughter of the
men who held it, or to account for such a slaughter by
supposed differences between the temper of the English and
those of other conquerors. … The displacement of the
conquered people was only made possible by their own stubborn
resistance, and by the slow progress of the conquerors in the
teeth of it. Slaughter no doubt there was on the battlefield
or in towns like Anderida, whose long defence woke wrath in
their besiegers. But for the most part the Britons cannot have
been slaughtered; they were simply defeated and drew back."

_J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
chapter 4._

The view strongly stated above, as to the completeness of the
erasure of Romano-British society and influence from the whole
of England except its southwestern and north· western
counties, by the English conquest, is combated as strongly by
another less prominent school of recent historians,
represented, for example, by Mr. Henry C. Coote (The Romans of
Britain) and by Mr. Charles H. Pearson, who says: "We know
that fugitives from Britain settled largely during the 5th
century in Armorica and in Ireland; and we may perhaps accept
the legend of St. Ursula as proof that the flight, in some
instances, was directed to the more civilized parts of the
continent. But even the pious story of the 11,000 virgins is
sober and credible by the side of that history which assumes
that some million men and women were slaughtered or made
homeless by a few ship-loads of conquerors."

_C. H. Pearson,
History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,
volume 1, chapter 6._

The opinion maintained by Prof. Freeman and Mr. Green (and, no
less, by Dr. Stubbs) is the now generally accepted one.

ENGLAND: 7th Century.
The so-called "Heptarchy."

"The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regular system of seven
Kingdoms, united under the regular supremacy of a single
over-lord, is a dream which has passed away before the light
of historic criticism. The English Kingdoms in Britain were
ever fluctuating, alike in their number and in their relations
to one another. The number of perfectly independent states was
sometimes greater and sometimes less than the mystical seven,
and, till the beginning of the ninth century, the whole nation
did not admit the regular supremacy of any fixed and permanent
over-lord. Yet it is no less certain that, among the mass of
smaller and more obscure principalities, seven Kingdoms do
stand out in a marked way, seven Kingdoms of which it is
possible to recover something like a continuous history, seven
Kingdoms which alone supplied candidates for the dominion of
the whole island." These seven kingdoms were Kent, Sussex,
Essex, Wessex, East Anglia, Northumberland and Mercia.

_E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2._

"After the territorial boundaries had become more settled,
there appeared at the commencement of the seventh century
seven or eight greater and smaller kingdoms. … Historians
have described this condition of things as the Heptarchy,
disregarding the early disappearance of Sussex, and the
existence of still smaller kingdoms. But this grouping was
neither based upon equality, nor destined to last for any
length of time. It was the common interest of these smaller
states to withstand the sudden and often dangerous invasions
of their western and northern neighbours; and, accordingly,
whichever king was capable of successfully combating the
common foe, acquired for the time a certain superior rank,
which some historians denote by the title of Bretwalda. By
this name can only be understood an actual and recognized
temporary superiority; first ascribed to Ælla of Sussex, and
later passing to Northumbria, until Wessex finally attains a
real and lasting supremacy. It was geographical position which
determined these relations of superiority. The small kingdoms
in the west were shielded by the greater ones of
Northumberland, Mercia and Wessex, as though by
crescent-shaped forelands—which in their struggles with the
Welsh kingdoms, with Strathclyde and Cumbria, with Picts and
Scots, were continually in a state of martial activity. And so
the smaller western kingdoms followed the three warlike ones;
and round these Anglo-Saxon history revolved for two whole
centuries, until in Wessex we find a combination of most of
the conditions which are necessary to the existence of a great
State."

_R. Gneist,
History of the English Constitution,
chapter 3._

ENGLAND: A. D. 617.
Edwin becomes king of Northumbria.

ENGLAND: A. D. 634.
Oswald becomes king of Northumbria.

ENGLAND: A. D. 655.
Oswi becomes king of Northumbria.

{785}

ENGLAND: A. D. 670.
Egfrith becomes king of Northumbria.

ENGLAND: A. D. 688.
Ini becomes king of the West Saxons.

ENGLAND: A. D. 716.
Ethelbald becomes king of Mercia.

ENGLAND: A. D. 758.
Offa becomes king of Mercia.

ENGLAND: A. D. 794.
Cenwulf becomes king of Mercia.

ENGLAND: A. D. 800.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ecgberht.

ENGLAND: A. D. 800-836.
The supremacy of Wessex.
The first king of all the English.

"And now I have come to the reign of Ecgberht, the great
Bretwalda. He was an Ætheling of the blood of Cerdic, and he
is said to have been the son of Ealhmund, and Ealhmund is said
to have been an Under-king of Kent. For the old line of the
Kings of Kent had come to an end and Kent was now sometimes
under Wessex and sometimes under Mercia. … When Beorhtric
died in 800, he [Ecgberht] was chosen King of the West-Saxons.
He reigned until 836, and in that time he brought all the
English Kingdoms, and the greater part of Britain, more or
less under his power. The southern part of the island, all
Kent, Sussex, and Essex, he joined on to his own Kingdom, and
set his sons or other Æthelings to reign over them as his
Under-kings. But Northumberland, Mercia, and East-Anglia were
not brought so completely under his power as this. Their Kings
submitted to Ecgberht and acknowledged him as their over-lord,
but they went on reigning in their own Kingdoms, and
assembling their own Wise Men, just as they did before. They
became what in after times was called his 'vassals,' what in
English was called being his 'men.' … Besides the English
Kings, Ecgberht brought the Welsh, both in Wales and in
Cornwall, more completely under his power. … So King
Ecgberht was Lord from the Irish Sea to the German Ocean, and
from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth. So it is not
wonderful if, in his charters, he not only called himself King
of the West-Saxons or King of the West-Saxons and Kentishmen,
but sometimes 'Rex Anglorum,' or 'King of the English.' But
amidst all this glory there were signs of great evils at hand.
The Danes came several times."

_E. A. Freeman,
Old English History for Children,
chapter 7._

ENGLAND: A. D. 836.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelwulf.

ENGLAND: A. D. 855-880.
Conquests and settlements of the Danes.
The heroic struggle of Alfred the Great.
The "Peace of Wedmore" and the "Danelaw."
King Alfred's character and reign.

"The Danish invasions of England … fall naturally into three
periods, each of which finds its parallel in the course of the
English Conquest of Britain. … We first find a period in
which the object of the invaders seems to be simple plunder.
They land, they harry the country, they fight, if need be, to
secure their booty, but whether defeated or victorious, they
equally return to their ships, and sail away with what they
have gathered. This period includes the time from the first
recorded invasion [A. D. 787] till the latter half of the
ninth century. Next comes a time in which the object of the
Northmen is clearly no longer mere plunder, but settlement.
… In the reign of Æthelwulf the son of Ecgberht it is
recorded that the heathen men wintered for the first time in
the Isle of Sheppey [A. D. 855]. This marks the transition
from the first to the second period of their invasions. … It
was not however till about eleven years from this time that
the settlement actually began. Meanwhile the sceptre of the
West-Saxons passed from one hand to another. … Four sons of
Æthelwulf reigned in succession, and the reigns of the first
three among them [Ethelbald, A. D. 858, Ethelberht, 860,
Ethelred, 866] make up together only thirteen years. In the
reign of the third of these princes, Æthelred I., the second
period of the invasions fairly begins. Five years were spent
by the Northmen in ravaging and conquering the tributary
Kingdoms. Northumberland, still disputed between rival Kings,
fell an easy prey [867-869], and one or two puppet princes did
not scruple to receive a tributary crown at the hands of the
heathen invaders. They next entered Mercia [868], they seized
Nottingham, and the West-Saxon King hastening to the relief of
his vassals, was unable to dislodge them from that stronghold.
East Anglia was completely conquered [866-870] and its King
Eadmund died a martyr. At last the full storm of invasion
burst upon Wessex itself [871]. King Æthelred, the first of a
long line of West-Saxon hero-Kings, supported by his greater
brother Ælfred [Alfred the Great] met the invaders in battle
after battle with varied success. He died and Ælfred
succeeded, in the thick of the struggle. In this year [871],
the last of Æthelred and the first of Ælfred, nine pitched
battles, besides smaller engagements, were fought with the
heathens on West-Saxon ground. At last peace was made; the
Northmen retreated to London, within the Mercian frontier;
Wessex was for the moment delivered, but the supremacy won by
Ecgberht was lost. For a few years Wessex was subjected to
nothing more than temporary incursions, but Northumberland and
part of Mercia were systematically occupied by the Northmen,
and the land was divided among them. … At last the Northmen,
now settled in a large part of the island, made a second
attempt to add Wessex itself to their possessions [878]. For a
moment the land seemed conquered; Ælfred himself lay hid in the
marshes of Somersetshire; men might well deem that the Empire
of Ecgberht and the Kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for
ever. But the strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen,
the saint, the scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver, carried
his people safely through this most terrible of dangers.
Within the same year the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious
[at the battle of Ethandun, or Edington], and the Northmen
were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen, fifty years
sooner, would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation, but
which might now be fairly looked upon as honourable and even
as triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wedmore the
Northmen were to evacuate Wessex and the part of Mercia
south-west of Watling-Street; they, or at least their chiefs,
were to submit to baptism, and they were to receive the whole
land beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the West-Saxon King.
… The exact boundary started from the Thames, along the Lea
to its source, then right to Bedford and along the Ouse till
it meets Watling-Street, then along Watling-Street to the
Welsh border. See Ælfred and Guthrum's Peace,' Thorpe's 'Laws
and Institutes,' i. 152. This frontier gives London to the
English; but it seems that Ælfred did not obtain full
possession of London till 886."
{786}
The territory thus conceded to the Danes, which included all
northeastern England from the Thames to the Tyne, was
thenceforth known by the name of the Danelagh or Danelaw,
signifying the country subject to the law of the Danes. The
Peace of Wedmore ended the second period of the Danish
invasions. The third period, which was not opened until a full
century later, embraced the actual conquest of the whole of
England by a Danish king and its temporary annexation to the
dominions of the Danish crown.

_E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2, with foot-note._