Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/296

Rh 282 ENGLAND Rivalry of the English king doms. Western advance of Wessex. Advance of Mercia. Great ness of Northum berland. resistance of heathendom to the new faith. His alliance with C;edwalla gave the Briton his last chance of greatness at the cost of the Teutonic intruder. When Caxlwalla and Penda had both fallen before the sword of the Northum brian Bretwaldas, two questions were solved. The Teuton and not the Celt was to be dominant in southern Britain ; but the rule of the Teuton was to be a Christian and not a heathen rule. But a third question, which of the Teutonic powers in Britain should become the head of Britain, was still undecided. This question took more than a hundred years to settle, and it was at last settled in a way which was hardly to be looked for. During the greater part of the seventh and eighth centuries the struggle seemed to lie wholly between Northumberland and Mercia. Wessex seems to have given up all her schemes of aggrandizement in central Britain. Shs gradually loses her dominion north of the Thames ; it is sometimes more than she can do to maintain her own independence against Mercian supremacy. But all the while she is gradually extending her dominion at the expense of the Britons to the west. She is also, in the latter part of the period, establishing a supremacy over the smaller English kingdoms to the east. The Wessex of 800 A.D. was a state of a wholly different shape on the map from the Wessex of 600 A.D. The West-Saxon kings, from the seventh century onwards, ruled over a realm of quite a different character from any of the earlier English kingdoms. Their western conquests, from the northern Axe to the Tamar, made them, now that the days of mere slaughter and havoc were passed, masters of a realm which contained British as well as English sub jects. In the laws of Ine (675-693) we find the picture of a land in which the Britons are under the full protec tion of -the law, but in which they form a distinct class, marked as inferior to the dominant English. The Welshman s oath and the Welshman s life both have their value ; but they are rated at a less value than the oath and the life of an Englishman of the same rank. When we turn to the laws of Alfred (878-901), no trace of any such dis tinction is left. He legislates for a purely English realm. That is to say, the Welsh within the West-Saxon kingdom had, in the course of those two hundred years, become natur alized Englishmen. The impassable barrier of creed which divided the Christian Briton from the heath en Teuton had now passed away. There was nothing to hinder the conquered, when once admitted to legal protection, from gradually adopting the tongue and manners of their conquerors. The same work must have been going on along the Mercian frontier also ; but here we have not the means of studying it in the same detail. During these hundred and fifty years the Mercian kings spread their dominion a long way westward of the boundary stream of the Severn. But we hear far more of them as warring, often as conquerors, against the English powers to the north and south of them. But at the beginning of this period Northumberland still remains the greatest power of Britain. For a while after the death of Penda her supremacy was undoubted. Mercia then again became independent, and under Wulfhere (657- 675) and his successor /Ethelred (675-703), who died a monk, pressed far towards the dominion of southern as well as of central England. Meanwhile, Ecgfrith of Northum berland (670-685) was pressing on to the further north, as the West-Saxon kings were to the extreme west. Northumberland, it must be remembered, reached to the Forth ; but to the west it was hemmed in by the British land which stretched to the Clyde. This last Ecgfrith incorporated with his dominions. Carlisle and its district, a land which was in after days to become English again, now became English for a moment, as well as the land to the west which was not to become English again. But Ecgfrith fell in a war with the Picts beyond the Forth, and [HISTORY. the dominion of Northumberland died with him. The northern land still remained for a while the chief scat of learning and culture, the land of Coedmon and Breda. But its political power fell with Ecgfrith. The stoutest Northumbrian kings of the eighth century could at most keep their own borders against the Mercian, or again win victories against the North Briton. Of the Bretwakladom of the seventh century they had no hope. Towards the end of the eighth century Northumberland fell into a state of confusion and division, which made it an easy prey for any enemy. During the greater part of the eighth century everything looked as if the chief place in the island was destined for Mercia. ^Rthelbald (716-757), Offa (757-796), and Cenwulf (797-819), through three long reigns, taking in more than a century, kept up the might and glory of their kingdom. Meanwhile, in Wessex a series of valiant kings pressed westward against the Briton, and bore ip against the Mercian. But to bear up was as much as they could do. The fight of Burford in 752, under the West-Saxon king Cuthred, secured the independence of Wessex; but it secured only her independence ; her northern frontier was finally cut short by Offa. This last is the greatest name in Mercian history. Though none of these Mercian kings are enrolled on the list of Bretwaldas, yet the position of Offa was as great as that of any English king before the final union of the kingdoms. In one way it was higher than that of any of them. Offa held, not only a British, but an European position. Britain was now again threatened with annexation by a continental power. Charles the Great, not yst crowned Caesar and Augustus, but already virtual lord of Rome, exercised an influence in British affairs such as no prince of the mainland had ever exercised since Honoring withdrew his legions. That Englishmen, the famous Alcuin (Ealhwine) at their head, held high places at his court and in his favour was simply part of the wise encouragement which he held out to learning and merit everywhere. But the great Frankish king exercised direct influence, if not supremacy, in several parts of our island. The Scots are, at least by his own annalist, counted among his homagers. Northumberland took back a king at his bidding. A banished West-Saxon prince learned in his school the art of founding empires. But with the great king of the Mercians Charles corresponded as an equal. War was once threatened, but only threatened, between the great potentates of the island and of the mainland. In the next reign Cenwulf found it needful to put it clearly on record that neither the bishop of Rome nor the emperor of Rome had any jurisdiction in his realm of Mercia. These dealings with the continental empire should be marked, both on their own account and because of the light which they throw on some later passages in British history. Charles, lord of the western world of Rome, was not fated to become lord of the island world of Britain. But a nearer approach to that character than had yet fallen to any English prince was in store for the friend and pupil of the great emperor. West-Saxon Ecgberht went back from the Frankish court to do in Britain as nearly as he could what Charles had done in Germany and Gaul. He went back to become the eighth Bretwalda, and more than a Bretwalda, The day of Northumberland and ijie day of Mercia had passed ; the day of Wessex had come. The single reign of Ecgberht (802-837) placed her for ever at the head of the powers of Britain. Immediate king only south of the Thames, Ecgberht stretched his overlordship to the Forth, and, what no Bretwalda had done before him, he handed on his dominion to his successors. But the dominion of Ecgberht must not be mistaken for a kingdom of all England. He was king of the West-Saxons; once only does he call himself King of the English. But the Greatu of Mercia Offaai Charle Supre macy n Wesses under Eogber