III. 721. BOOK formed that the queen had directed it: he demanded from her an explanation of the strange mystery. She smiled and answered: "My lord and husband! this is not indeed the noisy hilarity of yesterday: here are no brilliant hangings, no flattery, and no parasites: here are no tables weighed down with silver vessels: no exquisite delicacies to delight the palate: all these are gone like the smoke and wind. Have they not already passed away into nothingness? And should we not feel alarmed who covet them so much? for we shall be as transient. Are not all such things? are not we ourselves like a river, hurrying heedless and headlong, to the dark ocean of illimitable time? Unhappy must we be if we let them absorb our minds. Think, I entreat you, how disgusting those things become of which we have been so enamoured. See to what filthy objects we are attached. In these loathsome relics we may see what our pampered bodies will at last be. Ah! let us reflect, that the greater we have been, and the more powerful we are now, the more alarmed ought to be our solicitude; for the greater will be the punishment of our misconduct." 47 Ina goes to Rome. THE singularity of the incident had its full impression on the mind of Ina: he resigned his crown to his kinsman, and, imitating what all ranks were then emulous to do, he travelled to Rome.* He founded there a Saxon school, for the instruction of his countrymen who chose to be educated 47 Malmsbury, p. 15. 48 48 Bede, lib. v. c. 7. Sax. Chron. 52. Flor. Wig. 269. M. West. 265. Bede says of Ina's journey, that it was what in these times plures de gente Anglorum, nobiles, ignobiles, laici, clerici, viri ac feminæ, certatim facere consuerunt. IX. 721. at Rome, and he added a church for their service, CHAP. and for the convenience of their burial. To support this, and to provide a subsistence for the English who should dwell there, he imposed the payment of a penny on every family, which was denominated Romescot. It was sent to the papal see.49 Ina studiously avoided all pomp in his voluntary humiliation. He cut off his hair, put on a plebeian dress, and lived with his queen a private and retired life, even seeking support by the labour of his hands, till he died there.50 This conduct was evidence that his religious feelings were genuine impulses of sincerity. 781. The Anglo THE mutations of the octarchy for the last century had been generally from an heptarchy to an hexarchy; at the period of Ina's death it was an hexarchy, because Wessex had absorbed Sussex, and Deira and Bernicia were amalgamated into Northumbria. This restless province was then governed by Osric, who left the kingdom to Ceolwulf, the brother of Cenred, whom he had destroy- this period. ed", and the friend and patron of Bede. In 716-756. Mercia, Ethelbald, a descendant of Wybba, reigned.52 In Essex, which was becoming fast the satellite of Mercia, Suebricht had governed alone 49 Matt. West. 265. 50 Dug. Monast. i. p. 14. 32. Malm. Pont. 313. Alcuin mentions him by the name of In: "Quem clamant IN, incerto cognomine, gentes." 51 Flor. Wig. 269. Malmsb. 21. Ceolwulf submitted to the tonsure in 737, and Eadbert succeeded. Smith's Bede, p. 224. Ceolwulf was descended from Ocga, one of the sons of Ida. Sim. Dun. p. 7. Bede in one line expresses the vicissitudes of Ceolwulf, and the state of the country, captus et adtonsus et remissus in regnum, lib. v. c. ult. 52 Sax. Chron. 51. 59. Bede, lib. v. c. 24. He was the son of Alwion. Ing. 33. Saxon kings at III. BOOK since his brother Offa went to Rome.53 In Kent, Eadbert had ascended the throne of Wihtred, whose laws remain to us.54 In East Anglia, Aldulphus was succeeded by Selred; on his death, Alphuald, for a short time, inherited the sceptre.55 725. 747. 53 By mistake, Langhorn, 281., and Rapin, place Selred on the throne of Essex. Malmsb. 35.; Flor. Wig. 273.; and Al. Beverl. 85., led them into the error. We learn from Huntingdon, that Selred was king of East Anglia, p. 339., whom the Chronicle of Mailros supports. Suebricht or Suebred was king of Essex, and died 738. Mailros, p. 136. Sim. Dunelm. 100. A charter of his, dated 704, is in Smith's Appendix to Bede, p. 749. In another he signs with Sebbi and Sighear, ib. p. 748. Swithred reigned in Essex 758, Sim. Dun. 275. 54 After a reign of thirty-four years and a half, Wihtred died in 725, and left Edilberct, Eadbert, and Alric his heirs. Bede, lib. v. c. 23. Eadbert reigned until 748. Sax. Chron. 56. or 749. Mailros, p. 137. Ethelbert until 760. Sax. Chron. 60. when the surviving brother, Alric, succeeded, Malmsbury, p. 11. After this period we find three kings again in Kent signing charters contemporaneously; as in 762 Sigiraed and Eadbert appear, in one charter, as kings of Kent; and in another, Eardulf; and in 765 Egebert signs a charter with the same title. Thorpe, Reg. Roffens, p. 16. So many kings, in so small a province as Kent, strikingly illustrate the gavel-kind tenure of lands which still prevails there. 55 In the synod at Hatfield in 680, Aldulph was present. This was the seventeenth year of his reign. Bede, lib. iv. c. 17., and the Ely History, MSS. Cott. Nero. A. 15., state Aldulph to have been reigning in 679. The Chronicle of Mailros accurately places Selred after him, who died 747. 1 Gale Script. 137. Alphuald, the successor of Selred, died 749, ibid. Humbean and Albert divided the kingdom afterwards, ibid. Sim. Dun. 103. M. West. names them Beorna and Ethelbert, p.273. Bromton, p. 749. Flor. Wig. places Beorn in 768, p. 275. I hope these few last notes correctly state a very troublesome chronology. CHAP. X. The History of the Octarchy, from the Death of INA to the 2 X. 728. Æthel heard in ETHELHEARD, the kinsman of Ina, and a descendant of Cerdic, obtained the crown of West Saxony.' Oswald, also sprung from the founder of Wessex, at first opposed his pretensions, but discovering the inferiority of his forces, abandoned Wessex. the contest. The king invaded Devonshire, and was extending the ravages into Cornwall, when the Britons, under Rodri Malwynawc, vanquished him at Heilyn, in Cornwall. At Garth Maelawch, in North Wales, and at Pencoet, in Glamorganshire, the Cymry also triumphed. On Æthel 1 Sax. Chron. 52. Flor. Wig. 269. Ran. Higd. Chron. Petri de Burgo, p. 6. gives this date, which Ethelwerd, p. 837., also sanctions. Matt. West. p.266. has 727, yet the expressions of Bede, a contemporary, imply the year 725. Smith's ed. p. 188., note.— A passage of Malmsbury, in his Antiq. Glast. Eccles. p.312., promises to reconcile the contradictions. It states that Ina went twice to Rome. "Eodem anno quo idem rex Romam personaliter adiit, privilegium apostolico signaculo corroboratum in redeundo Glastoniam apportavit. Et postea iterum cum Ethelburga regina sua, instinctu ejusdem, Romam abiit."Bede may have dated his first peregrination; the others his last. 2 Huntingd. 338. In the charter of Ina, transcribed by Malmsbury, Antiq. Glast. p. 312., Ethelheard signs frater reginæ. Oswald was the son of Ethelbald, of the race of Cerdic, through Cealwin and Cuthwin. Flor. Wig. 269. Sax. Chron. 53. The plural expression of Bede, taken in its natural force, seems to express that Ina left his crown to Oswald, as well as Ethelheard, "ipse relicto regno ac juvenioribus commendato," lib.v. c.7. 3 Brut y Saeson, and Brut y Tywysogion, 471, 472. BOOK 728. Ethelbald in Mercia. 728. Wars with the Welsh. heard's death, Cuthred, his kinsman, succeeded him.4 THE king of Mercia at this period, Ethelbald, was a man of elegant stature, a powerful frame, a warlike and imperious spirit. Persecuted in his youth by the king he had succeeded, and to whom he had been dangerous, he owed his safety to the secresy of his retreat. Here the pious Guthlac endeavoured to moralise his mind, and, in gratitude to the friend of his adversity, Ethelbald constructed the monastery of Croyland over his tomb. The military abilities of this Mercian king, procured him the same predominance over the other AngloSaxon kingdoms which Egbert afterwards acquired. He subdued them all up to the Humber; and afterwards, in 737, invaded and conquered Northumbria. The Welsh next attracted his ambition; and, to annex the pleasant region between the Severn and the Wye to his Mercian territories, he entered Wales with a powerful army. At Carno, a mountain in Monmouthshire, the Britons checked his progress in a severe battle, and drove him over 6 4 Sax. Chron. 55. The Chronicle of Mailros, a document valuable for its general accuracy, countenances Bede's date of Æthelheard's reign; it says, that in 740, after a reign of fourteen years, he died. 1 Gale's Rer. Angl. Script. p. 136. 5 Ingulf. p. 2—4. To sustain the stony mass, an immense quantity of wooden piles was driven into the marsh; and hard earth was brought in boats nine miles, to assist in making the foundation. There is a MS. life of Guthlac, in the Cotton Library, Vesp. D. 21., in Saxon, by a monk named Alfric, and addressed to Alfwold, king of East Anglia. His beginning will show the respectful style used by the clergy to the sovereigns at that time. "Unum pcaldende piht zelyfendum, a poɲuld a populd minum tham leopertan hlafonde, ofen ealle othpe men copolice Kýningas, Alfpols East Angla Kỳning, mid pilte et mid ge-pirenum pice healdens. MSS. ibid. 6 Hunt. lib. iv. p. 339, 340. Sax. Chron. 54. |