THE RESISTANCE TO THE DANES.
In the long period of three and a-half centuries which
had elapsed between the Jutish conquest of Kent and
the establishment of the West Saxon over-lordship,
the politics of Britain had been wholly insular.
The island had been brought back by Augustine and his
successors into ecclesiastical, commercial, and literary
union with the continent: but no foreign war
or invasion had ever broken the monotony of murdering
the Welsh and harrying the surrounding English.
The isolation of England was complete. Ship-building
was almost an obsolete art: and the small trade
which still centred in London seems to have been mainly
carried on in Frisian bottoms; for the Low Dutch of
the continent still retained the seafaring habits
which those of England had forgotten. But a new
enemy was now beginning to appear in northern Europe—the
Scandinavians. The history of the great wicking
movement forms the subject of a separate volume in
this series: but the manner in which the English
met it will demand a brief treatment here. Some
outline of the bare facts, however, must first be
premised.
As early as 789, during the reign of Offa in Mercia,
“three ships of Northmen from Haeretha land”
came on shore in Wessex. “Then the reeve
rode against them, and would have driven them to the
king’s town, for he wist not what they were:
and there men slew him. Those were the first
ships of Danish men that ever sought English kin’s
land.” In 795, “the harrying of heathen
men wretchedly destroyed God’s church at Lindisfarne
isle, through rapine and manslaughter.”
In the succeeding year, “the heathen harried
among the Northumbrians, and plundered Ecgberht’s
monastery at Wearmouth.” In 832, “heathen
men ravaged Sheppey”; and a year later, “King
Ecgberht fought against the crews of thirty-five ships
at Charmouth, and there was muckle slaughter made,
and the Danes held the battle-field."[1] In 835, another
host came to the West Welsh (now almost reduced to
the peninsula of Cornwall): and the Welsh readily
joined them against their West Saxon over-lord.
Ecgberht met the united hosts at Hengestesdun and
put them both to flight. It was his last success.
In the succeeding year he died, and the kingdom descended
to his weak son, AEthelwulf. His second son,
AEthelstan, was placed over Kent, Essex, Surrey, and
Sussex, as under-king.
[1] This entry in the Chronicle, however, is
probably
erroneous, as an exactly
similar one occurs under AEthelwulf,
seven years later.
