ish inva conquest dom. The history of this process of consolidation is inseparably connected with the history of the Danish invasions, whose pressure had begun to be felt, even before the work of union had been finally accomplished. The Northmen from The Danthe isles of the Baltic and from either side of the Scandina- sions; vian peninsula, who began about the end of the eighth century to harry and plunder the coasts of Britain and of northern Gaul, were men of the purest Teutonic blood and speech, genuine kinsmen of the founders of the English kingdoms, kinsmen who had not yet emerged from the barbaric life and from the primitive heathenism of their forefathers. For more than half a century after the keels of these marauders first at first touched the shores of Britain (789-855), they confined them- mere plundering selves to mere plundering raids in which they would secure raids. their booty and then sail away again. The Chronicler tells us that in 855 the heathen men wintered for the first time in the isle of Sheppy.2 From that time to the end of the ninth Period of century, the Danes, who now came in larger bodies, seriously and permaengaged in the work of conquest and permanent settlement. nent settleIn the reign of Æthelred the First (866-871) the full force of Danish invasion broke upon the loosely united realm which his grandfather Ecgberht had built up. Northumbria, still rent by internal divisions, was the first to yield to the invaders, who soon completely conquered East Anglia and a part of Mercia. The national cause now depended alone upon Ælfred the hosts of Wessex, led by king Æthelred and by his brother Danes. Ælfred. In the midst of the conflict Ethelred died, and the defence of the realm passed into the hands of one who divides with Washington alone the honor of being the most perfect outcome of the English nation. In 878 so overwhelming was the force of the invasion that Ælfred was obliged to hide as a fugitive in the marshes of Somerset ; and for a time it seemed as if the standard of Woden had triumphed alike over the Dragon of Wessex and over the standard of Christ. But, after a great victory won by Ælfred Peace of in the same year, the invaders entered into a solemn peace at in 878. 1 Freeman, Norm. Cong., vol. i. p. Early Kings, vol. ii. p. 430; Freeman's Norm. Cong., Apendix KK, vol. i. p. 29. 2 E. Chron., a. 855. 436. As to the conquest of Northum- Green, Hist. of the English People, bria, see Robertson's Scotland under vol. i. pp. 72, 73. ment. and the Wedmore lagh. All Eng land out Wedmore, whereby "all Northumbria, all East Anglia, all Central England east of a line which stretched from Thames' mouth along the Lea to Bedford, thence along the Ouse to Watling Street, and by Watling Street to Chester, was left The Dane subject to the Northmen."1 Within this Danelagh, which embraced more than one half of the empire of Ecgberht, the Danes settled down among the conquered English as lords of the soil. The customary law which grew up within the Danelagh, the name applied to the region in which Danish law prevailed, varied only in small particulars from English customary law; new names rather than new customs date from the Danish occupation.2 The settlement of a foreign foe in the land inevitably tended to consolidate, for the purpose of common defence, all that part of the English nation that remained within the limits of West Saxon dominion. Under the pressure of this influence, all England southwest side of the of Watling Street fast grew into a compact and homogeneous kingdom. Ælfred, at his death in 901,3 left the Danes in quiet possession of the whole district ceded to them by the Peace of Wedmore; the task of reconquering the Danelagh he transmitted to his children. Eadward the Elder, who sucbegins and ceeded Ælfred, did not enter, however, upon the execution of this task, until driven into war by a great rising of the Northmen in the tenth year after his father's death. Before the end of his reign Eadward had recovered from the Danes the whole of Mercia, Essex, and East Anglia; and, by their annexation to his own kingdom, he became the immediate sovereign of all the English south of the Humber. After the Athelstan death of Eadward, his son Æthelstan completed the conquest completes the conof the Danelagh by incorporating Northumbria as an integral part of the realm. But the reigns of Ethelstan's successors, Eadmund and Eadred (940-955), continued to be disturbed by revolts in the north, until the final extinction of the Northumbrian kings. Not until the death of the last Danish Danelagh grew into a compact kingdom. Eadward the Elder quest of the Danelagh. 6 1 See Elfred and Guthrum's Peace, Thorpe's Laws and Institutes, vol. i. p. 152; Green, Hist. of English People, vol. i. p. 75. 2 Cf. Freeman, Norm. Cong., vol. i. p. 32, and Appendix E. E. Chron., a. 901. 4 E. Chron., a. 910. 5 Eadward also extended the supremacy of Wessex over the whole island of Britain. The princes of Wales, Northumbria, Scotland, and Strathclyde "chose him to father and to lord."- E. Chron., a. 924. 6 "Dogged as his fight had been, the Northman at last owned himself beaten. Peaceful Saxon, king of Northumbria in 954 did the phantom of provincial royalty pass forever away. From that time forth the great realm of the north was governed by an earl or ealdorman appointed by the national king. For a time after the death of Eadred (955) the kingdom was divided between his nephews, Eadwig and Edgar. Eadwig died in 958,2 and the realm was then reunited under Eadgar the Peaceful, whose Eadgar the tranquil reign of seventeen years constitutes the most glori- unites ous period in the history of the West Saxon Empire. The Engle, death of Eadwig and the final extinction of all provincial roy- and Dane alty paved the way for Eadgar's accession to the threefold sway. sovereignty of the West Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians. Engle, Saxon, and Dane were united under his sway; he became the sole and immediate king of all the English; and in his time the name of Britain passed into that Britain of Englaland, the land of Englishmen. The growth of a real Englaland. national unity was now complete; the consolidated kingdom of England was made not only in fact but in name. “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 has had the blood of Cerdic the West Saxon in his veins." 5 under his becomes The shire system, a vital ele ment in national develop ment. The early shire CHAPTER V. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. I. THE growth of the consolidated kingdom, outlined in its growth the preceding chapter, embraces three distinct periods of development: the union of the early settlements or primitive process of states in heptarchic kingdoms; the forced union of the heptarchic kingdoms under the supremacy of Wessex; the period of consolidation which, beginning with Ecgberht, ends with Eadgar. With the history of this process of national development the growth of the shire system is inseparably interlaced. It has been heretofore maintained that the primitive states in which the settlers originally grouped themselves in Britain were reproductions in every material particular of the continental Teutonic states as described by Cæsar and Tacitus. The unit of organization in the primitive state was the village-community, which appears in Britain as the tun or township.1 By a union of townships was formed the formed by district generally known in Germany as a gau or gá, a name which yielded in England to that of scir or shire. By a union of gás or shires was formed the primitive state. The scir or shire was simply what the word itself implies, a division of a larger whole; and it is now maintained, with greater or less emphasis, by the highest authorities, that scir or shire was the term originally employed in Britain to describe the district which arose out of a union of townships. But the early shire, which thus represented the largest division of the primitive state, must not be confounded with the modern The mod shire, which represents the largest division of the consoli. dated kingdom. The primitive states, advancing in the path of political confederation, united in forming the seven or eight aggregates generally known as the heptarchic kingdoms. Mercia seems to have grown up through the joining a union of townships. ern shire identical with the primitive state. 1 See above, p. 143. 2 See above, pp. 119, 120. Essays in A. S. Law, p. 18; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 96-101. triumph of consolida together of a number of smaller states in which the prevailing blood was Anglian. Wessex simply represented a union of kindred principalities, each one of which retained its own under-king. Out of the union of the North and South Folk arose East Anglia; Kent was probably formed by a double settlement in the same way; while Northumbria arose out of the union of Bernicia and Deira. By the final triumph of Ecgberht the several heptarchic unions were forced to unite in a single comprehensive union under the sway of the house of Cerdic. In this new union the conquered states preserved their existence as such, during a long period of time, to the greatest practicable extent. Each state, while still retaining its ancient boundaries and its tribal king, simply entered, at first, into more or less dependent relations with Wessex. But with the triumph of Ecgberht begins the work of con- With the solidation which occupies nearly a century and a half in its Ecgberht completion. In the process of consolidation local kingship the work of becomes extinct, and the primitive states are finally incor- tion begins. porated with Wessex, -they cease to exist as states and become shires. And as the primitive states thus descend in status, their own shires necessarily descend in the same way, -they cease to be shires and become hundreds. Thus it may be assumed, as a general principle, "that the state of "The state the seventh century became the shire of the tenth, while the seventh shire of the seventh century became the hundred of the century tenth." The use of the word "shire "in its enlarged and shire of the modern sense seems to have been introduced during or shortly while the after the reign of Ecgberht; but the name of the hundred seventh does not occur until the laws of Eadgar," in whose time the century bearrangement of the whole kingdom in shires was probably hundred completed. The map of the England of to-day clearly dis- tenth." closes the origin of the modern shire in what has been called the primitive state. Out of the principalities founded by the Somersætas, the Dorsætas, the Wilsætas, the Middle Sax of the became the tenth, shire of the came the of the |