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157 Dunstan appeared. He was born in Wessex, | miracle, however, induced the king to make him about the year 925. Although he was of noble abbot of Glastonbury, and to increase greatly birth, and remotely related to the royal family, the privileges of that famous monastery. Edred, as well as connected with the church through two the successor of Edmund, showed him equal fauncles, one of whom was primate, and the other vour, and would have made him Bishop of CreBishop of Winchester, these signal advantages diton; but Dunstan, who seems to have contemwere not deemed enough for the future aspirant plated a much higher preferment, declined the to clerical supremacy, without the corroboration offer. The very next day (having always miraof a miracle. His career was, therefore, indicated cles at his hand) he declared that St. Peter, St. by a miracle in a church, even before he was born. Paul, and St. Andrew had visited him in the His youth also was a series of miracles. His night, and that the last, having severely chastised early studies having been pursued with an inten- him with a rod for rejecting their apostolic society. sity that exhausted his feeble constitution, a fever commanded him never to refuse such an offer ensued; but an angel visited his couch by night, again, or even the primacy, should it be offered and suddenly restored him to health. By another him; assuring him withal that he should one day miracle he was taught how he must enlarge the travel to Rome. church in Glastonbury, &c. Dunstan, however, accomplished himself in all the learning and in most of the arts that might give him an influence in society. He was an excellent composer in music; he played skilfully upon various instruments; was a painter, a worker in design, and a caligrapher; a jeweller, and a blacksmith. After he had taken the clerical habit, he was introduced by his uncle, Aldhelm the primate, to King Athelstane, who seems to have been delighted with his music. At this time of his life he was accustomed to sing and play some of the heathen songs of the ancient Saxons, and for this he was accused by his enemies as a profane person. Incurring the envy of Athelstane's courtiers, and losing the favour of the king, who was made to suspect him of sorcery, Dunstan was driven from the court, was kicked, and cudgelled, and thrown into a bog, and there left to perish. He escaped, however, from this peril, and sought refuge with his uncle, the Bishop of Winchester. His whole life was now altered. Contiguous to the church of Glastonbury he erected a very small cell, more like a sepulchre than a human habitation; and this was at once his bed-chamber, his oratory, and his workshop; and it was here that he had that most celebrated combat with the devil which all have heard of. His character for sanctity now began to wax illustrious. A noble dame, who had renounced the world, and who occupied a cell near his own, died in the odour of sanctity, and left him all her property. He distributed the personal property among the poor, and bestowed the lands upon the church at Glastonbury, endowing that establishment at the same time with the whole of his own patrimony, which had lately fallen tocester by King Edgar in 957. Three years after him. His ambition, though inordinate, was of too lofty a character to stoop to lucrative considerations. Edmund having now succeeded to the throne, Dunstan was recalled to court; but his ambition and the dread of his talents again united the courtiers against him, and he was once more dismissed through their intrigues. An opportune

It is probable that Dunstan's ultimate aim was to effect what he deemed a reformation of the church, and that, according to the morality of the times, he justified to himself the means to which he resorted by the importance of the object he had in view. A fierce champion for the fancied holiness of celibacy, he determined to reduce the clergy under the monastic yoke, and to carry out the celibate rule of Pope Gregory II.; and as during the late troubles many both of the secular and the regular priests had married, he insisted that those who had so acted should put away both their wives and families. Those clergymen also who dwelt with their respective bishops were required to become the inmates of a monastery. In these views Dunstan was happy in having for his coadjutor Archbishop Odo. This personage, born of Danish parents, and distinguished in the early part of his life as a warrior, retained ever after the firmness and ferocity of his first calling. We have already related the part he acted along with Dunstan in the tragedy of the unhappy Elgiva. When Dunstan, shortly after this, was obliged to flee from England, on being accused of embezzlement in the administration of the royal revenues, it is related that while the king's officers were employed at the abbey of Glastonbury in taking an inventory of his effects, his old adversary, the devil, made the sacred building resound with obstreperous rejoicings. But it is added that Dunstan checked the devil's triumph by the prophetic intimation of a speedy return. In effect the death of Edwy immediately brought about the recal of Dunstan, and the restoration of his influence; and he was appointed Bishop of Wor

he obtained the primacy, being promoted to the archbishopric of Canterbury upon the death of his friend Odo. According to custom, he repaired to Rome to receive the pall at the hands of the pope, thus fulfilling the predictions of his vision.

1 See vol. i. p. 101.

2 Anglia Sacra.

stan and his adherents occupied remained safe and unmoved-sound as a rock. It is no violation of charity to suspect from this incident that the archbishop was skilled in the profession of the carpenter and builder as well as in that of the blacksmith.

The history of the Anglo-Saxon Church, from the death of Dunstan to the Norman conquest, presents little to interest the general reader. The cause for which Dunstan and his coadjutors had laboured, with the celibacy of the clergy, remained completely in the ascendant. Monasteries continued to be founded or endowed in every part of the kingdom; and such were the multitudes who devoted themselves to the cloister, that the foreboding of the venerable Bede was at length accomplished-the monks were so numerous that there were not left soldiers enough to defend the country, and above a third of the property of the land was in possession of the church, and exempted from taxes and military service.

Dunstan was now possessed of unlimited eccle- | and flooring suddenly gave way, and fell with a siastical authority;' and he was seconded by the mighty crash, with his adversaries, of whom some zealous efforts of Oswald and Ethelwald, the for- were crushed to death, and many grievously inmer of whom he promoted to the see of Worces-jured; while the part of the edifice which Dunter, and the latter to the see of Winchester, and both of whom were afterwards canonized as well as himself. The superstitious King Edgar, and afterwards the youthful King Edward, were completely under his control. With none to check him, he proceeded with merciless zeal in his projects of reformation, and alternately adopted force Dunstan lived for ten years after this sanguiand stratagem. The clergy were imperiously re-nary trick, and spent them in prosecuting his quired to dismiss their wives and children, and favourite schemes of ecclesiastical reform. His conform to the law of celibacy or resign their last moments are irradiated in the legend of his charges; and when they embraced the latter life by a whole galaxy of miracles. He died in alternative they were represented as monsters of the reign of Ethelred, A.D. 988. wickedness. The secular canons were driven out of the cathedrals and monasteries, and their places were filled with monks. Miracles were not spared for converting the obstinate recusants, and, besides the wonderful legends that were propagated in praise of St. Benedict and his severe institution, Archbishop Dunstan vouchsafed to them a sign for their conviction. A synod being held at Winchester in the year 977, at which the canons hoped that the sentence against them would be reversed, all at once a voice issued from a crucifix in the wall, exclaiming, "Do it not! do it not! You have judged well, and you would do ill to change it." This miracle or ventriloquism, however, so far from convincing the canons, only produced confusion, and broke up the meeting. A second meeting was held, with no better sucA third was appointed at Calne, and there a prodigy was to be exhibited of a more tremendous and decisive character. The opponents of Dunstan had chosen for their advocate Beornelm, a Scottish bishop, who is described as a person of subtle understanding and infinite loquacity. Dunstan, perplexed by the arguments of the logical and loquacious Scot, proceeded to his final demonstration. "I am now growing old," he exclaimed, "and you endeavour to overcome me. I am more disposed to silence than to contention. Yet I confess I am unwilling that you should vanquish me; and to Christ himself, as judge, 1 commit the cause of his church!" Scarcely had he said the words, when part of the scaffolding

cess.

1 "The Christian clergy occupied an influential station among the Anglo-Saxons, which, considering the numerous calamities that had befallen them, as well as their disputes with the Scots, is the more remarkable. In explanation of this striking phenomenon among barbaric hordes, may be adduced the account given by Tacitus of the vast influence in secular affairs possessed by the pagan German priesthood, in whom exclusively resided the power of life and death. Such a primitive influence tended, no doubt, greatly to facilitate the domination of the Roman Papal Church, and a part of their jurisdiction-the ordeals or socalled judgments of God-may have had their origin in the legal usages of the heathen priests. Religion became a national concern, and priests enacted a principal part in the Anglo-Saxon witenagemot. The rank of an archbishop was equal to that of

With the remnant of the superstitions of the ancient Britons were blended many of the superstitions and customs which the Saxons and Danes brought with them from Northern Germany and Scandinavia, and of which traces are still to be found in sundry usages and in many parts of England and Scotland. An increase of superstition of a certain kind was one of the consequences of the invasion of the Danes. In a canon of the reign of King Edgar the clergy are enjoined to be diligent in withdrawing the people from the worship of trees, stones, and fountains, and from other evil practices; and the laws of King Canute prohibit the worship of heathen gods, of the sun, moon, fire, rivers, fountains, rocks, or trees, the practice of witchcraft, or the commission of murder by magic, or other infernal devices.2

an atheling, of a bishop to that of an eolderman. The bishop presided with the eolderman in the county court (scir-gemot, the jurisdiction of which was frequently coextensive with the diocese."—Lappenberg, vol. ii. p. 322.

2 "No Germanic people preserved so many memorials of pa ganism as the Anglo-Saxons. Their days of the week have to the present time retained their heathen names; even that of Woden (Wednesday) is still unconsciously so called in both worlds, and by more tongues than when he was the chief object of religious veneration. In the north of England and the Germanic parts of Scotland, the Yule feast (geohol, geol) has never been supplanted by the name of Christmas. That these denominations throughout ages were not a senseless echo of superannuated customs, is evident from the Anglo-Saxon laws of later

In the canons of Elfric, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 995 to 1005, we learn that there were seven orders of clergy in the church, whose names and offices were the following:-1st, the

ostiary, who took charge of the church doors, and rang the bell; 2d, the lector or reader of Scripture to the congregation; 3d, the exorcist, who drove out devils by sacred adjurations or invo

JOHNWAPE ELARREFILPI

SIMON WARM ANMAK EROFTHE WORK.EANOO NI 1560

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ORDERS OF THE CLERGY, from carved panels in the church at Trull, Somersetshire.-J. W. Archer, from his drawing on the spot. cations; 4th, the acolyte, who held the tapers | read the gospel, baptized children, and gave the at the reading of the gospels and the celebration of mass; 5th, the sub-deacon, who produced the holy vessels, and attended the deacon at the altar; 6th, the deacon, who ministered to the mass-priest, laid the oblation on the altar,

times, which strictly forbid the worship of heathen gods, of the sun, the moon, fire, rivers, water-wells, stones, or forest-trees. It is, however, probable, that some of this heathenism may have been awakened by contact with the pagan Northmen. A part of the old theology lost its pernicious power; when reduced to history it became subservient to the purposes of epic poetry, as instances of which may be cited the genealogies of the AngloSaxon kings and the poem of Beowulph. Of many superstitions, which long retained their ground, relative to the power of magic, to amulets, magical medicaments, as well as to the innocent belief-so intimately connected with poetry-in elves and swarms of benevolent, or at least harmless unearthly, though sublunary spirits, it is often difficult to point out the historic elements from which they have sprung; as precisely in the northern parts of England, where they were longest preserved, the intermixture of the Britons with the Germans was the most intimate."Lappenberg.

In this curious carving, we have, commencing on the right, the ostiary ringing the church bell; next, it may be conceived, the sub-deacon, bearing a coffer containing the holy vessels. The next figure may represent the exorcist, then followed by a cross-bearer, the mass-priest, in his embroidered cape. The intervening panels are ornamented with-1st, an oak; 2d, a vine; 3d, the instruments of the passion, viz., the cross, the hammer, the pincers, and the ladder, between the rungs of which is the flagellum or scourge; on the ladder is the cock which admonished St. Peter by its crowing, and opposite, the lantern of

eucharist to the people; 7th, the mass-priest or presbyter, who preached, baptized, and consecrated the eucharist. Of the same order with the last of these, but higher in honour, was the bishop.2

Judas; 4th and 5th, a repetition of the oak and vine; and 6th, a vine surmounted by the sacred monogram. Over an adjoining series of scroll panels are the names of the ecclesiastic under whose auspices the work was performed, "John Waye clarke heere;" and of the carver himself, "Simon Warman maker of thys worke. Ano. Dni. 1560."

"A preceding bishop, probably his immediate predecessor, Elfric, in the year 1006, had directed, in one of the canons published at a council in which he presided, that every parish priest should be obliged, on Sundays and on other holidays, to explain the Lord's Prayer or the Creed, and the gospel for the day, before the people, in the English tongue. While historians enlarge on the quarrels between the Papacy and the civil power, and descant, with tedious prolixity, on the superstitions which were in vogue during the dark ages, they are too apt to pass over in a cursory manner such facts as this. Let the reader reflect on the preciousness of the doctrines which the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and some of the plainest and most practical passages of the New Testament either exhibit or imply, and he will be convinced that, if the canon of Elfric had been obeyed with any tolerable degree of spirit and exactness in a number of parishes in England, the ignorance and darkness could not have been so complete or so universal as we are generally taught to believe.

That elementary knowledge which is the object of the canon is ever more salutary in its influence than the most ingenious subtleties of literary refinement in religion."-Milner, Hist. of the Church of Christ, cent. 11, ch. iv.

CHAPTER VII.-HISTORY OF SOCIETY.

FROM THE ARRIVAL OF THE SAXONS TO THE ARRIVAL OF THE NORMANS.-A.D. 449-1066

Union of the Saxon tribes in England into one people-Classes into which they were divided-Condition of the ceorls and serfs-Different kinds of servitude-Ecclesiastical architecture-Houses-Furniture-FoodCookery-Anglo-Saxon banquets-Drinking practices-Dress of the Anglo-Saxons-Ornaments-Female costume and ornaments-Social and domestic life of the Anglo-Saxons-Female occupations Superstitions of the people-Their course of life from the beginning to the close-Amusements of the Anglo-Saxons--State of education-Learned Englishmen.

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HEN the Saxons, Jutes, and that which converted them from restless pirates Angles had obtained possession into peaceful industrious agriculturists. In obof England, and when the Hep-taining not the mere plunder of the English tarchy had been resolved into coast, but the permanent possession of England a monarchy, it was in the or- itself, they had got all and more than they had dinary course of things that hoped for; and, therefore, nothing further rethese distinctions of races should cease, and the mained for them but to sheathe their swords, and whole become one people. This was the more sit down to the full enjoyment of their conquest. natural, as they were previously assimilated in character, language, customs, and institutions, as well as by the fact of a common origin. Accordingly they soon came to be spoken of, first under the name of Angles, and afterwards under the compound term of Anglo-Saxons. An equally natural, but still more important change, was

1 The police of the Anglo-Saxons was established and secured by the principle of mutual guarantee. This system began with the magburk, or family-bond, including whole communities, related by blood and occupying the same localities. These seem to have given their names to their respective possessions in the lands they had conquered. Mr. Kemble gives two lists of patronymical names, which he believes to be those of ancient marks the first derived from the Codex Diplomaticus and other authorities; the second inferred from actual local names in England. The total number of the latter is 627; but as several are found repeated in various counties, the grand total is 1329. Thus, the Ebingas are supposed to have given their name to Abinger, Abinghall, and Abington; the Aldingas, to Aldingbourn, Aldingham, and Aldington; the Buslingas, to Buslingthorpe; the Fealdingas, to Faldingworth; the Ferdingas, to Firdingbridge; the Gildingas, to Gildingwells; the Hemingas, to Hemingbrough and Hemingby, &c.; while many of these names stand alone, without any addition of ton, ham, thorpe, worth, &c. Mr. Kemble supposes that, as of 190 of these last, 140 occur in counties on the eastern and southern coasts, and twenty-two more in counties easily accessible through great navigable streams, they were possibly the original seats of the marks bearing those names; and that the settlements distinguished by the addition of ham, wie, &c., to these original names, were filial settlements, or, as it were, colonies from them.

"In looking over a good county map," says Mr. K., "we are surprised to see the systematic succession of places ending in den, holt, wood, hurst, fald, and other words, which invariably denote forests and out-lying pastures in the woods. These are all in the mark; and within them we may trace, with equal certainty, the hams, tuns, worths, and stedes, which imply settled habitations."

Thus, while the British and Celtic races seem to have named places almost invariably from some natural peculiarity of the ground, the Anglo-Saxons, it appears, named them from the families or relationships that settled on them. And each of these small communities had its police maintained originally by the magburk, or family-bond, according to which all were held respon

In this way the three Germanic tribes became a single nation; and from these causes, also, they acquired that distinctive nationality which was best suited to their common character. The country was divided into shires and hundreds, and into cities, burghs, and townships; while the people, in like manner, were parted into their

sible for the offence committed by one; and an offence done to one, it became the right and duty of all to avenge.

But this, though a natural, could not be a lasting system. A time inevitably comes when the members of a sibsceaft, or cognation, gradually disperse, and neighbours cease to be kinsmen. This naturally led to a new system of guarantee, founded simply on number and neighbourhood. The free inhabitants of the mark came thus to be classed in tens and hundreds--technically, tithings and hundreds-each forming a corporation, probably comprising a corresponding number of members respectively, together with a tithing-man for each tithing, and a hundred-man for each hundred; thus making 111 men in each territorial hundred.

It must not be supposed that these 111 heads of houses were, with their children and domestic servants, the sole in 'habitants of the Lundred; a large allowance must be made or slaves. Neither did the territorial hundred contain always neither more nor fewer heads of houses than those with which it commenced A distinction seems, indeed, to have been for some time observed between the numerical and the territorial division-the nume rical being called the hynden, which consisted of ten tithings, and the territorial being called the hundred, although originally they were identical. The tendency of land divisions being to remain stationary for ages, while their population varies inces santly, two very distinct things seem to have grown up together in England-a constantly increasing number of the gylds, or corporations, yet a nearly or entirely stationary tale of territorial tithings and hundreds. There seems to have been elbowroom within the marks, to admit a considerable elasticity of the population, without disturbing their ancient boundaries, but merely by extending and improving cultivation within those boundaries. Assuming that our present hundreds nearly represent the original in number and extent, we might conclude that, if in the year 400 Kent was first divided, Thanet then contained only 100 heads of houses, or hydes, upon 3000 acres of cultivated land; while, in the time of Bede, three centuries later, it comprised 600 families, upon 18,000 cultivated

acres.

respective classes, whether of rich or poor, whether | but still it was hard enough that five good men of bond or free. But it is to these divisions of the people that we confine our attention at present, and to the development and progress of their character in intellectual, social, and domestic life.

The Anglo-Saxon society, after it had assumed a settled and regularly organized form, may be divided into six classes. These were-1, the king and his family; 2, the ethelborn, or nobly-born, who were men of the highest birth; 3, men high in office or possessed of large property; 4, a freeman; 5, a freed man; 6, a serf. In simplifying these nice distinctions, however, the people, properly so called, were divided into two great classes the eorls and the ceorls. The former comprised the ethelborn, eoldermen, or men of princely descent; the twelfhaendmen, or men of twelve hands, and the sixhaendmen, or men of six hands; that is, the nobility of inferior rank. As for the ceorls (or churls), who were also called villains (or inhabitants of a villa), they were the free-born and the liberated, who dwelt in the township, village, or farm, under the rule of their feudal superior, and were the agriculturists and handicraftsmen of the country, and traders and small landholders of every description under the rank of priest and noble. These constituted the middle classes, out of which the commons of England were ultimately formed. An idea of the

and true might be outfaced in a court by the testimony of only one six-handed man. The ceorls, also, although they were not the absolute property of a master, were yet so strictly bound to the soil that they could not remove from the estate on which they were born; and when this was sold, they were transferred with it to the new purchaser, like the cattle that grazed, or even the trees that grew upon it. This was nothing more or less than the condition in which these ceorls, villani, or bondmen had been placed in the forests of Germany, which Tacitus thus describes: "The rest of their slaves have not, like ours, particular employments in the family allotted them. Each is the master of a habitation and household of his own. The lord requires from him a certain quantity of grain, cattle, or cloth, as from a tenant; and so far only the subjection of the slave extends." Mild though this form of servitude might be in a rude state of society, the Roman historian characterizes it under the name of slavery; and there are few of the present day who will not agree with him. To be mere part and parcel of the soil, though it were that of Eden itself, and to be bound to it beyond the power or liberty of removal, is bondage indeed. It is evident that a long period

inferior place which the ceorls occupied, although
they constituted the bulk of the community, may
be obtained from the following scale, established
in the courts of law. The word of a king or
bishop was of itself conclusive, and required
no additional corroboration. The compurgatory
oath of a priest was equivalent to that of 120
ceorls, and the oath of a deacon to that of sixty.
But when we descend from these sacred privi-
leges of the church in the matter of legal testi-
mony and oath-taking, to the lay nobles, it is gra- SERF OR THEOW.-Cotton MS
tifying to find that the eorl was equivalent to
not more than six ceorls. This was a liberal al-
lowance, according to the standard of the age;

"The population of the country consisted of two elements -the chiefs and their followers, who had obtained possession and lordship of the lands; and the agriculturists and labourers, who were in the position of serfs and bondmen, and comprised chiefly the old Romano-British population, which, under the Anglo-Saxons, was probably quite as well off as under the Ro

mans.

The Saxons thus held the country, while the Roman cities continued to hold the towns as tributaries of the Saxon kings, within whose bounds they stood. The country thus exhibited Teutonic rudeness, while the towns were the representatives of Roman civilization; and though the intercourse between the two, and the gradual infusion of Saxon blood into the towns, laid the foundation of modern society, there was a feeling of hostility and rivalry between town and country which has hardly yet disappeared. Between the aristocratic feeling of the Saxon landholders, and the republican principles that existed in the towns, arose, under the balancing influence of the crown, the modern political constitution."-See The Celt, the VOL. 1.

had to intervene, and many a step of transition to be effected, before these land-enthralled churls could become the happy, bold-hearted, and free-born, freemoving commons of merry England.

A worse condition still than this was that of the serfs or slaves, in the proper acceptation of the term. These men, who constituted a large portion of the AngloSaxon population, were not only bondmen of the

Cleopatra C. 8

Roman, and the Saxon, p. 435. In illustrating the only effects by which his view was demonstrated, the same author adds, at p. 440:-"It may be cited as a proof of the correctness of this view of the mode in which the Roman corporations outlived the shock of invasion, and thus became a chief instrument in the civilization of subsequent ages, that even the Danes, in their predatory excursions, often entered into similar compositions with the Saxon towns, as with Canterbury, in 1009. It may be added, that there is no greater evidence of the independence and strength of the towns under the Saxons than the circumstance, that while the king and his earls, with the forces of the counties, were not able to make a successful stand against the Danish invaders, it frequently happened that a town singly drove a powerful army from its gates, and the townsmen sometimes issued forth, and defeated the enemy in a pitched

battle."

2 Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons. 3 Ibid.; Palgrave's English Commonwealth.

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