| <The Saturday Review, April 27, 1867>
| <Freeman's History of the Norman Conquest>
| <second notice>
| <pb n="532">
| In our previous notice of Mr. Freeman's book we confined 
| ourselves chiefly to the general sketch of our earlier history 
| and Constitution which forms the first half of this 
| introductory volume. The second portion is of a more 
| purely historic character, and is treated in a more purely 
| historic way. The story of our Danish Kings is indeed a real 
| addition to our knowledge of this portion of our annals. It is 
| not merely that Mr. Freeman has been the first to realize the 
| importance of the rule of King Cnut, and his sons Harold 
| and Harthacnut, as a prelude to the Norman Conquest 
| which he has to tell; it is that he may fairly claim to be the 
| first to have brought out the full interest of the time in 
| itself. <reg orig="
| one"> No-one </reg> before 
| has told as it deserved to be told the 
| story of the desperate rally of England under Eadmund 
| Ironside; <reg orig="no one"> no-one </reg> 
| has brought out the strangely attractive 
| character of Cnut; nowhere certainly has any attempt been 
| made to give meaning or importance to the reigns of his 
| successors. Without committing ourselves wholly to his 
| conclusions, it is bare justice to Mr. Freeman to say that he 
| is the first who has brought to light a forgotten chapter of 
| English history, and that he has done it with a breadth and 
| vividness of treatment which effectually secures it from 
| ever being forgotten again.
| We are not saying that in his narrative of the reigns of these 
| Danish Kings the historian has, in our opinion, fully 
| grasped the meaning of the period which he has treated, or 
| that he has satisfactorily solved its numberless difficulties. 
| The importance, in fact, that he attaches to the artificial 
| kingdom which the genius of AElfred's successors built up 
| would alone stand in the way of any right understanding of 
| the events that produced or followed on its dissolution. The 
| truth is that till the reign of the conqueror, whatever shape 
| its outer political arrangements might assume, England was 
| not one kingdom, but three or two kingdoms. Wessex, 
| Mercia, and Northumbria remained separate political 
| bodies which 
| efforts of force or policy could really fuse 
| into one. Their relation was of course greatly modified by 
| the Danish settlement of the North. The distinction between 
| Mercia and Northumbria, for instance, was almost done 
| away; or, to put it more accurately, Mercia was divided into 
| two parts, of which the northern became purely Danish and 
| fused into Northumbria; while the southern, under its 
| Ealdormen, exhibits its old local character of mediator 
| between north and south only intensified by the mixture of 
| population which now gave it kinship with either. But these 
| modifications of provinciaol differences by the addition of 
| a difference of race increased the difficulty, which every 
| great statesman of the time had to encounter, of holding 
| this varied England together under the supremacy of the 
| royal line of Wesssex. Thhey really solved it by basing the 
| power and polic6y of England not on the wouth but on the 
| north; but such a solution, if it satisfied the Danelagh, was 
| hardly likely to be acceptable to the old and fast-waning 
| kingdom of Ecgbert and AElfred. The cardinal error of Mr. 
| Freeman's treatment of this latter period seems to us to lie 
| in his steady identification of England with Wessex ~~ of 
| West-Saxon provincialism with English patriotism. The 
| facts point the other way; again and again it is the selfish 
| provincialism of Wessex which ruins all hope of national 
| union as Dunstan or Eadgar would have built it up. It was 
| against the abandonment of the policy of the first by the 
| West-Saxon Eadwig that Mercia and Northumbria rose in 
| arms to replace the great Minister and to set their own ruler 
| on the throne. In that great revolution lies the key to the 
| after history of the realm, and for the hour its import could 
| not but be understood. The submission of Wessex before 
| the two kingdoms under Eadgar is but repeated in her 
| submission to them under Sweyn. England's real strength 
| lay to the north of Thames; if the tradition of sovereignty 
| lingered to the south of it; and it was Eadgar's steady 
| appreciation of this that forms the chief element in the 
| glory of his reign, as, in the form of a partiality for the 
| Danes, it was the one charge which Wessex could bring 
| against him. But the policy of Eadgar died with him. The 
| murder of Eadward the Martyr, the succession of 
| AEthelred, bears every mark of a political revolution. The 
| <p> "great joy of the English Witan" </p> which the 
| Chronicle so expressly notices, the retirement of Dunstan  
| and his presaging words of ill to come, the futile attempts 
| ~~ which must have come from the North ~~ to set up a 
| rival, the immediate resumption of Danish hostility, all 
| point to the success of a West-Saxon reaction in the 
| elevation of AEthelred. It is on Wessex, and for a long time 
| on Wessex only, that the invasions and ravages of the 
| Northmen fall; East Anglia alone ~~ which seems to have 
| had some special connexion with Wessex ~~ stirs a finger 
| in its defence. It was not so much the imbecility of 
| AEthelred as the practical secession of England north of the 
| Thames which paralysed the struggle against the Dane. 
| And when Northern England passed from inactivity to 
| active effort the struggle was over in a moment. It was not 
| Sweyn, but Northumbria and Mercia, which had risen as 
| one man when his ships appeared, doubtless by invitation, 
| in the Humber, that crushed the resistance of Wessex in a 
| single march, and swept AEthelred away to  Normandy. He 
| returns, when the sudden death of his conqueror had again 
| freed Wessex, to occupy the same provincial position; for if 
| Mr. Freeman regards his recall as a national act, the people 
| of Lindissy, whose homes he had harried with fire and 
| sword on his return, were not likely to mistake him for 
| more than a West-Saxon. The battles of Eadmund Ironside 
| were, with one exception, purely West-Saxon battles; it was 
| the election of Cnut that first restored ~~ as he himself 
| claimed to have restored ~~ the system of Eadgar, and gave 
| a lasting peace to the realm.
| We will not pursue the subject further, though much might 
| be adduced in support of this view from the reigns of 
| Harold and Harthacnut. But it is impossible not to see what 
| a fresh light it flings upon the character of the statesmen of 
| the day who, as they fall under the censure of the 
| Chronicle, fall equally under the lash of Mr. Freeman. But, 
| as he himself confesses, it is easier to censure than to 
| understand them. If it be true that the career of a man who 
| played so prominent a part in English politics as Eadric 
| <p> "is simply a catalogue of treasons as unintelligible as 
| those of his predecessor" </p> Aelfric; if, again, <p> "the 
| very success of his villanies" </p> (the words might apply 
| to either) <p> "shows that he must have somehow or other 
| obtained the lend of a considerable party"; </p> if, after the 
| most outrageous treasons, men such as these can still retain 
| influence with the kings they betray, and sway (as EAdric 
| did after Assandun) the counsels of the Witan in the very 
| freshness of their treachery ~~ then it is not merely the 
| character of Eadric or Aelfric that is unintelligible, it is the 
| whole history of the country and the time. What in our 
| judgment these men really attempted, what among all their 
| strange changes from side to side England, her Kings, and 
| her Witan seem to have understood them to be attempting, 
| was the restoration of that system of political balance 
| which, alike in the elections of Eadwig and AEthelred, 
| Wessex had swept away. And in the pursuit of this policy 
| they do not stand by themselves; they are but two in a line 
| of great statesmen which begins with Dunstan and ends 
| with Godwine. Dunstan's own party, with his successor 
| Sigeric at their head ~~ that clerical party which in these 
| obscure times gives us the best clue to the true national 
| sentiment ~~ led the way in the policy of purchasing peace 
| which is visited so heavily on the head of Aelfric. But the 
| position of these two Ministers, AElfric and Eadric, is ~~ it 
| must be remembered ~~ determine and, not merely by the 
| older traditions of English statesmanship, but by their 
| connexion with the province which specially represented 
| the system of compromise as opposed to that of Wes-Saxon 
| supremacy. Both were Ealdormen of English Mercia, and 
| the choice of their province accurately represents the 
| character of their policy. Like Lord Halifax, they were 
| trimmers, and they have received the usual reward of 
| trimmers, but they trimmed from causes far deeper than the 
| sentimental attraction towards minorities which 
| distinguished the statesman of the seventeenth century. 
| Tortuous as their policy might seem in details, it was 
| perfectly intelligible in its broad outlines; and with all the 
| facts fresh before them which have come down to us 
| dist0orted by legend and hate, the men of their own day 
| gathered to their standard and bowed to their counsel. But it 
| is the historic curse which rests upon heroes that to write 
| them up it is commonly necessary to write other men down; 
| and if Archbiship Sigeric and Ealdorman Aelfric are 
| sacrificed to the theory which identifies England with 
| Wessex, Eadric is ruthlessly immolated on the altar of the 
| glory of Eadmund Ironside. We will not affect to regret that 
| Mr. Freeman has for once bowed the head before a hero, fo, 
| however great a mistake the struggle of Eadmund may have 
| been politically, it carries with it the real heroic charm, and 
| it is painted in words as spirit-stirring as the deeds they tell. 
| Take such a battle-picture as this of the fight at Assandun, 
| where the King's wonderful seven months of victory end in 
| ruinous defeat. The retreat of the Danes has led them along 
| the high ground which lies south of the Crouch, by the 
| Essex coast: ~~ <q> </q>
| <pb n="533">
| It is hard after a glowing passage like this, to return to the 
| colder colours of historic fact. But the whole story of 
| Eadmund as Mr. Freeman gives it, is primarily built on 
| Florence of Worcester, and as far as the story of Eadmund 
| is concerned, Florence is but an unscrupulous expansion of 
| the Chronicle into legend. The earlier and more curious part 
| of the hero's history indeed remains untouched. While 
| AEthelred still lived it seems to have been the intention of 
| Eadmund to resume the older policy of his house; by a 
| political marriage he established some sort of lordship over 
| the five Danish boroughs along Trent, and hastened at the 
| head of a Northumbrian and Mercian force to meet Cnut, to 
| whose arms his new policy had abandoned Wessex without 
| defence. The attempt however failed, and on his father's 
| death Eadmund, rejected by England, sank into a King of 
| Wessex. It was with West-Saxon armies that he held the 
| border of his shrunken realm at pen and Sherstone against 
| the attempts of Cnut, whom the whole English nation, save 
| the few faithful nobles gathered round Eadmund in 
| London, had chosen for their national king. But he could do 
| more than hold Wessex till the junction of Eadric 
| brought him all the support of what the Chronicle from that 
| time calls <p> "all England." </p> Whatever was the 
| immediate cause of Eadric's passing over from Cnut to 
| Eadmund, whether it was the cause or result of a revulsion 
| of popular feeling, it changed the face of affairs at once. 
| Eadmund was able to push forth to the relief of London ~~ 
| the one ally left him outside his realm ~~ to harass the 
| besiegers at Brentford, and when they broke up the siege 
| from want of food, to fall on their dispersed parties in 
| Mercia and Kent. The Danes had withdrawn to Essex, and 
| there, as we have seen, Eadmund overtook them to lose all 
| in one frightful defeat. The defeat was attributed to the 
| flight of Eadric, but the voice of Eadric is first in the Witan 
| which now insists on the compromise which has become 
| inevitable. Wessex remains t Eadmund; the rest of England 
| passes to Cnut. A little time more and the sudden death of 
| his rival leaves Cnut master of all. Over all this simple 
| record of a gallant struggle, as the Chronicle gives it, 
| Florence has thrown the exaggeration and distortion of 
| legend. <p> "He fought against the armies at Pen" </p> 
| becomes a victorious rout of the Danes. Sherstone, where 
| <p> "much slaughter was made on either side, and the 
| armies of themselves separated," </p> is amplified into a 
| two days' struggle, from which the Danes fly under cover 
| of the night, and in which Eadric plays the inevitable traitor 
| with a scrupulous perversion of the grea defeat at 
| Assandrum, where the Chronicle's simple <p> "The did 
| Eadric the ealdorman, as he had often done before, begin 
| the light first with the Magesetas, and so betrayed his lord 
| the king and the English people. " </p> becomes an 
| elaborate story of a promise of treachery made to Cnut and 
| fulfilled in the very instant of English success. Mr. 
| Freeman, we must own, feels none of our distrust of 
| Florence; he follows him without a murmur from pen to 
| Assandum, but at the close of the last encounter he wakes 
| up to a faint protest, which might, under less exciting 
| circumstances than this great battle period supplies, have 
| led to a wider indredulity. When the prim monk spoils the 
| Chronicle's <p> "there were slain Abbot Eadnoth and 
| Abbot Wullsige" </p> by his pious little addition, <p> 
| "both of whom had come to pray for the soldiers while they 
| were fighting, " </p> <q> </q> says Mr. 
| Freeman, <q> 
| </q> but the 
| perversion which best illustrates Florence's way of going to 
| work is passed over without comment. Mr. Freeman rightly 
| adopts the Chronicle's narrative of the events that followed 
| Assandun; <p> "then advised Eadric and the Witan who 
| were there that the kings should be reconciled." </p> but 
| Florence saw that to give such a position to Eadric at the 
| head of the Witan was to falsify his story of a covenanted 
| treachery at Assandudn. Since the days of Demosthenes 
| men have learnt that a politician may run away from the 
| field of battle without necessarily doing so from sheer 
| treason. But the flight of panic and that of treachery are 
| easily distinguishable and the Witan and Eadmund  himself 
| were hardly likely to be following the lead of a traitor of a 
| week's standing, through whose treason the hill of 
| Assandum was covered with English dead. Whatever 
| patience policy might have dictated, the memory of that 
| corpse-strewn hill would have made patience impossible. 
| So Eadmund is made to be very indignant at the proposal of 
| peace and the Witan of the Chronicle are turned into a 
| contemptuous <p> "quidam alii." </p>
| The immediate result of the death of Eadmund Ironside was 
| the establishment of a Danish monarchy, whose effect in 
| preparing England for her Norman masters and in bringing 
| forward the great men whose names stand foremost in the 
| history of the conquest is admirably explained by Mr. 
| Freeman in the last chapters of his work. The result by 
| which it most affects us perhaps is the transference of the 
| capital which it in the long run brought about from 
| Winchester to London. The history of London is so well 
| illustrated in Mr. Freeman's pages that we wonder at his 
| omitting to notice the new position the great city assumes 
| when, through the influx of Danish citizens, it became the 
| chosen residence of Harold the First. It was 
| accident that 
| he was buried, first of our Kings, at Westminster; or that 
| his ejected corpse was again buried in the London cemetery 
| of St. Clement Danes. But of this, 
| doubt, there will be 
| more to tell when the new Minster of the confessor tells us 
| that the old capital of the Kings of Wessex is definitely 
| forsaken. Full as the last chapters are of interest, we must 
| leave them without comment. The best close of a notice 
| which has been almost exclusively concerned with
| <pb n="533">
| Eadmund Ironside will be the eloquent words of Mr. 
| Freeman's farewell to the hero-King of Wessex: ~~ <q> 
| </q>