§ 2. From the election of Æthelred to the first dispute with Normandy. 979–1000

Eadward, after a four years’ reign, was cruelly murdered. There is little doubt that this foul deed was done by the instigation, if not by the personal order, of his step-mother Ælfthryth, whose son Æthelred was now elected at the age of ten years. For thirty-seven years England was governed |Death of Dunstan. 988.| by him or in his name, and after Dunstan was gone, the reign of Æthelred meant only the reign of his unworthy favourites. The world soon learned how great was the change when the Imperial sceptre of Britain was no longer grasped by the hand of Eadgar the Peaceful. Æthelred had not been two years on the throne when the Danish invasions began again. The whole interest of the history so completely gathers round this fearful scourge that we may pass swiftly by the few, and mostly unlucky, events of |London burned. 982. (Chron. and Flor. Wig.)| internal history which are handed down to us. In one year London was burned, seemingly by one of those accidental fires which, then and long after, were so common and so destructive in cities where the buildings were mainly |Siege of Rochester. 986.| of wood. In another year, owing to some internal sedition the cause of which is not explained, Æthelred, then a youth of seventeen, besieged the town of Rochester, and being unable to take it, ravaged and alienated some of the |987.| lands of the bishopric. In another year we hear of an epidemic fever, and of a murrain among beasts, seemingly the forerunner of the modern cattle-plague, which raged through the whole of England in a way unknown to former times. Besides these misfortunes of different kinds, |Death of Ælfhere. 983.| Ælfhere of Mercia died, and was succeeded in his ealdormanship by his son Ælfric, who was banished some years afterwards, we are not told for what cause. The first marriage |Banishment of Ælfric. 986.| of Æthelred to the daughter of one of his nobles, whose name and parentage are uncertain, and the birth of his sons Æthelstan and Eadmund, afterwards the renowned Ironside, must also be placed within this period.

From these obscure domestic events we turn to the terrible drama of the Danish wars. This new series of invasions, which led in the end to the submission of all England to a Danish King, form the third and last period of Danish warfare. But the third period, after so long an interval, is as it were ushered in by a kind of repetition of the two earlier periods. Before the great attack on the |first, with mere plundering incursions, [980–982];| kingdom of England by a King of all Denmark, we find a short period of mere plunder and a short period of attempted settlement. During the first years of Æthelred the Danish invasions once more become mere piratical incursions. Then for a few years they cease altogether. |then attempts at settlement, [988–993].| Then they begin a second time, in a shape which seems to imply intended settlement, and which presently grows into |Characters of Swegen of Denmark and Olaf of Norway.| regular political conquests. The leading spirit of all these invasions was Swegen, the son of Harold Blaatand, the Danish King who played so important a part in the affairs of Normandy. And for a while there appears by his side another rover of the North, whose career was, if possible, stranger than his own, the famous Olaf Tryggvesson of Norway. But it is hard indeed to force the entries in the English Chronicles, which hardly ever touch upon the internal affairs of Scandinavia, into agreement with the half fabulous narratives in the Danish historians and in the Norwegian sagas. Swegen, baptized in his infancy, and held at the font by an Imperial godfather, had received the name of Otto, as Guthrum received the name of Æthelstan. But he cast away his new name and his new faith, and waged war against his Christian father on behalf of Thor and Odin. The life of Olaf, as told in the sagas of his country, is one of the most amazing either in history or in romance. The posthumous child of a murdered King and a fugitive Queen, he is sold as a slave in Esthonia, he flourishes through court favour in Russia, he wins principalities by marriage in Wendland and in England, and is converted to Christianity by an abbot in the Scilly Islands. The early life of Swegen is likewise connected by tradition with England; he is said to have been driven from Denmark, to have sought for shelter in England, and, when repelled by Æthelred, to have taken refuge for a time at the more hospitable court of Kenneth of Scotland. It is highly probable that Swegen took a part as a private wiking in the first three years of piracy, which chiefly laid waste the shores of Wessex and Kent. The presence of Olaf in England may also be inferred from the statement that Cheshire was ravaged by enemies who are distinctly pointed out as Norwegians. That Swegen indeed had a hand in the earlier incursions is almost proved by an interval |Cessation of inroads. 982–988.| of peace succeeding them. This interval doubtless answers to the time of Swegen’s parricidal war with his father, which is quite enough to account for the cessation of |They begin again.| his attacks upon England. After six years’ intermission, |Battle at Watchet. 988.| the invasions began again with an attack on Watchet on the western coast of Somerset, in which several English thegns were killed, but the Danes were at last beaten off. Three years later, a much more serious attack was made on the east of England, seemingly with the intention |Norwegian invasion. 991.| of making a settlement. This seems to have been a Norwegian expedition; the leaders were Justin and Guthmund, sons of Steitan, and there seems every reason to believe that Olaf Tryggvesson himself was present also. |Plunder of Ipswich.| They plundered Ipswich and thence advanced into Essex, where the brave Ealdorman Brihtnoth met them in battle |Battle of Maldon and death of Brihtnoth.| at Maldon. The hero of the monks was also the hero of the soldiers, and the exploits and death of the valiant Ealdorman were sung in strains which rank among the noblest efforts of Teutonic poetry. It is a relief to turn from the wretched picture of misgovernment and treachery which the reign of Æthelred presents, and to hear the deeds of one of the few righteous who were left told in our own ancient tongue in verses which echo the true ring of the battle-pieces of Homer. The fight of Maldon is the only battle of the days of Æthelred of which any minute details are preserved, and every detail throws light on something in the manners or the military tactics of the age. The battle took place near the town of Maldon, on the banks of the tidal river Panta, now called the Blackwater. The town lies on a hill; immediately at its base flows one branch of the river, while another, still crossed by a mediæval bridge, flows at a little distance to the north. The Danish ships seem to have lain in the branch nearest to the town, and their crews must have held the space between the two streams, while Brihtnoth came to the rescue from the north. He seems to have halted on the spot now marked by the church of Heybridge, having both streams between him and the town. He rode to the spot, but when he had drawn up his army in order, he alighted from his horse and took his place among his own household troops. These were men bound to him by the traditional tie of personal fidelity handed on from the earliest recorded days of the Teutonic race. Like Harold at Senlac, Brihtnoth fought on foot; an English King or Ealdorman used his horse only to carry him to and from the field of battle; in the actual combat the first in rank was bound to share every danger of his lowlier comrades. The wikings now sent a herald, offering to withdraw and go back to their ships, on payment of money to be assessed at their own discretion. Brihtnoth of course indignantly refused any such demand; steel and not gold was the only metal that could judge between him and them. The two hosts now stood on the two sides of the water, a deep and narrow channel, which, as the tide was coming in, could not be at once crossed. The bridge, a still older predecessor doubtless of that which still remains, was held, at Brihtnoth’s order, by three champions whose exploit reminds us, like some other incidents of the battle, of one of the most famous tales in the poetical history of Rome. The dauntless three who kept the bridge at Maldon were Wulfstan the son of Ceola, Ælfhere, and Maccus, the name of which last champion may suggest some curious inquiries as to his origin. Till the tide turned, the two armies stood facing each other, eager for battle, but unable to do more than exchange a few flights of arrows. At last the turn of the tide made the ford passable; the Northmen began to cross, and Brihtnoth, perhaps with a kind of chivalrous feeling which was doubtless utterly thrown away upon such enemies, allowed large numbers of them to pass unhindered. And now the fight began in earnest. The English stood, as at Senlac, in the array common to them and their enemies, a strong line, or rather wedge, of infantry, forming a wall with their shields. As in the old Roman battles, the fight began with the hurling of the javelins, and was carried on in close combat with the broadsword. Brihtnoth was wounded early in the battle, and his sister’s son Wulfmær was disabled. But the brave old chief went on fighting, and, after slaying several wikings with his own hand, he was cut down, and two gallant followers who fought at his side were slain with him. One of these was another Wulfmær, the young son of Wulfstan, who fought by his lord while his father was guarding the bridge. After the death of the valiant Ealdorman, the thoroughly Homeric character of the story comes out more strongly than ever. The fight over the body of Brihtnoth sounds like the fight over the body of Patroklos, or like that later day when

“Fiercer grew the fighting
Around Valerius dead.”

Two caitiffs, the only faithless ones among the body-guard of the fallen hero, two brothers whose names are handed down to infamy as Godric and Godwig, the sons of Odda, forgot their duty to their lord who had shown them such favours, and fled from the field, leaving his body in the hands of his enemies. Godric even added the further treason of mounting the horse on which Brihtnoth had ridden to the field, so that many thought that it was the Ealdorman himself who had fled. The English were thus thrown into confusion; the fortress of shields was broken. The enemy had thus time to mangle the body of Brihtnoth, |Faithfulness of the comitatus of Brihtnoth.| and to carry off his head as a trophy. But the fight was renewed by Brihtnoth’s special comrades, whose names and exploits are handed down to us in verses which breathe the true fire of the warlike minstrelsy common to Greek and Teuton. There fought Ælfwine the son of Ælfric, of a lordly house among the Mercians; there fought Æseferth the son of Ecglaf, a Northumbrian hostage who had escaped from the enemy; there fought Brihtwold, old in years but valiant among the foremost; there fought Eadward the Long, and Leofsunu, and others whose names live only in the nameless poet’s verse, but among whom one must not be forgotten, one whose tale shows that, deep as were the corruptions of English life under this wretched reign, there was at least room left for lowly merit to raise itself to honour. This was Dunnere, a churl by birth, but whose rank is spoken of without the least shadow of contempt, and whose words and deeds placed him on a level with the noblest of his comrades. In short, the whole personal following of the East-Saxon Ealdorman seems to have fought and fallen around his body. The heathen had the victory; but the defeat of the English seems to have been by no means decisive. We do not read that the Danes were able to spoil or burn the town, according to their usual custom, and the body of Brihtnoth was carried off in |His burial at Ely.| safety and found a worthy resting-place. On an island in the great fen land between Mercia and East-Anglia, on a height which in that part of Britain passes for a considerable hill, the virgin Queen Æthelthryth (the Etheldreda of hagiology) had, three centuries before, forsaken every duty of royal and married life, to rule over a sisterhood which proved fruitful in saints of royal birth. Thus arose the great monastery of Ely; but, like many other religious houses, it was utterly destroyed in the Danish invasion of the ninth century. When the monks were in the height of their power under Eadgar, Bishop Æthelwold, their great patron, chose the forsaken site for a new foundation; a church was built, and a body of monks took possession of the former home of sainted princesses. Among the benefactors of the new house the Ealdorman of the East-Saxons was one of the foremost. The first Abbot, whether from kindred or from accident, bore the same name as his benefactor the Ealdorman. He, according to the legend, died a martyr’s death, through the practice of the Lady Ælfthryth, the unworthy niece of the pious chieftain. The second Abbot Ælfsige was bound to Brihtnoth by the tie of mutual benefits. He now hastened to the place of slaughter, and carried off the body of so great a benefactor of his house. The remains of Brihtnoth were buried in the newly hallowed minster, the humble forerunner of the most stately and varied of England’s cathedral churches. Under its mighty lantern the brave and pious Ealdorman slept in peace, till, under pretence of restoration, his bones were disturbed by the savages of the |Gifts of his widow Æthelflæd; the Ely Tapestry.| eighteenth century. His widow Æthelflæd shared his devotion to the house of Saint Æthelthryth. She added to his gifts of lands; she offered a bracelet of gold, perhaps part of the badges of his office; and she adorned the minster with one gift, which, if it survived, would rank among the most precious monuments of the history and art of the age. Ely once could rival Bayeux; among the choicest treasures of Ely under her first Bishop, a hundred and twenty years later, was the tapestry on which the devotion of Æthelflæd had wrought the glorious deeds of the hero of Maldon.

At Maldon the invaders had gained a victory, but it was a victory which showed what Englishmen could still do when they had men of the old stamp to lead them. But the dastardly flight of the sons of Odda showed that England also contained men of another temper. And unhappily the policy of Æthelred was now guided by men of the stamp of Godric, not by men of the stamp of Brihtnoth. The shameful payment of money, which the brave old Ealdorman had so indignantly refused, was the only means of safety which suggested itself to a King in the first vigour of youth and to his chief counsellors in Church and State. |The Danes first bought off. 991.| The year which beheld the fight of Maldon beheld also, for the first time, the Lord of all Britain stoop to buy peace from a few ship-crews of heathen pirates. This was the beginning of that senseless and fatal system of looking to gold to do the work of steel, of trusting to barbarians who never kept their promises, and who of course, as soon as they had spent one instalment of tribute, came back again to seek for more. But this plain lesson was one which Æthelred and his advisers seemed never able to learn. The spirit of the nation, which under men like Brihtnoth was ready for vigorous resistance, was thus |Advisers of the measure;| quenched, and its energy frittered away. The evil counsellors who stand charged with the infamy of first suggesting this unhappy measure were men of the highest rank in the nation. The great Dunstan was dead; he was taken away from the evil to come in the very year in which the invasions began again. After a momentary occupation of |Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury, [990–994];| the metropolitan throne by Æthelgar, Bishop of the South-Saxons, who died the next year, the primacy fell to the lot of Sigeric, Bishop of Wiltshire or Ramsbury. The first act of this prelate was to drive out the secular priests from the metropolitan church, where Dunstan himself had let them abide. If Sigeric was at all versed in the fitting lore of his office, the history of the Old Testament might have supplied him with many precedents to show the fatal nature of his policy. No Jewish King had ever gained anything by buying off the Assyrian, and an English King was not likely to fare any better by buying off the Dane. But Sigeric joined with the Ealdormen Æthelweard and Ælfric in gaining the King’s leave to purchase peace for their own districts at the hands of the invaders by the |Ealdorman Æthelweard,| payment of ten thousand pounds. Æthelweard, “Patricius Consul Fabius Quæstor Æthelwerdus,” was a man of royal descent, who is memorable as our only lay historian of this age, but who would have been more worthy of honour in his literary character, had he, like his kinsman Ælfred, stooped to write in his native tongue, instead of |and Ealdorman Ælfric.| clothing a most meagre record in most inflated Latin. As for Ælfric, his identity and his actions form one of the standing difficulties of this time. His doings, as favourite |Peace purchased of the Northmen. 991.| and as traitor, are spread over several years of the reign of Æthelred. Having bought a respite for their own districts, the Primate and the two Ealdormen next persuaded the King and his Witan to buy a general peace for the whole land. The terms of the treaty show that, if the invaders were not actually to settle in the land, they were at least not expected to make a speedy departure. They engage to help King Æthelred against any fleet which may come to invade England; neither party is to receive the enemies of the other; and various provisions are made, which would be quite out of place if the Northmen had been expected to sail away at once. And the events of the next |Fleet assembled at London. 992.| year clearly show that they did not sail away, and they seem also to imply that the peace was broken. For in that year Æthelred and his Witan gathered together a fleet at London, which was placed under the command of two Bishops, Æscwig of Dorchester and Ælfric of Wiltshire, and of two lay chiefs, Thored the Earl, of whom we have already heard, and who, according to one account, was the King’s father-in-law, and, unluckily for the enterprise, Ælfric the Ealdorman. We have now reached the first of that long series of utterly inexplicable treasons, which were, in a way no less utterly inexplicable, always forgiven by those against whom they were wrought. One can understand the wretched policy which buys off an enemy or the sheer cowardice which flees from an enemy. Contemptible as both of them are, neither of them implies any deliberate treachery or any positive perversion of heart. But what human motive could induce an English Ealdorman deliberately to betray his country to the heathen invaders? Yet so to do now becomes the regular course on the part of the royal favourites, a class who form a strange contrast to the brave men, chiefs and people alike, whose patriotic efforts |Treason of Ælfric.| were so often thwarted by them. Ælfric now first sent word to the Northmen to beware lest they should be surrounded by the English fleet, and then actually joined them |Naval victory of the English. 992.| with his own contingent. The English, among whom the East-Angles and the citizens of London were the foremost, pursued and gave battle; the Danes were defeated with great slaughter; the traitor’s ship was taken with all |Ælfgar blinded. 993.| that was in it, but he himself narrowly escaped. Æthelred took a base and cowardly revenge by blinding Ælfric’s son Ælfgar, against whom there is nothing whatever to show that he had any share in his father’s crime. Yet, strange to say, within a few years Ælfric himself was again in favour, and again in a position to command and to betray English armies.

The storm was thus turned away from London. The importance of that great city was daily growing throughout these times. We cannot as yet call it the capital of the kingdom; but its geographical position made it one of the chief bulwarks of the land, and there was no part of the realm whose people could outdo the patriotism and |Comparison with Paris.| courage of its valiant citizens. London at this time fills much the same place in England which Paris filled in Northern Gaul a century earlier. The two cities, in their several lands, were the two great fortresses, placed on the two great rivers of the country, the special objects of attack on the part of the invaders and the special defence of the country against them. Each was, as it were, marked out by great public services to become the capital of the whole kingdom. But Paris became a national capital only because its local Count grew into a national King; London, amidst all changes within and without, has always kept more or less of her ancient character as a free city. Paris was merely a military bulwark, the dwelling-place of a ducal or a royal sovereign; London, no less important as a military post, had also a greatness which rested on a surer foundation. London, like a few other of our great cities, is one of the ties which connect our Teutonic England with the Celtic and Roman Britain of earlier times. Her British name still lives on, unchanged by the Teutonic conquerors. Before we first hear of London as an English city, she had cast away her Roman and Imperial title; she was no longer Augusta; she had again taken her ancient name, and through all changes she clave to her ancient character. The commercial fame of London dates from the early days of Roman dominion. The English Conquest may have caused an interruption for a while, but it was only for a while. As early as the days of Æthelberht the commerce of London was again renowned. Ælfred had rescued the city from the Dane; he had built a citadel for her defence, the germ of that Tower which was to be first the dwelling-place of Kings, and then the scene of the martyrdom of their victims. Among the Laws of Æthelstan none are more remarkable than those which deal with the internal affairs of London and with the regulation |Commerce of London.| of her earliest commercial corporations. During the reign of Æthelred the merchant city again became the object of special and favourable legislation. Her Institutes speak of a commerce spread over all the lands that bordered on the Western Ocean. Flemings and Frenchmen, men of Ponthieu, of Brabant, and of Lüttich, filled her markets with their wares and enriched the civic coffers with their tolls. Thither too came the men of Rouen, whose descendants were, at no distant day, to form no |Privileges enjoyed by the “Men of the Emperor.”| small element among her own citizens. And, worthy and favoured above all, came the sea-faring men of the Old-Saxon brother-land, the pioneers of the mighty Hansa of the North, which was in days to come to knit together London and Novgorod in one bond of commerce, and to dictate laws and distribute crowns among the nations by whom London was now threatened. The demand for toll and tribute fell lightly on those whom English legislation distinguished as the men of the Emperor. The manifest advantages of their trade, perhaps some feeling or memory of their common blood and speech, gained privileges for them to which the Gaul and the Norman had no claim, privileges which did not extend to the kindred Fleming, vassal as he was of the Parisian King, or to the Lorrainer, still a vassal of Cæsar, but already exposed to the contagion of foreign influence and language. The chief seat of their enterprise was indeed as yet not open to them, and the chief seat of their dominion was as yet not in being. Queenly Lübeck had not yet begun to cover her peninsula with her stately spires, her soaring gateways, the rich and varied dwellings of her merchant-princes, and the proud pile of that council-house which was to become the centre of the commerce and policy of Northern Europe. The Baltic, one day to be an Hanseatic lake, was still surrounded throughout its coasts by savage or piratical tribes to whom all Christendom alike was hostile. But, if the Trave was not yet reached, the Elbe and the Weser were already occupied. The fame of Hamburg and of Bremen was as yet ecclesiastical rather than commercial; still we may well believe that, among the continental brethren whom London welcomed, there were some who had ventured forth from their infant havens. And the Rhine at least was still open; the ancient Colony of Agrippina was already a chief mart of Teutonic commerce; as early as the days of Charles and Offa, commerce between England and the Empire was a matter of special interest on both sides; and now, in the days of Æthelred, the men of the Emperor, alone among the natives of foreign lands, were emphatically spoken of as “worthy of good laws, even as we ourselves.”

The great merchant city was thus saved, mainly, as we shall often find it in these wars, by the valour of her own citizens. The Northmen, baffled in their attack on London, turned their course northward; they stormed King Ida’s fortress of Bamburgh, the earliest seat of Northumbrian kingship; they then turned back to the mouth of the Humber, and ravaged the country on both sides of that river. The men of Lindesey and Deira were no less ready to defend their country than the men of London and East-Anglia; but they had less worthy leaders. |Treason of Fræna, Frithegist, and Godwine.| Just as the battle was beginning, the English commanders set the example of flight. Their names were Fræna, Frithegist, and Godwine, two of them at least old servants of Eadgar, and it is distinctly implied that the cause of their cowardice and treachery was that they were themselves of Danish descent, and that they therefore sympathized with the invaders rather than with those whom it was their duty to defend.

Our narrative is thus far, on the whole, straightforward and intelligible; but two difficult questions now present themselves. Were these Scandinavian invasions accompanied by any efforts on the part of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain to shake off the English supremacy? Was Æthelred, while thus attacked by foreign invaders, himself engaged in foreign disputes and wars, perhaps in |Border warfare with the Welsh.| actual invasion of a foreign land? As far as the Welsh are concerned, it would be alike impossible and unprofitable to try to trace out every detail of the border warfare which was always going on along the Mercian frontier. The English Chronicles scarcely ever condescend to speak of the ups and downs of these endless skirmishes, while |Scandinavian incursions in Wales.| the Welsh Chronicles are full of them. They tell us of a good many incursions of the “Saxons,” but they are far fuller of the ravages of the “Black Pagans,” who were probably much oftener Northmen from Ireland and the Western Islands than actual Danes from Denmark. And it is small honour to the Emperor of all Britain that his plan of buying off the heathen ravagers had perhaps been |988.| forestalled by a vassal prince of Wales. This prince, Meredydd, son of Owen, seems to have spread his dominion over the greater part of the modern principality, and in the year of the battle of Maldon we distinctly find him, not only at war with the English, but in league with the Northmen. A prince of Gwent and Morganwg, |War with Meredydd. 991.| in company with an English commander whose name appears to have been Æthelsige, ravaged the kingdom of Meredydd as far as Saint David’s. In return for this, Meredydd, with an army of heathen mercenaries, ravaged Morganwg, the dominion of the Welsh ally of England. One would be more anxious to know what was the position of Scotland at this time. The reception of Swegen by Kenneth, if it be historical, might seem to point to an unfriendly feeling towards England; but we have no notices of Scottish affairs till some years later.

A more important question still now presents itself. As far as we can gather from most imperfect and contradictory accounts, it seems that it was during these years that the first direct intercourse between England and Normandy took place, and that that intercourse was |Disputes arising from the shelter given in Normandy to Danish vessels.| of an unfriendly, if not a directly hostile, kind. The quarrel seems to have arisen out of the hospitable reception which was given in the Norman ports to the piratical fleets which were engaged in the plunder of England. The old connexion with Denmark, the good services which had been rendered by King Harold, were not forgotten in Normandy. The kind reception thus due to the Danes in general may have extended itself even to those who were in fact Harold’s rebellious subjects, warring against the champion of the faith common to Normandy and England. The Norman havens lay most conveniently open for the sale of the plunder of Wessex; it is even possible that some of the inhabitants of those parts of Normandy where the old Danish spirit still lingered may have joined their heathen kinsmen in incursions on the opposite coast. Considering the chronology, it seems most |988.| likely that the invasion of Somerset which took place in the year of Dunstan’s death was aided and abetted by Richard’s subjects in one or other of these ways. A dispute thus arose between Æthelred and the Duke; whether it led to open war is uncertain. At any rate it assumed importance enough to call for the intervention of the |Reconciliation brought about by Pope John the Fifteenth. 991.| common father of Christendom. The reigning Pope, John the Fifteenth, stepped in to reconcile two Christian princes who were weakening one another in the presence of threatening, if not triumphant, heathendom. A prelate named Leo, described as Bishop of Trier, was sent by the Pontiff to the court of Æthelred on a message of peace. He thence went to Duke Richard at Rouen, accompanied by an English embassy, consisting of Æthelsige, Bishop of Sherborne, and two thegns named Leofstan and Æthelnoth, who are not otherwise distinguished, but whose names are attached to many of the charters of the time. Peace was concluded on the terms that neither party should receive the enemies of the other, nor even each other’s subjects, unless they were provided with passports from their own sovereign.

There can be no doubt that in these transactions we may see the germs of much that came to pass in later years. The first recorded intercourse between the courts of Rouen and Winchester paved the way for that chain |from this time.| of events which was at last to establish a descendant of Richard in the royal city of Æthelred. Each country now began to feel the importance of the other, whether as a friend or as an enemy. As we go on in the reign of Æthelred, we shall find intercourse of all kinds with Normandy growing more frequent at every step. And for the first and the last time in the common history of the two countries, the Roman Bishop appears in his fitting character of a common peacemaker and father. The next Pontiff who mingles in a strife between a King of the English and a Duke of the Normans shows himself in quite another light.