Note Pp. p. . The Taking of Canterbury and the Martyrdom of Ælfheah

Of the siege of Canterbury and the martyrdom of Ælfheah—the Alphege of hagiology—we have four distinct accounts. That in the Chronicles of course claims the first place. It was written before 1023, as it speaks of Ælfheah’s body being still at Saint Paul’s and working miracles there, whereas it was translated to Canterbury in 1023. The witness of the Chronicles I of course accept unhesitatingly. And next to it I am inclined to place the narrative in Thietmar of Merseburg, which he heard when it was fresh from the lips of an Englishman named Sewald. He gives a minute account of the martyrdom, which differs a good deal from the popular version, but which falls in very well with the account in the Chronicles, contradicting it in nothing, but explaining it on one or two points. But, oddly enough, Ælfheah is called Dunstan, a strange mistake to have been made by a contemporary, even though a foreigner, but one which shows how great was the fame of Dunstan, and how small the fame of Ælfheah, in Christendom generally. There is also the Life of Ælfheah by Osbern in Anglia Sacra, ii. 122. This is a mere piece of hagiology, in the common style of such lives, and it contains many statements which are untrue or impossible. It is in fact valuable only as affording practice in the art of unravelling the component elements of a romantic story. But the remarkable thing is that the fourth narrative, that of Florence, departs in several important points from the Chronicles and copies either from Osbern, or, what is more likely, from some third source from which Osbern also copied. Florence’s knowledge and good sense kept him from repeating any of Osbern’s grosser absurdities, but he has not improved his narrative by introducing several details which cannot be reconciled with the Chronicles. Simeon simply copies Florence; Henry of Huntingdon follows the Chronicles, with some slight touches from Florence.

The Chronicles (1011) describe the whole event in detail, but they give us only a picture of plunder and captivity, without any mention of slaughter. The Archbishop and the other persons spoken of and a further countless number of clerks and laymen, men and women, were made prisoners (“hi þær genamon inne ealle þa gehadodan men and weras and wif; þæt wæs unasecgendlic ænigum men hu micel þæs folces wǽs”). The word “genamon” which is applied to the mass of the people is the same word which is applied to the Archbishop, who was not put to death till long after, and to others who we know were not put to death at all. The Chronicles then go on to say how the Danes stayed in the city as long as they would, and when they had searched it thoroughly went to their ships (“ðá hí hæfdon þa buruh ealle asmeade, wendon him þá tó scypan”). Then follows a short poem lamenting the captivity of Ælfheah and the wretchedness of the city; but there is not a word to imply any general massacre. Neither is there anything to imply such a massacre in the shorter narrative of Thietmar. But in Osbern (Ang. Sacr. ii. 136, 137) and Florence we get a soul-harrowing account of every possible horror. Men are slaughtered, burned, thrown from the walls, tortured in horrible ways. Women are dragged by their hair and thrown into the fire. Children are tossed on spears or crushed under the wheels of waggons. The whole ends with a systematic decimation of the surviving adult males. By decimation is here meant the slaying, not of one out of ten, but of nine out of ten. This process leaves their lives to four monks and eight hundred laymen. If this is any clew to the population of Canterbury, the monks of the two minsters must have been fewer, and the general population much larger, than one would have expected. The metropolis of England must have gone down, relatively at least, since the eleventh century.

These stories cannot be accepted in the teeth of the speaking silence of the Chroniclers. The narrative of these last is so minute and so pathetic that they could hardly have failed to dwell on the massacre if any massacre had taken place. No doubt some lives were lost; a city was not likely to be taken, least of all by Danes in that age, without the loss of some lives. And here would be material enough for rhetorical hagiologists to work up into the picture given us by Osbern, into which they of course brought in all the horrors that they had ever heard of anywhere.

The reader will perhaps not be inclined to set much store by the authority of Osbern, if he knows the kind of story with which he (ii. 132) introduces the siege. One of the brothers of Eadric, a man “lubricus et superbus” like Brihtric, perhaps Brihtric himself, stirs up the wrath of the thegns of Kent by falsely accusing them to the King, and thereby procuring the confiscation of the estates of many of them. For these misdeeds they kill him and burn his house. Then Eadric, whom the King had made ruler over the whole realm (“totius imperii sui præfectum statuerat”), calls on the King to chastise them. The parts of Eadward and Godwine in a later story are thus transposed. Æthelred refuses to inflict any punishment on the Kentish thegns, affirming the wrong-doer to have been rightfully slain (“jure peremptum”). Eadric then takes the law into his own hands; he collects ten thousand men, who are described as being “optime armati,” and invades Kent at their head. The Kentishmen however resist valiantly, and the expedition fails. He then leagues himself with the Danes (“Danorum conciliabula expetit”) and exhorts them to attack, not Kent only, but the whole of Britain (“ad totius Britanniæ fines invadendos”). He describes the nakedness of the land, how the King—at the age of forty-two—was worn out with years, how the princes and people were all sunk in sloth and luxury. All this happens at a time when Swegen is already dead, and when Thurkill has seemingly succeeded to his power (see above, p. ). So Eadric and Thurkill agree to divide the kingdom. Eadric is to take the East-Angles, seemingly in addition to his Mercian government, and the Danes are to take the North (“regnum post victoriam æqua sorte dividendum se Orientalibus Anglis principari, illos vero aquilone potiri”). Eadric now joins the Danes in the siege of Canterbury. Thurkill is not personally mentioned, but Eadric presently vanishes from the stage, without any explanation. It might not be hard to resolve this fable into its component parts; it is even possible that Eadric’s attack on the metropolitan city of England is really borrowed from his capture of the metropolitan city of Wales.

A point now arises as to the traitorous churchman who betrayed the city. It is not quite clear whether there were two Ælfmærs or one (see Hook, Lives of Archbishops, i. 466). The Chronicles seem to distinguish Ælfmær the traitor from Ælfmær the Abbot; and Florence distinguishes the traitor as “archidiaconus.” Yet if Ælfmær the Abbot was a different man from Ælfmær the traitor, why should the Danes let Abbot Ælfmær go free, when the Archbishop and the rest were seized? I can only suggest, as seems also to have occurred to Dr. Hook, that the story is the reverse story of that of Cinna the conspirator and Cinna the poet, that the Danes mistook one Ælfmær for the other, and let go the innocent one by mistake.

Abbot Ælfmær undoubtedly kept his abbey, and was afterwards raised to the bishopric of Dorset (W. Thorn, X Scriptt. 1782; Hist. St. Aug. 23, 24). Thorn gives two dates, 1017 and 1022, and makes him resign his see and return to his abbey. He signs various charters of Cnut as Bishop; he also appears as Abbot in a writ of Cnut (Cod. Dipl. iv. 9), addressed to him together with Archbishop Lyfing—therefore before 1020—and Bishop Godwine; also as a witness to the marriage settlement of another Godwine (Cod. Dipl. iv. 10) along with King Cnut and Archbishop Lyfing. We find him also in the doubtful charter of 1023, in Cod. Dipl. iv. 23, 25, where he signs in company with Æthelric, Bishop of Dorset, who otherwise seems to have left off signing in 1009. This Ælfmær must not be confounded with the contemporary Ælfmær, Bishop of the South-Saxons, whose signature also appears to the charter in iv. 25. The annals of his own abbey speak of Ælfmær with great reverence; and, though ordinary traitors might be advanced, a churchman who had had an indirect share in the martyrdom of a saint would hardly meet with any favour at the hands of Cnut or of any one else.

In describing the Archbishop’s martyrdom, I have given no heed to the mythical details in Osbern, but I have formed my narrative from the Chroniclers and Thietmar. There is no contradiction between the two accounts, but each fills up gaps in the other. Thus the statement that Ælfheah first promised a ransom and then refused to pay it comes from Thietmar; this explains the whole story, which otherwise is hardly intelligible. We thus see, what otherwise we do not clearly see, both why the Danes kept Ælfheah so long in bonds, and why they were so bitterly enraged against him when he finally refused to pay. And we can easily see why this part of the story should be left out, as tending somewhat to lessen the martyr’s glory, while it is not easy to see why any one should invent or imagine it. Florence makes the Danes demand a ransom of the Archbishop on one Saturday, and tell him that, if he does not pay it, he shall be killed on the next Saturday (“necem ejus usque ad aliud sabbatum protelant”). He seems to connect the demand with the late vote of the Witan rather than with any promise on the part of Ælfheah himself. The intercession of Thurkill comes from Thietmar; it falls in exactly with his conduct directly after. The words put into his mouth imply that he was already a Christian, which he certainly was, and a zealous one, before long. William of Malmesbury, the consistent persecutor of Thurkill, must be uttering mere calumnies when he says that he was “incentor ut lapidaretur archiepiscopus.” I accept from Florence the name and motive of the Dane Thrim or Thrum, who cleft the Archbishop’s head. The Chronicles simply mention the fact. “Ðrim miles,” “Ðrym dux,” “Ðrim eorl” is a signature attached to more than one charter of Cnut (Cod. Dipl. iv. 17, 23, 25). The documents are suspicious; the title of Earl is specially suspicious. But no one would have invented a signature of Thrim, unless he had seen it attached to some genuine document.

Lappenberg (ii. 177 Thorpe) has some good remarks on the impossibility of Osbern’s general story, though he accepts his account of the horrors at Canterbury. Mr. St. John (ii. 30) amusingly takes Lappenberg to task for “misinterpreting Florence and the Saxon Chronicle.” The truth is that Lappenberg did not misinterpret anything, but that Mr. St. John failed to consult Thietmar, though Lappenberg gave him the reference. Sir Francis Palgrave, when he wrote his small history (p. ), swallowed the whole tale about Eadric and his brother. M. de Bonnechose (ii. 17) has much to tell us about “un chef farouche nommé Turchtill,” but he does not take him to Canterbury.

As Thietmar’s account of the martyrdom is well worth reading, and as his work is much less accessible than most of my authorities, I transcribe it in full;

“Percepi quoque a relatu prædicti hominis Sewaldi factum miserabile ac idcirco memorabile, quod perfida Northmannorum manus, duce ad hoc Thurkilo, Cantuariæ civitatis egregium antistitem, Dunsten nomine, cum cæteris caperent, et vinculis et inedia ac ineffabili pœna, more suo nefando, constringerent. Hic humana motus fragilitate, pecuniam eis promittit, et ad hanc impetrandam inducias posuit, ut si in his acceptabili redemptione mortem momentaneam evadere nequivisset, semet ipsum gemitibus crebris interim purgaret, hostiam Domino vivam ad immolandum. Transactis tunc omnibus designatis temporibus, vorax picarum charybdis Dei famulum evocat, et sibi promissum celeriter persolvi tributum minaciter postulat. Et ille, ut mitis agnus, ‘Præsto sum,’ inquit, ‘paratus ad omnia quæ in me nunc presumitis facere; ac Christi amore, ut suorum merear fieri exemplum servorum, non sum hodie turbatus. Quod vobis mendax videor, non mea voluntas, sed dira efficit mihi egestas. Corpus hoc meum, quod in hoc exsilio supra modum dilexi, vobis culpabile offero, et quid de eo faciatis in vestra esse potestate cognosco; animam autem meimet peccatricem Creatori omnium, vos non respicientem, supplex committo.’ Talia loquentem profanorum agmen vallavit, et diversa hunc ad interficiendum arma congerit. Quod quum eorum dux Thurcil a longe vidisset, celeriter accurrens: ‘Ne, quæso, sic faciatis!’ infit. ‘Aurum et argentum, et omne quod hic habeo vel ullo modo acquirere possum, excepta navi sola, ne in christum Domini peccetis libenti animo vobis omnibus trado.’ Tam dulci affatu infrenata sociorum ira, ferro et saxis durior, non mollitur, sed effuso innocenti sanguine placatur, quem communiter capitibus boum et imbribus lapidum atque lignorum infusione protinus effundunt. Inter tot frementium impetus potitus est cœlesti jucunditate, ut signi sequentis efficacia protinus testatur.” (Pertz, iii. 849.)