CHAP. II. towns, and, in most cases, the county groups itself round its capital, as round an acknowledged and convenient centre. The names of the old principalities vanish, and their boundaries are often disregarded. One principality is divided among several shires, and another shire is made up of several ancient principalities. We can hardly doubt that the old divisions were wiped out in the Danish invasions, and that the country was divided again, either by the Danish conquerors or, more probably, by the English Kings after the reconquest.

Names of

places in

berland

cia retain ing the names of

Danish lords.

Again, the names of the towns and villages throughout Northum- a large part of the ceded territory show the systematic berler way in which the land was divided among the Danish leaders. Through a large region, stretching from Warwickshire to Cumberland, but most conspicuously in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire, the Danish termination by marks the settlements of the invaders, and, in a vast number of cases, the name of the manor still retains the name of the Danish lord to whom it was assigned in the occupation of the ninth century. Names like Carlby, Haconby, Kettilby, Thorkillby, tell their own story.2 In two cases at least the Danes gave new names

1 Thus the principality of the Hwiccas has long formed two whole shires, Worcester and Gloucester, and part of another, Warwick. The Magesætas seem to be divided between Herefordshire and Shropshire. Lincolnshire contains several principalities, Gainas, Lindisfaras, &c., but the traces of their original independence are not wholly lost even at the present day.

These and several other Mercian principalities we can identify, but such is by no means the case with all. In the very ancient list of Mercian divisions, printed by Mr. Kemble (Saxons in England, i. 81-85), many of the names have to be guessed at, and some are quite hopeless. It is not so with any portion of Wessex.

* Places seem to have been more commonly named directly after individuals in the course of the Danish Conquest than they had been by the earlier English occupiers. At least, among the names given during the English occupation, those which are formed from the proper name itself are less common than those which are formed from the patronymic ending in -ing. These last again raise the question, how far they are called after historical individuals and how far they are tribe-names called

EVIDENCE OF LOCAL NOMENCLATURE.

51

to considerable towns. Streoneshalh and Northweorthig CHAP. II. exchanged their names for the new ones of Whitby and Derby (Deoraby). This last town is one of considerable Whitby and Derby. importance in the history of the Danish settlement. It formed, along with Lincoln, Leicester, Nottingham, and Stamford, a member of a sort of Confederation of Danish The Five Boroughs. towns, which, under the name of the Five Boroughs, often plays a part in the events of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

of Elfred.

union of

him.

Ælfred, the unwilling author of these great changes, is Character the most perfect character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince, who has become a hero of romance, who, as such, has had countless imaginary exploits and imaginary institutions attributed to him, but to whose character romance has done no more than justice, and who appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable. No other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the Singular virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no virtues in other man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little alloy.1 A saint without superstition, a scholar withafter some mythical patriarch. This last view will be found discussed at length by Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 59 and Appendix A. Names like Tooting, Bensington, Gillingham, give the typical forms. On the other hand (see Kemble's note, p. 60), it should be remembered that this familiar form ing, being so familiar, has often swallowed up others; thus Ethandún, Æbbandún, Huntandún, forms of quite different origin, have been corrupted into Edington, Abingdon, Huntingdon. Birmingham again has been thought to be a corruption of Bromicham, but Mr. Kemble (i. 457) admits it as a genuine patronymic from the Beormingas. On the other hand, Glæstingabyrig, a genuine patronymic, has been corrupted into Glastonbury, and a wrong derivation given to the name.

An exact parallel to the Danish system of nomenclature is supplied by a later and less known, though very remarkable, settlement of the same kind, the Flemish occupation of Pembrokeshire in the twelfth century. The villages in the Teutonic part of that county bear names exactly analogous to those of Lincolnshire, only ending in the English ton instead of the Danish by. Such are Johnston, Williamston, Herbrandston, and a crowd of others.

The story which represents Alfred as forsaken by his subjects on account of cruelties in the early part of his reign, and as being thus led to reformation, is part of the legend of Saint Neot, not of the history of Ælfred.

son with

Saint
Lewis ;

CHAP. II. Out ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained by cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity, never lifted up to insolence in the day of triumph -there is no other name in history to compare with his. Compari- Saint Lewis comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monastic piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic virtues. Both of them stand forth in honourable contrast to the abject superstition of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly engaged in the care of their own souls that they refused either to raise up heirs for their throne or to strike a blow on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the sake of distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious, undertakings. The true duties of the King of the French clearly lay in France and not in Egypt or at Tunis. No such charge lies at the door of the great King of the West-Saxons. With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian benevolence, Ælfred never forgot that his first duty was to his own people. He forestalled our own age in sending expeditions to explore the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms to the distant churches of India; but he neither forsook his crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected its with Wash- duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Ælfred, like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous displays of superhuman genius, but in the simple, straightforward discharge of the duty of the moment. But Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot, like Ælfred, has no claim to Elfred's further characters of saint and scholar. with Wil- William the Silent too has nothing to set against Ælfred's

ington;

liam the Silent;

1 No one can blame Ælfred for hanging (see Chron. 897) the crews of some piratical Danish ships, who had broken their oaths to him over and over again. His general conduct towards his enemies displays a singular mildness.

CHARACTER OF ELFRED.

53

literary merits, and in his career, glorious as it is, there is CHAP. II. an element of intrigue and chicanery, utterly alien to the noble simplicity of both Elfred and Washington. The same union of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of the warrior and the statesman is found, on a wider field of action, in Charles the Great. Charles cannot aspire to the pure glory of Ælfred.

But even with
Amidst the Great;

Charles

ward the

all the splendours of conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of personal ambition, of personal vice, to occasional unjust aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own later princes, the great Edward alone can with Edbear for a moment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. First. And, when tried by such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike, disinterestedness which marks the character of Elfred. The times indeed were different; Edward had to tread the path of righteousness and honour in a time of far more tangled policy, and amidst temptations, not harder indeed, but far more subtle. The legislative merits of Edward are greater than those of Ælfred's Ælfred; but this is a difference in the times rather than position as a legisin the men. The popular error which makes Elfred the lator; personal author of all our institutions hardly needs a fresh confutation. The popular legends attribute to him the invention of Trial by Jury and of countless other portions of our Law, the germs of which may be discerned ages before the time of Ælfred, while their existing forms cannot be discerned till ages after him. Ælfred, like so many of our early Kings, collected and codified the laws of his predecessors; but we have his own personal testimony that he purposely

1 "I then, Elfred King, these [laws] together gathered, and had many of them written which our foregangers held, those that me-liked. And

CHAP. II. abstained from any large amount of strictly new legislation. The legislation of Edward, on the other hand, in its bold

ness and originality, forms the most marked epoch in the as scholar. history of our Law. It is perhaps, after all, in his literary aspect, that the distinctive beauty of Alfred's character shines forth most clearly. As a rule, literary Kings have not been a class deserving of much honour. They have, for the most part, stepped out of their natural sphere only to display the least honourable characteristics of another calling. But it was not so with the Emperor Marcus; it was not so with our Ælfred. In Ælfred there is no sign of literary pedantry, ostentation, or jealousy; nothing is done for his own glory; he writes, just as he fights and legislates, with a single eye to the good of his people. He shows no signs of original genius; he is simply an editor and translator, working honestly for the improvement of the subjects whom he loved. This is really a purer fame, and one more in harmony with the other features of Elfred's character, than the highest achievements of the poet, the historian, or the philosopher. I repeat then that Happiness Elfred is the most perfect character in history. And he in his suc- was specially happy in handing on a large share of his genius and his virtue to those who came after him. The West-Saxon Kings, for nearly a century, form one of the most brilliant royal lines on record. From Æthelred the Saint to Eadgar the Peaceful, the short and wretched reign of Eadwig is the only interruption to one continued

of Ælfred

cessors.

many of them that me not liked I threw aside, with my Wise Men's thought, and on other wise bade to hold them. Forwhy I durst not risk of my own much in writ to set, forwhy it to me unknown was what of them would like those that after us were. But that which I met, either in Ine's days my kinsman, or in Offa's the King of the Mercians, or in Æthelberht's that erst of English kin baptism underwent, those that to me rightest seemed, those have I herein gathered and the others passed by. I then Ælfred, King of the West-Saxons, to all my Wise Men these showed, and they then quoth that to them it seemed good all to hold." Ælfred's Dooms, Thorpe's Laws and Institutes, i. 58-59. Schmid, p. 69.