THE REMISSION OF THE DANEGELT. THE PARDON OF THE THIEF. THE SHIPWRECK OF THE KING OF DENMARK, BAS RELIEFS FROM THE FRIEZE OF THE SHRINE OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. partments of the screen of his shrine.' The king was reposing after the labours of the day. His chamberlain, Hugolin, had opened the chest of the royal monies to pay the servants of the palace. The scullion crept in to avail himself, as he supposed, of the King's sleep, and carried off the remains of the treasure. At his third entrance Edward started up, and warned him to fly before the return of Hugolin (He will ' not leave you even a halfpenny'); and to the remonstrances of Hugolin answered, 'The thief hath more need of it than 'we-enough treasure hath King Edward!' 2 Another peculiar combination marks his place equally in the history of England and in the foundation of the Abbey. He was the last of the Saxons--that is, the last of The last of those concerned in the long struggle against the the Saxons. Danes. As time went on, the national feeling transfigured him almost into a Saxon Arthur.3 In him was personified all the hatred with which the Anglo-Saxon Christians regarded the Pagan Norsemen. His exile to escape from their tyranny raised him at once to the rank of Confessor,' as Edmund the East Angle, by his death in battle with them, had been in like manner raised to the rank of Martyr.' A curious legend represents that, on entering his treasury, he saw a black demon dancing on the casks' which contained the gold extracted from his subjects to pay the obnoxious tax to the Danes, and how in consequence the Danegelt was for ever abolished. 6 He was also the first of the Normans. His reign is the earliest link which reunites England to the Continent of Europe. Hardly since the invasion of Cæsar-certainly not The first since the arrival of Augustine-had such an influx of Normans. new ideas poured into our insular commonwealth as came with Edward from his Norman exile. His mother Emma and his The legends which are here cited are not found in the contemporary life of the Confessor in the eleventh century, and therefore cannot be trusted for the accuracy of their facts or their language, but only as representing the feeling of the next generation. The screen is of the fifteenth century, but it faithfully preserves these records of the twelfth. Nothing shows the rapidity of the growth of these legends more than the fact that out of the fourteen subjects of the thus represented, so few are actually historical. 2 Cambridge Life, 1000-1040. See the comparison in the Cambridge Life, 900–910. Cambridge Life, 940-961. The casks are represented in the frieze of the screen. This long continued to be the mode of keeping money, as appears from the story of Wolsey and the Jester. For the abolition of the Danegelt see Cambridge Life, 922, 1884; Oxford Life, 302. maternal grandfather Richard were more to him than his father Ethelred; the Norman clergy and monks than his own. rude Anglo-Saxon hierarchy. His long hair and beard, distinguishing his appearance from that of the shorn and shaven heads of his Norman kinsmen, were almost the only outward marks of his Saxon origin. The French handwriting superseded in his court the old Anglo-Saxon characters; the French seals, under his auspices, became the type of the sign-manual of England for centuries. From him the Norman civilisation spread not only into England, but into Scotland. His grandnephew Edgar Atheling, as the head of the Anglo-Norman migration into the north, was the father of the Scottish Lowlands. of the These were the qualities and circumstances which went to Foundation make up the Founder of Westminster Abbey. We have Abbey. now to ask, What special motive induced the selection of this particular site and object for his devotion? The idea of a regal Abbey on a hitherto unexampled scale may have been suggested or strengthened by the accounts Consecration brought back to him of Reims, where his envoys had at Reims. been present at the consecration of the Abbey of St. Remy, hard by the cathedral in which the French kings were crowned. By this time also the wilderness of Thorney was cleared; and the crowded river, with its green Thorney. meadows, and the sunny aspect of the island,' may have had a charm for the King, whose choice had hitherto lain in the rustic fields of Islip and Windsor. Meadows of sor's devotion to St. But the prevailing motive was of a more peculiar kind, belonging to times long since passed away. In that age, as still The Confes amongst some classes in Roman Catholic countries, religious sentiment took the form of special devotion Peter. to this or that particular saint. Amongst Edward's favourites St. Peter was chief. On his protection, whilst in Normandy, when casting about for help, the exiled Prince had thrown himself, and vowed that, if he returned in safety, he would make a pilgrimage to the Apostle's grave at Rome. This vow was, it is said, further impressed on His vow. 1 Lappenberg (Thorpe), ii. 246. 2 Palgrave's History of England, p. 328. Saxon Chronicle, 1049. The combination of motives is well given in the contemporary Life. (Har leian MS. 980-985.) Quoted as the motto to this chapter. The church of the Confessor's residence at Old Windsor is dedicated to St. Peter, and the site of his palace is thence called Peter's Hill. his mind by the arrival of a messenger from England, almost immediately afterwards, with the announcement of the departure of the Danes, and of his own election as King.1 It was yet further confirmed by a vision, real or feigned, of Brithwold, Bishop of Winchester, at Glastonbury,2 in which St. Peter, the patron saint of Winchester Cathedral, appeared to him, and announced that the Bishop himself should crown a youth, whom the saint dearly loved, to be King of England.3 Accordingly, when Edward came to the throne, he announced to his Great Council his intention of fulfilling his vow. The proposal was received with horror by nobles and people. It was met both by constitutional objections, and on the ground of the dangers of the expedition. The King could not leave the kingdom without the consent of the Commons; he could not undertake such a journey without encountering the most formidable perils- the roads, the sea, the mountains, 'the valleys, ambuscades at the bridges and the fords,' and most of all the felon Romans, who seek nothing but gain and 'gifts.' 'The red gold and the white silver they covet as a leech covets blood." The King at last gave way, on the suggestion that a deputation might be sent to the Pope who might release him from his vow. The deputation went. The release came, on the condition that he should found or restore a monastery of St. Peter, of which the King should be the especial patron. It was, in fact, to be a pilgrimage by proxy, such as has sometimes been performed by traversing at home the same number of miles that would be travelled on the way to Palestine; sometimes by sending the heart after death," to perform what the living had been unable to accomplish in person. Where, then, was a monastery of St. Peter to be found which could meet this requirement? It might possibly have been that at Winchester. Perhaps in this hope the story of Bishop Brithwold's vision was revived. But there was also the little minster,' west of London, near which the King 1 Cambridge Life, 780-825. 2 Ailred, 373. There is a difficulty in distinguishing Brithwold, Bishop of Winchester, and Brithwold, Bishop of Wilton. The chronicles in general are in favour of Winchester. One of the Lives of the Confessor is in favour of Wilton. 3 Ibid. p. 222. The various dangers of the journey to Rome are well given in William of Malmesbury (ii. 13). As in the case of the late King of Saxony. As in the case of Edward I. of England, and Robert the Bruce and James I. of Scotland. from time to time resided, and of which his friend Edwin,' the courtier abbot, was head. It had, as far back as memory exConnection tended, been dedicated to St. Peter. A Welsh legend of later times maintained that it was at Lampeter,' of the Abbey with the name of St. Peter. 'the Church of Peter,' that the Apostle saw the vision in which he was warned that he must shortly 'put off his earthly tabernacle.' If the original foundation of the Abbey can be traced back to Sebert, the name, probably, must have been given in recollection of the great Roman Sanctuary, whence Augustine, the first missionary, had come.3 And Sebert was believed to have dedicated his church to St. Peter in the Isle of Thorns, in order to balance the compliment he had paid to St. Paul on Ludgate Hill: a reappearance, in another form, of the counterbalancing claims of the rights of Diana and Apollo-the earliest stage of that rivalry which afterwards expressed itself in the proverb of 'robbing Peter to pay Paul.' 5 This thin thread of tradition, which connected the ruinous pile in the river-island with the Roman reminiscences of Augustine, was twisted firm and fast round the resolve of Edward; and by the concentration of his mind on this one object was raised the first distinct idea of an Abbey, which the Kings of England should regard as their peculiar treasure. There are, probably, but few Englishmen now who care to know that the full title of Westminster Abbey is the Col'legiate Church or Abbey of St. Peter.' But at the time of its first foundation, and long afterwards, the whole neighbourhood and the whole story of the foundation breathed of nothing else but the name, which was itself a reality. The soil of St. 'Peter' was a recognised legal phrase. The name of Peter's Eye,' or 'Island,' which still lingers in the low land of Battersea, came by virtue of its connection with the Chapter of Westminster. Anyone who infringed the charter of the Abbey would, it was declared, be specially condemned by St. Peter, when he sits on his throne judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Of the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster, as of the 1 See Chapter V. 7 22 Pet. i. 14. (I cannot recover the reference to this legend.) 3 See Memorials of Canterbury, p. 11. 4 Ailred, c. 384. See Chapter VI. Dagobert, in like manner, had a peculiar veneration for St. Denys. Smith's Antiquities, p. 34. The Cock' in Tothill Street, where the workmen of the Abbey received their pay, was probably from the cock of St. Peter. A black marble statue of St. Peter is said to lie at the bottom of the well under the pump in Prince's Street. (Walcott, 73, 280.) Pope Nicholas's Letter, Kemble (Codex), § 825. |