THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND..
CXXX.—YoRKsmRE :-SAXON PERIOD. THE present county of York was, there can be no doubt,. included within the great kingdom of Northumbria, which. emerged out of the darkness in which the last days of Roman and Keltic dominion in Britain are plunged. It seems clear also that the county belonged to that portion or constituent element of the Northumbrian kingdom to which we find the name of Deira given._ The principality of Deira, sometimes independent and sometime& united in one kingdom with the other half of Northumbria, is variously said to have extended from the Humber to the Tees or to the Tyne,the rest of Northumbria, extending to the Frith of Forth, bearing the name of Bernicia. It will be thus seen that the county of Durham is variously assigned to each of the constituent principalities, and pro- bably it was to some extent a debateable ground between them. The: original demarcation, we are inclined to believe, was the Tyne, or- rather the Roman wall from the Tyne westward towards the Solway Frith, which must have long been a boundary line of defence for the British against their Teutonic invaders. In this case, we may perhaps see in the word Dur-ham a relic of the old designation, which appears as Deira, just as Northumberland pre- serves the recollection of the much larger kingdom of Northumbria._ The name " North-Humber-Land " was certainly not given to the county as a distinctive term by those who dwelt south of the Tyne, but by those who dwelt on the north of the Tweed, when the northern part of Bernicia—Lothian—wee ceded by Edgar or Canute to Malcolm, King of the Scots, and so, in like manner, the, district immediately south of the Tyne would continue to be called by the inhabitants of the districts of Bernicia immediately to the north. of that river by the old form of the name Deira long after the districts, to the south of the Tees were generally known by other designations.. If this be the case, we may perhaps find a more probable deriva- tion for the words Deira and Durham in the Keltic word for water,. dur or dwr, than in deor, wild beast, which is the favourite deriva- tion. If so, too, the Derwent river, an affluent of the Tyne,. continuing the line of separation between Durham and Northum- berland, probably preserves the older name of the whole Tyne system of waters, and has given the name to Deira, just as the. Derwent of the midland counties is the basis of the name Deoraby, or Derby. The name would then mean that district of the territory north of the Humber which extended to the Dement.
That there were Teutonic settlements in Yorkshire long before the date usually assigned to the origin of the Angle kingdom to. the north of the Humber is clear from various traditions, and, as we have seen, a nation of the Alemanni was settled there in the reigns of the Emperors Constantine and Valentinian. Beyond,, however, this general fact, we have no details on which we can rely. There is a tradition preserved in the history attributed to. Nennius, that the family of Hengist made a settlement in Northumbria in the fifth century ; the first Angle, however, who is said to have assumed the title of King in those parts is Ida, who, we are told, began to reign in 547. Modern historians conjecture that he was the first who united the various Teutonic chiefs or Ealdormen under one monarchy. Whence the Angles, the pre- dominating race henceforth in the north of England, came it is
easy to determine. We have given reasons, however, chiefls
drawn from the sepulchral remains and from the language used by the Angles, for believing that they were of common or closely kindred origin with those settlers in England to whom the vaguely used title of Saxons has especially clung. If there was any distinction, it probably arose from the Angles being derived from the shore of the German Ocean nearer the mouth of the Elbe and Friesland, and the more southern Saxons of Britain from the coast nearer the mouth of the Rhine, and perhaps, in the case of the south Saxons and the Gewissas, or West Saxons, from the Saxon settlements along the coast of Gaul opposite to Sussex and the Isle of Wight. Of the events attending the fall of EBURACUM and the other Roman cities in Yorkshire we know no- thing; possibly some of them passed without a struggle,on the down- fall of the central Imperial power, into the hands and government of the chiefs of the Alemanni and the other Teutonic settlers or legionaries. The British legends preserved in the Welsh poems and chronicles, and elsewhere, point to an alliance between the Angles and a portion of the previous settlers, sometimes called Lloegriaus (whom some writers believe to have been the Roman- ized Britons of the towns), against the more purely Keltic chiefs of the western kingdom of Cumbria. This is not improbable, and.the more so, if we consider that a large part of the Romanized settlers near York were of Alemannic origin. Mr. Kemble has col- lected or deduced the names of 127 Marks or settlements of the Angles in the three Ridings of Yorkshire ; and he notes the fact that among these, pure patronymic names, without the addition of -ham, -wic, and so forth, are scarcely to be found north of the Humber, only thirteen occurring in the whole of Yorkshire ; only three in Northumberland (out of 48 marks) ; while in Norfolk there are 24 (out of 96) ; in Suffolk, 15 (out of 56); in Essex, 21 (out of 48) ; and in Sussex, 24 (out of 68). His theory (as we have had occasion before to mention) is that the pure patronymics indi- cate the first settlements, and the names with the affixes of -ham, -wic, &c, denote offshoots from primitive settlements ; but this is too doubtful a point to be the basis of any reliable argument. " At the end of the sixth century and at the beginning of the seventh," the kingdom of Northumbria " was at the height of its power. Its King, .Ethelfrith, stands forth in the pages of Bede as the mightiest of conquerors against the Welsh, and as checking an invasion of Picts and Scots at the great battle of Dagsanstan. " It must always be borne in mind," continues Mr. Freeman, " that at this time, and long after, Lothian was politically as well as ethnologically English, and that Picts and Scots, whatever was the amount of distinction between them, are to be looked for only north of the Forth. Eadwine, the first Christian king of Northumberland, and who ranks as the fifth Bretwalda, has left his name to the frontier fortress of Eadwines- burh, or Edinburgh. Eadwine was a true Bretwalda, in every sense of the word, exercising a supremacy alike over Teutons and Britons. Five kings of the West Saxons fell in battle against him, but at last he died at Heathfield [identified by Camden with Hatfield, in the West Riding], in battle against Penda, the hea- then king of the Mercians (A.D. 633). Along with Penda appeared a strange ally, the Christian Cadwalla, the last of his race who could boast of having carried an aggressive war, as dis- tinguished from mere plundering inroads, into the territory of any English people. Not long afterwards Oswald, the restorer of the Northumbrian kingdom and the sixth Bretwalda, fell in another battle against the heathen 'Mercian. At last, the seventh prince who bore that title, Oswiu of Northumberland, checked him in his last invasion, and slew him in the battle of Wingfield, a name which, obscure as it now sounds, makes an important turning- point in the history of our island. The strife between the creeds of Christ and of Woden was then finally decided ; the Mercians embraced the religion of their neighbours, and Northumber- land again became the leading power of Britain." The history of the mission of St. Paulinus, and of the conversion to Christianity of King Eadwine and his people, "can hardly be traced so minutely as the story of St. Augustine in Kent ; but the sites connected with the foundation and gradual establishment of the new faith retain some very interesting memorials of their early days." " Under her two Bretwaldas, Oswald and Oswiu, the English dominion was, seemingly for the first time, extended beyond the Forth, and Picts and Scots, as well as English and Britons, admitted the supremacy of the Northumbrian king. But the greatness of Northumberland lasted no longer than the reigns of Oswiu and his son Ecgfrith. Ecgfrith was slain in battle against the Picts ; the northern dominion of Northumberland died with him, and the kingdom itself, which had been for a while the most flourishing and advancing state in Britain, became utterly weakened by intestine divisions. It sank into utter insignificance and stood ready for the irruption of a new race of conquerors." These conquerors were the Northmen or Danes, who from the close of the eighth century appeared more and more frequently in the Humber, plundering the country on both sides ; but at last, in the year 867, they made a more formidable invasion of the kingdom, " the Army," as "The Saxon Chronicle" relates, going over the mouth of the Humber from East Anglia into Northumbria. The Angle King Osbriht had been expelled in a rebellion, but was now recalled by the people, and having laid aside his dissension with his rival, they with united forces proceeded against the Northmen, who had occupied EISORACUM (as Asser still calls it), the Eoforwic-ccaster of " The Saxon Chronicle." On their approach the Northmen retired within the city, pursued by the North umbriaus, who broke down the wall—for, to use Asser's words, " that city had not yet in those times strong and stable walls "—and entered the place with them; when the Northmeu turned on their pursuers, whom after a great slaughter they put to flight, the two Angle kings, according to one account, falling on the field. According, however, to another tradition, Alle was not present at the battle, but was engaged at the time in hunting, but fell afterwards in an encounter with the Northmen. The whole kingdom had before the close of the year 869 submitted to the Scandinavian invaders. The Angles received from the con- querors a tributary king, Ecgberht, over Bernicia, while the main body of " the Army" remained in the southern part of Northumbria. The sequel of the conquest—confiscation of the lands of the conquered—is placed by the same " Chronicle" under the year 876, when, it says, " Halfdan divided the Northumbrians' lands, and from that time they were ploughing and tilling them." Thus Yorkshire, with the rest of Northumbria, became a Northman principality, colonized as well as conquered by the Scandinavians. It has been observed that " the Danish termination by, marking a house or village, is more frequent along the rivers that flow into the Humber than in any other part of England. Kirk,' as in Kirleby-Moorside,' is another Danish indication of which nine- teen instances occur in Yorkshire." The Norwegians, also, " who established themselves on the western coasts, spread over Cumber- land and Westmoreland, and descended thence into the Yorkshire dales, where, besides many personal natnes,the waterfalls, as in Nor- way, are still called forces or fosses and the mountains fells. Nor- wegians may also have settled in other parts of Yorkshire, since many of the northern kings who ruled for a time in York—Olaf, for example, and Eric Blodaex, the son of Harold, came from Norway—and must have brought with him numerous followers."
The princes of the Danish. or Scandinavian kingdoms of Northumbria owned the superior lordship of Alfred and Edward the Elder ; but from 926 Athelstan assumed an immediate lordship over Northumbria, and " though Northumbrian kings were often set up," Mr. Freeman asserts that "except the Lords of Bamborough, no Northumbrian prince was admitted by Athelstan to vassalage. This system was followed by his successors, except during the momentary recognition of Olaf and Rognald by Edmund in 943." Of course, the great Scandinavian element in the population of the kingdom became a valuable ally to Sweyn and Canute in their invasions of England. Its earl, Uhtred, after submitting to Canute and giving hostages, was treacherously slain in the presence of the Danish prince, with forty of his companions, and the earldom of Northumbria (the capital still continuing to be York) was given by Canute to a Dane named Eric, who had married his sister Gytha, and had held the government of Norway under Sweyn. But, according to Mr. Freeman, it seems that Eadwulf Cutel, the brother of the murdered Uhtred, either was allowed to hold the northern division of the earldom under the supremacy of Eric, or else succeeded to the whole when Eric, some years later, was banished. This Eadwulf, son of Waltheof, did not long enjoy the dignity. In 1018, Malcolm, King of the Scots, entered England, accompanied by Eogan, or Eugenius, "seemingly an under-king in Strathclyde. A great battle took place at Carham-on-the-Tweed," not far from where the battle of Flodden was long afterwards fought, in which the forces of the Bernician earldom were entirely routed. Eadwulf did not long survive this disaster, and the earldom was then divided, and Ealdred, son of Uhtred, succeeded his uncle in Bernicia only. Not improbably Deka (including Yorkshire) fell at once to the government of Siward, surnamed Digera, or the Strong. He was a Dane by birth, of gigantic stature and great personal prowess, which made him a favourite of romance. His name is attached to several charters of the reign of Canute, says Mr. Freeman, from whom we borrow these details of the succession of the earldom, but he does not appear to have risen to earl's rank in his time. He married a daughter of Earl Ealdred of Bernicia. The latter was assassinated and succeeded by his brother, Eadwulf, a ruler of some vigour. He, however, was in ill odour at the Court of Hardicanute, for pressing the claims to the crown of Harold. Hardicanute entrusted the murder of the Bernician Earl to Siward, the husband of the Earl's niece, and on its execution the murderer was invested with the whole Earldom of Northumbria from the Humber to the Tweed, and he remained in possession of it till his death, in the year 1055, at his capital York. His victory over Macbeth, which Shakespeare has immortalized, cost him the lives of his eldest son and his nephew, and his remaining son, 1Valtheof, was still a child. The death of Siward consequently led to the ex- tension for the first time of the power of the House of Godwine to the north of the Humber, Tostig, a son of Godwine, being appointed Earl of Northumbria. An old sun-dial in the church in Kirkdale still bears, among other inscriptions in Saxon round it, one which speaks of " Tosti's days, the Earl." His government was so oppressive, and the acts of violence attributed to him so serious, that in October, 1065, the people of Northumbria rose in revolt against him. A gemot called by the insurgents at York passed a vote of deposition and outlawry against Tostig, and elected Morkere, of the House of Leofric of Mercia, Earl in his place. Joined by the other head of this house, Eadwine, the Northumbrians ravaged Northamptonshire and the neighbouring shires, and in answer to a summons from King Edward to lay down their arms, " would not listen to any proposal which implied even the possibility of Tostig's return to power. They were freemen born and bred, they would not bow to the pride of any earl ; they had learnt from their fathers to bear no third choice besides freedom or death. If the King wished to retain Northumbria in his allegiance, he must confirm tlieacts of their gemot. If he persisted in forcing Tostig upon them, they would deal with him as an enemy ; if he yielded to their demands, he would see what loyal subjects the Northumbrians could be when they were gently ruled by a ruler of their own choice." The King was inclined for resistance, but Earl Harold took the other side, and a gemot at Oxford con- firmed Morkere in the earldom. Morkere had previously entrusted the government of the northern province, the old Bernicia, now beginning to be distinctively called Northumberland, to Oswulf, son of the Eadwolf whom Siward murdered ; and the son of Siward, Waltheof, was now made Earl of Northamptonshire and Hunting- donshire, the outlying parts of the possessions of Siward.
The term Yorkshire was now beginning to be applied vaguely to Deira from the metropolitan character of York, though when employed more precisely it bad a restricted sense. "The geogra- phical limits indeed implied in the word Yorkshire' appear," as Mr. Pearson remarks, " to have varied from period to period, more than is the case with any other county. At the time of the Domesday Survey, Yorkshire proper was a shire distinct from the three Ridings, and comprehended Dewsbury and Knaresborough on the west, Cave, Driffield, and Pickering, on the east. The West Riding, on the other hand, included Amounderness hundred in north Lancashire, being, in fact, all the land between Ken and Ribble. When, or why, these divisions were changed," Mr. Pearson continues, "I cannot say. But the first recorded division of counties into circuits for Justices in Eyre, under Henry II. (1176), distributes the north into Yorkshire, Richmondshire, Cope- land, Westmoreland, Northumberland, and Cumberland. It is natural to suppose that the circuits of 1176 do not differ materially, in the extent of country to be visited, from those of 1179, when the division was by six instead of by four commissions. Now in this later list the Northern Circuit was through (North Derbyshire), Yorkshire, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and the land between Ribble and Mersey, defined, apparently by a later scribe, as Lancastre. It would seem, therefore, that Copeland must have been meant for Lancashire, though the name now be- longs to the southern parts of Cumberland ; and Richmondshire was, no doubt, the North Riding or the district about Richmond."
We possess a document which professes to give an account of the Wer-gyld, or social value of the different classes among the " North people," during the earlier Saxon period ; but Mr. Kemble entertains some doubt as to its • value as an authority. According to it, the King in Northumbria stood, with respect to the ceorl, as 113 to 1, while we know that in Kent he only stood as 171 to 1, and in Mercia and Wessex as 72 to 1. The same document gives us the relation of the Northumbrian noble of the first class to the ceorl as 56 to 1 nearly ; of the second class, is 30i to 1 nearly ; of the third class, as 15-1 to 1 nearly ; and of the fourth class, as 71 to 1 nearly ; while we know that in Mercia the noble stood to the ceorl at 6 to 1, which was the relation of the noble of the first class in Wessex, while the noble of the second class in the last-named kingdom stood to the ceorl as 3 to 1, and in Kent the noble stood to the ceorl only as 2 to 1. If the Northumbrian document is to be relied on, it shows a great social interval between the king and the noble in that kingdom ; and an immense interval between the nobles of the two higher classes and the ceorl ; while it also exhibits several grades in the noble class of widely different social rank; and the social condition must have been somewhat similar to that which till lately existed in Hun- gary, where the noble class comprehended what we should call the upper grades of the middle-class. The entries in Domesday Survey, which must give rather the Scandinavian than the Saxon society of Yorkshire, are remarkable for a total absence of absolute slaves, the bulk of the enumerated population (5,000 out of 8,000) being of the class of villani—the semi-servile class—and the bordarii, or lower free agricultural population, reaching to about 1,800, and the sochemanni, or free yeomen, numbering 447.
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