he occupied; and it was, for the most part, his wisdom and sagacity which moulded into shape those customs and laws which, originally transplanted from the rude forests of Germany to the fertile plains of Britain, and slightly modified there by the remains of Roman prudence and experience, formed the basis of English jurisprudence, and which, in fact, still constitute a large portion of the common law even now administered in our Courts.

The history of this reign, therefore, presents many points of peculiar interest to us, who inherit from the Saxon blood which flows in our veins, many traits in our national character, and derive from Saxon institutions many ingredients in that mixed constitution under which we have achieved our national greatness. It would be presumptuous in me to expect that my limited information, derived for the most part from sources open to all, will enable me to throw any fresh light upon this important subject,—a subject which, to use the words of Gibbon, is at once "familiar to the most illiterate, and obscure to "the most learned." I can only hope that a simple narrative, accompanied with a few plain and obvious reflections, may not prove altogether uninteresting, and may be accepted as a discharge of the task I have undertaken.

And, first, I would ask you to take with me a brief and general view of the early fortunes, and existing condition of the country which Alfred was called upon in the course of events to govern,—that fair ground in which, by the merciful Providence of God, our lot has fallen to us in these latter days.

Now, although a multitude of fables have descended to us, attributing the first colonisation of our Island to various sources,-to the Egyptians, for instance, to the Trojans, or to the Spaniards,-and recording the names and actions of a complete series of British kings, from the very first dispersion of mankind, we can hardly be said to possess anything worthy the severe dignity of History, prior to the time of the Roman invasion. If we accept the tradition handed down to us by Cæsar, and stamped with the authority of Tacitus, this country was first peopled by a colony from the neighbouring shores of Gaul,— a Celtic people, the ancestors of the existing Irish, Highland Scotch, and Welsh, and descended from the first of the three great streams of colonisation, which flowed from the Eastern nursery of mankind; as the Teutonic tribes of Germany, which afterwards possessed it; the parents of the English, Danes, and Normans, were from the second.

The Ancient Britons were a bold and vigorous race, inured to hunger, cold, and hardship,-knowing few wants, and ambitious of no superfluities,-strangers alike to the luxuries and to the arts of civilised life. A scanty traffic with the Phoenicians, whose enterprise conducted them to our shores in search of the metals which they so abundantly supplied, or a precarious voyage in their wicker vessels to the parent coast of Gaul, formed their only communication with foreign nations. And yet, unpolished as they were, and little known, for want of a contemporary historian or poet to hand down the recollection of their

deeds to succeeding generations, there must have been greatness even in their barbarism. Time has yet spared some relics of that early period, to speak to us of those who then occupied our places. We may smile, indeed, as we examine the simple implements, which have been disentombed from their barrows; but the traveller gazes with wonder, not unmixed with awe, and the antiquary with curious perplexity, upon the gigantic circle of Stonehenge, the stupendous masses of a Cromlech, and the tottering but nicely-balanced stones. of a Logan; while we all look back with becoming pride upon the noble stand which the barbarian warriors of Britain made in defence of their land and their liberty, against the disciplined veterans of Rome, directed by the military talents, and animated by the successful fortunes of him, who did—

"Bestride this narrow world like a Colossus;"

and who, wherever his ambition led his victorious legions,-came, and saw, and conquered. That stand, indeed, was made in vain; for more than four hundred and fifty years the independence of Britain was absorbed in the mighty Empire of Rome; and the enduring remains of their walls, their roads, and their fortifications still attest the genius of this extraordinary people, in providing for the security and government of the nation they had reduced beneath their yoke. But the energies and virtues of a people are sure to languish under a condition of servile dependence. Trusting no longer to their own arms for defence, and accustomed to obey the will of a master where their ancestors had been wont to act only for themselves, the Britons gradually became corrupted by the vices and enfeebled by the luxuries of the Romans; and when the impending ruin, which threatened the proud metropolis of the Western world, compelled Honorius to withdraw his legions from the distant provinces of the Empire, they were left exposed to the attacks of their rude neighbours, the Picts and Scots, who poured down upon them from the hills of Caledonia; and, embarrassed by an independence which they knew not how to use, they lamented the recovery-no less bitterly than they had once mourned the loss-of that freedom which they now found themselves unable to defend. In vain did they entreat from their former masters the aid, which neither the Consul Ætius, nor the Emperor Valentinian, themselves trembling before the approach of Attila, were able to afford them.

In the year 449, the vices, or the misfortunes, of Vortigern their king, had brought their miserable condition to a crisis. They turned from the Romans to the barbarians for assistance, and the Saxons, encouraged by their soothsayers, gladly yielded to an invitation which, they were assured, laid open to them the plunder of a rich and fertile land for a hundred and fifty years, and the quiet possession of it for double that period.

Under the general name of Saxons are comprised the inhabitants of three distinct but contiguous districts, once known as the Cimbrian Chersonese, and

which have since formed the mainland of the present kingdom of Denmark. Of these, the Saxons, properly so-called, occupied Holstein; the Angles Sleswick, and the Jutes, a part of Jutland. Dwelling over against the Eastern shores of Britain, and accustomed, from their maritime position and their hardy mode of life, to brave the dangers of the ocean, the Saxon hordes had in former times made various piratical incursions upon our island; and the necessity of guarding against the savage insolence of these barbarians had not been overlooked by Roman precaution. One of the chief officers of their government held the title of Count of the Saxon Shore; and of the eight provosts under his command, two had been stationed on a coast so exposed to attack as was that of Norfolk; one at Branodunum, or Brancaster; and another at Garianonum, the remains of which give interest and a name to the village of Burgh.

But now those who had been so long watched and feared as enemies were invited as allies, and in the year I have just mentioned, three vessels discharged the first band of Saxon adventurers, under Hengist and Horsa, on the Isle of Thanet. Their arrival reanimated the courage of the Britons. The Scots and Picts, who had extended their ravages almost unopposed as far as Stamford, were defeated in a great battle near that place, and were driven back by their conquerors beyond the wall of Antonine. The fertility of the island into which they had been so strangely introduced, and the weakness of its natural defenders, determined the Saxons to fix here their permanent abode; and for many years after the landing of Hengist, the Cimbrian Chersonese continued to pour forth its hardy sons to take possession of the pleasant land, to which, from the designation of one of their tribes, they gave the name of Anglen-land, or England.

The Britons discovered too late the misfortunes in which their timid policy had involved them, and now exerted in vain that courage which, had it been aroused at an earlier period, might have secured the independence of their country. After a contest which lasted for eight years, Hengist had acquired possession of the whole of Kent, and assumed the title of King; and the other Saxon provinces, for we can hardly call them kingdoms, were established in rapid succession-Sussex by Ella, in 490; and Wessex, subsequently the most powerful state of the Heptarchy and the foundation-stone of the British Monarchy, by Cerdic, in 519. It was in the struggle which the Britons long maintained with this powerful and prudent chief, that those deeds of heroism were achieved, which, exaggerated in the fantastic romances of former days, and adorned by the genius of Scott in our own, have rendered the name of King Arthur and his knights familiar to us all. Too feeble, however, were the heavy blows dealt by his good sword Excalibar, and vain was the prowess of Morolt and Mordred, of Sir Tristrem and Sir Lancelot de Lac. Cerdic slowly but surely stretched his dominions from the confines of Sussex till he had

extended them to the counties of Somerset and Devon.

Offa landed upon this

eastern shore in 575, and founded the throne of the East Angles. The subjugation of Essex followed, and of Mercia, that vast central district of the kingdom from the coast of Lincolnshire to the marches of Wales, which embraced within its limits no fewer than sixteen of our present counties. At an early period of the Saxon invasion, and while the defence of their British allies against the Scots was their ostensible object, a colony had, by their advice, been planted in the North, between the walls of Severus and of Antonine; and these having now received a large reinforcement under Ida, that chief assumed the title of King of Bernicia, the territory which lies between the Tyne and the Frith of Forth-and Ælla at the same time made himself master of the more Southern district, between the Tyne and the Humber, which received the name of Deira; these two provinces, sometimes united under one chief and sometimes divided between two, formed the kingdom of Northumberland, and the Heptarchy was completed.

Of the Britons many in sad despair had fled into Gaul, now called by its Frankish conquerors, France, where they colonised the district of Armorica, which is still known as the province of Brittany; others existed in a state of servitude to Saxon masters; and the remnant maintained themselves as an independent people under their native Princes, and retained possession of the Western coast of their former kingdom, from the Land's End to the Frith of Clyde.

In a confederacy, if confederacy it may be called, so loosely constituted as was the Saxon Heptarchy, the more powerful states would, in course of time, naturally and necessarily absorb the weaker-where primogeniture conferred no inherent title to the crown, but each descendant of the royal house was considered eligible to fill the vacant throne, disputes concerning the succession would frequently occur, which would compel or invite the interference of a powerful and ambitious neighbour. Bernicia and Deira were constantly struggling for the supreme power in Northumberland, while the four smaller provinces gradually lost their independence; and the varying fortunes of war, or the event of unscrupulous policy and sometimes of murderous treachery decided to which of the great principalities, whether Wessex or Mercia, they should severally be subject.

At the commencement of the ninth century Egbert ascended the throne of the former kingdom. His virtues fostered under the stern discipline of adversity, and his valour matured in the warlike court of Charlemagne, he was eminently qualified to direct the storm which was now shattering the Heptarchy to annihilation. Received with cheerful obedience, and supported with ready valour by his own subjects, he had little difficulty in compelling the Britons of Devonshire and Cornwall to submit to his authority, and scarcely more in humbling the pride of Mercia; while the chiefs of Northumberland,

weakened by mutual strife, offered no opposition to his progress beyond the Humber, but at once acknowledged him as their Sovereign. His success in thus placing himself at the head of the whole nation has caused, and, perhaps, entitled him to be styled the first Monarch of England. It might, possibly, be more correct to regard him as a feudal Suzerain, to whom a number of powerful and almost independent vassals were compelled to do homage, rather than disposed to yield obedience. But Egbert was a warrior rather than a statesman, and did nothing towards consolidating his conquests by a uniform code of laws, or by the general establishment of institutions which should unite in one commonwealth the whole body of his subjects. The commencement of this great work was destined for a more cultivated understanding, and a more commanding genius than his, its completion was reserved for quieter and more civilised times.

The union which Egbert achieved lasted only so long as his own power continued to control it. The rulers of Northumberland and of Mercia retained the title of King and exercised their power without much regard to the rights which they had been forced to cede to the crown of Wessex. Even Alfred, in his will, styles himself King, not of England but of the West Saxons, and it was rather the violence of the Danes than the victories of Egbert, which obliterated the still remaining boundaries of the Heptarchy, and finally united its distracted provinces under the government of the sons of Cerdic.

The death of Egbert in 836 consigned the guidance of this disjointed monarchy to the feeble hands of his son Ethelwolf, a prince who, in early life, and at a time when the prospect of his succession appeared improbable, had been destined to the service of the Church, and whose quiet virtues and inactive disposition seem to have qualified him rather for the cloister than the

crown.

Ethelwolf had married Osberga, a descendant like himself of the royal house of Cerdic; and of the four sons who survived their father, and in turn succeeded to the throne of Wessex, Alfred, born in the year 849, was the youngest. It was his misfortune to be deprived in his earliest infancy of his mother's care, and the superintendence of his education was entrusted to Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, whose name is familiar to us all as the patron of a rainy summer. To the early intercourse which was thus established between St. Swithin and his illustrious pupil, may probably be traced those deep religious impressions which so powerfully actuated the great Alfred through the future course of his life; but certainly his education, in the restricted meaning of the term, would seem to us to have been strangely neglected, since we know that at twelve years of age he was unable even to read. But knowledge was not at that time considered necessary as a royal accomplishment, and Alfred did not grow up more ignorant than his elder brothers had done before him. In the intellectual cultivation of his mind, he