An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England | Page 7

success to drive the Danes from the country or
to limit that portion of it which was under their control; but as a matter
of fact the northern, eastern, and central portions of England were for
more than a century and a half almost entirely under Danish rule. The
constant immigration from Scandinavia during this time added an
important element to the population--an element which soon, however,
became completely absorbed in the mixed stock of the English people.
The marauding Danish invaders were early followed by
fellow-countrymen who were tradesmen and merchants. The
Scandinavian countries had developed an early and active trade with
the other lands bordering on the Baltic and North seas, and England
under Danish influence was drawn into the same lines of commerce.

The Danes were also more inclined to town life than the English, so
that advantageously situated villages now grew into trading towns, and
the sites of some of the old Roman cities began again to be filled with a
busy population. With trading came a greater development of
handicrafts, so that the population of later Anglo-Saxon England had
somewhat varied occupations and means of support, instead of being
exclusively agricultural, as in earlier centuries.
During these later centuries of the Saxon period, from 800 to 1066, the
most conspicuous and most influential ruler was King Alfred. When he
became king, in 871, the Danish invaders were so completely
triumphant as to force him to flee with a few followers to the forest as a
temporary refuge. He soon emerged, however, with the nucleus of an
army and, during his reign, which continued till 901, defeated the
Danes repeatedly, obtained their acceptance of Christianity, forced
upon them a treaty which restricted their rule to the northeastern shires,
and transmitted to his son a military and naval organization which
enabled him to win back much even of this part of England. He
introduced greater order, prosperity, and piety into the church, and
partly by his own writing, partly by his patronage of learned men,
reawakened an interest in Anglo-Saxon literature and in learning which
the ravages of the Danes and the demoralization of the country had
gone far to destroy. Alfred, besides his actual work as king, impressed
the recognition of his fine nature and strong character deeply on the
men of his time and the memory of all subsequent times.
The power of the kingship in the Anglo-Saxon system of government
was strengthened by the life and work of such kings as Alfred and some
of his successors. There were other causes also which were tending to
make the central government more of a reality. A national taxation, the
Danegeld, was introduced for the purpose of ransoming the country
from the Danes; the grant of lands by the king brought many persons
through the country into closer relations with him; the royal judicial
powers tended to increase with the development of law and civilization;
the work of government was carried on by better-trained officials.
On the other hand, a custom grew up in the tenth and early eleventh

century of placing whole groups of shires under the government of
great earls or viceroys, whose subjection to the central government of
the king was but scant. Church bodies and others who had received
large grants of land from the king were also coming to exercise over
their tenants judicial, fiscal, and probably even military powers, which
would seem more properly to belong to government officials. The
result was that although the central government as compared with the
local government of shires and hundreds was growing more active, the
king's power as compared with the personal power of the great nobles
was becoming less strong. Violence was common, and there were but
few signs of advancing prosperity or civilization, when an entirely new
set of influences came into existence with the conquest by the duke of
Normandy in the year 1066.
*6. The Period following the Norman Conquest.*--Normandy was a
province of France lying along the shore of the English Channel. Its
line of dukes and at least a considerable proportion of its people were
of the same Scandinavian or Norse race which made up such a large
element in the population of England. They had, however, learned more
of the arts of life and of government from the more successfully
preserved civilization of the Continent. The relations between England
and Normandy began to be somewhat close in the early part of the
eleventh century; the fugitive king of England, Ethelred, having taken
refuge there, and marrying the sister of the duke. Edward the Confessor,
their son, who was subsequently restored to the English throne, was
brought up in Normandy, used the French language, and was
accompanied on his return by Norman followers. Nine years after the
accession of