The History of England | Page 4

was the destruction of Mercia's unity; its royal
house had disappeared in the struggle, and the kingdom was now
divided; while Alfred lost his nominal suzerainty over north-east
England, he gained a real sovereignty over south-west Mercia. His
children, Edward the Elder and Ethelfleda, the Lady of the Mercians,
and his grandson Athelstan, pushed on the expansion of Wessex thus
begun, dividing the land as they won it into shires, each with a burh
(borough) or fortified centre for its military organization; and
Anglo-Saxon monarchy reached its zenith under Edgar, who ruled over
the whole of England and asserted a suzerainty over most of Britain.
It was transitory glory and superficial unity; for there was no real
possibility of a national state in Anglo-Saxon-Celtic-Danish England,
and the whole meaning of English history is missed in antedating that
achievement by several hundred years. Edgar could do no more than
evade difficulties and temporize with problems which imperceptible
growth alone could solve; and the idealistic pictures of early England
are not drawn from life, but inspired by a belief in good old days and an
unconscious appreciation of the polemical value of such a theory in
political controversy. Tacitus, a splenetic Roman aristocrat, had

satirized the degeneracy of the empire under the guise of a description
of the primitive virtues of a Utopian Germany; and modern theorists
have found in his Germania an armoury of democratic weapons against
aristocracy and despotism. From this golden age the Angles and Saxons
are supposed to have derived a political system in which most men
were free and equal, owning their land in common, debating and
deciding in folkmoots the issues of peace and war, electing their kings
(if any), and obeying them only so far as they inspired respect. These
idyllic arrangements, if they ever existed, did not survive the stress of
the migration and the struggle with the Celts. War begat the king, and
soon the church baptized him and confirmed his power with unction
and biblical precedents. The moot of the folk became the moot of the
Wise (Witan), and only those were wise whose wisdom was apparent to
the king. Community of goods and equality of property broke down in
the vast appropriation involved in the conquest of Britain; and when,
after their conversion to Christianity, the barbarians learnt to write and
left authentic records, they reveal a state of society which bears some
resemblance to that of medieval England but little to that of the
mythical golden age.
Upon a nation of freemen in arms had been superimposed a class of
military specialists, of whom the king was head. Specialization had
broken down the system by which all men did an equal amount of
everything. The few, who were called thegns, served the king,
generally by fighting his enemies, while the many worked for
themselves and for those who served the king. All holders of land,
however, had to serve in the national levy and to help in maintaining
the bridges and primitive fortifications. But there were endless degrees
of inequality in wealth; some now owned but a fraction of what had
been the normal share of a household in the land; others held many
shares, and the possession of five shares became the dividing line
between the class from which the servants of the king were chosen and
the rest of the community. While this inequality increased, the tenure of
land grew more and more important as the basis of social position and
political influence. Land has little value for nomads, but so soon as they
settle its worth begins to grow; and the more labour they put into the
land, the higher rises its value and the less they want to leave it; in a

purely agricultural community land is the great source of everything
worth having, and therefore the main object of desire.
But it became increasingly difficult for the small man to retain his
holding. He needed protection, especially during the civil wars of the
Heptarchy and the Danish inroads which followed. There was, however,
no government strong enough to afford protection, and he had to seek it
from the nearest magnate, who might possess armed servants to defend
him, and perhaps a rudimentary stronghold within which he might
shelter himself and his belongings till the storm was past. The magnate
naturally wanted his price for these commodities, and the only price
that would satisfy him was the poor man's land. So many poor men
surrendered the ownership of their land, receiving it back to be held by
them as tenants on condition of rendering various services to the
landlord, such as ploughing his land, reaping his crops, and other work.
Generally, too, the tenant became the landlord's "man," and did him
homage; and, thirdly, he would be bound