but while the English tribes had become Christian, the Northmen, who had replaced them in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, retained the heathen worship of their common ancestry. The pirates' light ashwood ships were so built as to be able to sail with equal facility over the German Ocean or up the English rivers. It is said that they landed first on the coasts of Northumbria, near the monastery of Streanæshalch, since called Whitby, and having treacherously murdered the chief men of the town, who came down to the harbour to meet them, they proceeded to lay hands on everything of value, which for the sake of getting rid of them the panic-stricken people gladly surrendered. St. Hilda's monastery afforded them the largest booty; for there were numbers of gold and silver vessels and much saleable treasure in the shape of manuscripts and vestments. The monks and priests made a feeble resistance, but the fierce marauders despatched them with little ceremony. Indeed, they had a special hatred against the Christian religion, for it had well nigh destroyed their ancient mythological belief. They utterly destroyed the monastic buildings, and having filled their ships with spoil, sailed away over seas. The success of their first expedition emboldened them to fresh attempts, and within two years the towns on the coast of Wessex suffered from similar depredations; in 795 "the harrying of heathen men wretchedly destroyed God's Church at Lindisfarne Isle, through rapine and manslaughter." The next year "the heathen harried among the Northumbrians, and plundered the monastery at Wearmouth." In 832 "heathen men ravaged Sheppey." They did not come as an army prepared to give battle to trained troops, but came down suddenly upon some peaceful town which was unprepared to resist them. Offa, King of Mercia, cared nothing about the way they plundered and weakened the smaller provinces, so long as they remained outside his kingdom. But when he died, and Egbert, king of Wessex, assumed the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon kings, a more òrganised resistance was offered to the invaders. But they continued their depredations for full two hundred years, and it is not too much to say that a similar distressful condition of affairs occurred all over the country to that which happened three hundred years before, when the earlier tribes of Teutons harassed the Celtic population of Britain. In 833 there was a pitched battle between the Danes and Egbert, the Bretwalda; in this the bishops, clergy and monks, had 1 "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle." 1 taken up arms against the heathen, but the united forces were unable to stand against the Northmen, and two bishops, Herefrid, of Worcester in Mercia, and Wilbert, of Sherborne in Wessex, were killed in the strife. On the whole, however, Egbert was able to hold the Danes in check during his reign, and he obtained a decisive victory over them at Hengist's-Down in Cornwall, A.D. 835. The constant ravages of the Danes forced the Anglo-Saxon kings into a mutual alliance against them, the Church providing everywhere the bond of union. It was a fight for home, and family, and freedom, and for love of Christ. 2. Destruction of the Anglo-Saxon Churches.-In 847 the clergy under Ealstan, bishop of Sherborne, obtained their revenge over the Danes for the death of the bishops by decisively defeating them not far from Glastonbury, whither they had come attracted by the wealth of that famous church. But the Danes were irrepressible, they never accepted defeat. If they went home it was only to return in a short time with large reinforcements; and in 851 they had gained a sufficient advantage over the English to be able to winter in the Isle of Thanet. Henceforth "it was no longer a series of plunder-raids, but the invasion of Britain by a host of conquerors who settled as they conquered." In 866, and again in 870, they invaded East Anglia, each time defeating the inhabitants. second occasion the Danish leaders Ubba and Ingwar offered life and kingdom to King Edmund if he would renounce Christianity and reign under them. But he refused their terms and gloried in the Faith. He had once sheltered their exiled father at his court, but, when flushed with wine and inflamed with minstrelsy, one of his retainers "In the dark of guilty night, Plucked King Lodbrog's lusty life,” On the for which the Danes now took a terrible revenge. They tied Edmund to an oak tree and shot at him with arrows, but nothing would shake his fortitude. He was then beheaded, and has since been honoured in the English Church as one of its noblest martyrs. The tree to which he was bound stood until a few years ago, when it was destroyed by lightning. Ubba's arrow head, found embedded in its heart, is now to be seen in the British Museum. Edmund's body was carefully protected from dishonour by his friends, and when many years later there was danger of its being maltreated by descendants of his murderers, they removed it to the church of St. Gregory by St. Paul, London. In the year 1013 they placed it in a little church at Greenstead, in Essex, built for the purpose; the nave of which remains to the present day, after more than eight centuries' use in the service of the English Church. It is the only one of all the Saxon wooden churches which remains to us. It is built of upright chestnut logs with windows above them, and is well worth a visit from holiday makers by reason of its ancient dignity as well as its primitive simplicity. It is about a mile from Ongar Station GREENSTEAD CHURCH, ESSEX. (ONLY SAXON WOODEN NAVE EXTANT) BUILT A.D. 1012. on the Great Eastern Railway. From it the body of St. Edmund, king and martyr, was in quieter times transferred to a worthy shrine still known as St. Edmund's Bury, in Suffolk. So terrible was the strife between the Danes and English, and so, vindictive the conduct of the Northmen toward the churches and monasteries, that everything in the shape of religion and learning became paralysed. All the great religious houses and the finest churches were pillaged and destroyed. The noble monastery of Bardney in Lincolnshire fell in 869. The still wealthier one of Crowland followed suit the next year, its abbot being slain at the altar where he was celebrating the Holy Communion, many of the monks being tortured and killed in the most cruel manner. Shrines and monuments of the departed were specially singled out by the Danes as objects of destruction. The costly materials of which they were composed would be rifled, and the bones and relics scattered hither and thither. Whatever was of wood in the buildings they burnt, and that which was stone or brick they razed to the ground. In 875 the monastery of Lindisfarne RUINS OF CROWLAND ABBEY (13TH CENTURY EDIFICE, ON SITE OF OLDER CHURCH). was attacked. The brethren there hastily removed the remains of St. Cuthbert, and fled. For seven years they were homeless, after which they were offered an asylum at Melrose. Here also the general enemy came, and the monks were compelled to bear the wooden sarcophagus that contained the precious relics from one place to another, until, in 995, after more than a century of wandering, the persecuted community found a resting-place for their beloved teacher's bones in the primæval woods of Durham, under a shrine of boughs, until they could erect the humble church that became the nucleus of the stately pile-"half Church of God, half castle 'gainst the Scots"—which Carilef built at the close of the 11th century. (See page 165). "O'er northern mountain, marsh, and moor, And after many wanderings past, He chose his lordly seat at last, Where his cathedral, huge and vast, Looks down upon the Wear." -Sir W. Scott's "Marmion.' Peterborough and Ely, Winchester and London, Canterbury and Rochester, Lindisfarne and Hexham, every place in fact which was likely to contain anything worth searching for; all were pillaged and the inmates massacred. The whole country became a scene of desolation, over which the conquerors were often found exulting in the wildest ribald glee. "The land was as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness." At length arose a leader who put a period to his country's woes. 3. Alfred the Great.-King Ethelwulf, who succeeded Egbert, had four sons, each of whom in turn wore the crown. The reigns of three of them were very short; two of them died, and were buried at Sherborne, Ethelred, the third son, succeeding. In his reign the Danes, who had long been devastating the north and east, for the first time invaded Wessex with an army. This they divided in two parts. The king was at his devotions when this attack of the Danes was made, but he refused to be interrupted. He said, “I will serve God first and man after." Meantime his brother Alfred, who led part of the English force, met one division of the enemy and slew their leaders; and after the king joined in the conflict a similar victory was gained over the other division. Undaunted, the Danes renewed the attack within a fortnight. This time they held their own. A succession of battles followed, in one of which another bishop of Sherborne was killed, and soon after, Ethelred died, Alfred |