BOOK IV. 868. boat with their treasures. They threw their domestic property into the waters, but as part of the table of the great altar, plated with gold, rose above the waves, they drew it out, and replaced it in the abbey. THE flames of the villages in Kesteven now gradually spread towards them, and the clamours of the fierce pagans drew nearer. Alarmed, they resumed their boat, and reached the wood of Ancarig near the south of the island.29 Here, with Toretus, the anchorite, and his fraternity, they remained four days. THE abbot, and they who were too young or too old to fly, put on their sacred vestments, and assembled in the choir, performing their mass and singing all the Psalter, with the faint hope, that unresisting age and harmless childhood would disarm ferocity of its cruelty. Soon a furious torrent of howling barbarians poured in, exulting to find Christian priests to massacre. The venerable abbot was hewed down at the altar by the cruel Oskitul, and the attendant ministers were beheaded after him. The old men and children, who ran affrighted from the choir, were seized and tortured, to discover the treasure of the place. The prior suffered in the vestry, the subprior in the refectory; every part of the sacred edifice was stained with blood. One child only, of ten years of age, whose beautiful countenance happened to interest the 29 Or Thorn-ey, the island of Thorns. There was a monastery here. Malmsbury exhibits it as the picture of a paradise; amidst the marshes abounding in trees, was a fine green plain, as smooth and level as a stream; every part was cultivated; here apple-trees arose, there vines crept along the fields, or twined round poles. Yet he adds one trait so expressive of lonesomeness, as to throw a gloom over the charms of nature: "When a man comes he is applauded like an angel." De Gest. Pont. 294. VI. younger Sidroc30, was permitted to survive. The CHAP. spoilers broke down all the tombs and monuments, with the avaricious hope of discovering treasures; and, on the third day, they committed the superb edifice to the flames. WITH a great plunder of cattle, the insatiate barbarians marched the next day to Peterborough.31 There stood a monastery, the glory of the architecture of the age, and whose library was a large repository of books, which the anxious labours of two centuries had collected. But arts and science were toys not worthy even to amuse their women, in the estimation of these invaders. They assailed the gates and fastenings, and with their archers and machines attacked the walls. The monks resisted with all their means of annoyance. A brother of Ubbo was carried off to his tent, wounded by the blow of a stone. This incident added a new incentive to the cruel fury of the Northmen. They burst in at the second assault under Ubbo. He slew the hoary abbot, and all the monks, with his own weapon. Every other inhabitant was slaughtered without mercy by his followers. One man only had a gleam of humanity. Sidroc cautioned the little boy, whom he had saved from Croyland, to keep out of the way of Ubbo. The immense 30 One of the Sidrocs had already distinguished himself for his aggressions on France. In 852, and 855, he entered the Seine with much successful depredation. Chron. Fontanel. Bouquet 7. p. 40-43. 31 This also stands in the land of the Girvii or Fenmen, who occupied those immense marshes, containing millions of acres, where the counties of Lincoln, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Northampton meet. Camd. 408. The marshes are described by Hugo Candidis as furnishing wood and turf for fire, hay for cattle, reeds for thatching, and fish and water-fowl for subsistence. Peterborough monastery was in the best portion. On one side was a range of water, on the other woods and a cultivated country. It was accessible on all sides but the east, where a boat was requisite. 868. IV. BOOK booty which they were gorged with did not mitigate their love of ruin. The much admired monastery, and its valuable and scarcely reparable literary treasures, were soon wrapt in fire. For fifteen days the conflagration continued. 868. THE Northmen, turning to the south, advanced to Huntingdon. The two earls Sidroc were appointed to guard the rear and the baggage over the rivers. As they were passing the Nen, after the rest of the army, two cars, laden with vast wealth and property, with all the cattle drawing them, were overturned, at the left of the stone bridge, into a depthless whirlpool. While all the attendants of the younger Sidroc were employed in recovering what was possible of the loss, the child of Croyland ran into the nearest wood, and, walking all night, he beheld the smoking ruins of his monastery at the dawn. He found that the monks had returned from Ancarig the day before, and were laboriously toiling to extinguish the flames, which yet raged in various divisions of the monastery. When they heard from the infant the fate of their superior and elder brethren, unconquerable sorrow suspended their exertions, till wearied nature compelled a remission of their grief. They collected such as they could find of the mutilated and half-consumed bodies, and buried them with sympathetic reverence. Having repaired part of the ruins, they chose another abbot; when the hermits of Ancarig came to implore their charitable care for the bodies at Peterborough, which the animals of prey were violating. A deputation of monks was sent, who found the corpses, 32 This river runs through Northampton, making many reaches by the winding of its banks. Camden calls it a very noble river, p. 430. and interred them in one large grave, with the abbot at the summit. A stony pyramid covered his remains, round which were afterwards engraven their images in memorial of the catastrophe. 33 SPREADING devastation and murder around them as they marched, the Northmen proceeded into Cambridgeshire. Ely and its first Christian church and monastery, with the heroic nuns, who mutilated their faces to preserve their honour, were destroyed by the ruthless enemy; and many other places were desolated. 34 CHAP. VI. 868. 870. Invasion of THE sanguinary invaders went afterwards into East Anglia. The throne of this kingdom was East Anoccupied by Edmund, a man praised for his affa- glia. bility, his gentleness, and humility. He may have merited all the lavish encomiums which he has received for the milder virtues; but he was deficient in those manly energies whose vigorous activity would have met the storm in its fury, and might have disarmed it of its terrors. 35 INGWAR, separating from Ubbo, proceeded to the place where Edmund resided. The picture 33 Ingulf, 22-24. Chron. Petrib. 18-20. 34 Abbo Floriacensis, who wrote in the tenth century, describes East Anglia as nearly environed with waters; immense marshes, an hundred miles in extent, were on the north; the ocean on the east and south. On the west it was protected from the irruptions of the other members of the octarchy, by a mound of earth like a lofty wall. Its soil was fertile and pleasant; it was full of lakes two or three miles in space; its marshes were peopled with monks. MSS. Cott. Library. Tib. B. 2. p. 3. 35 One of the fullest accounts of the fate of Edmund, is in the little book of Abbo. He addresses it to the famous Dunstan, from whom he had the particulars he narrates. He intimates that Dunstan used to repeat them with eyes moist with tears, and had learnt them from an old soldier of Edmund's, who simply and faithfully recounted them upon his oath to the illustrious Ethelstan. Abbo's treatise has been printed abroad in Acta Sanctorum. Cologne, vol. vi. p. 465-472. ed. 1575. IV. 870. BOOK annexed to his route represents a burning country, the highways strewed with the victims of massacre, violated women, the husband expiring on his own threshold near his wife, and the infant torn from its mother's bosom, and slain before her eyes to increase her screams. 36 Ingwar had heard a favourable account of Edmund's warlike abilities, and by a rapid movement endeavoured, according to the usual plan of the Northmen 37, to surprise the king, before he could present an armed country to repel him. Edmund, though horrors had for some time been raging round his frontiers, was roused to no preparations; had meditated no warfare. He was dwelling quietly in a village near Hagilsdun, when the active Dane appeared near him, and he was taken completely unawares. His earl, Ulfketul, had made one effort to save East Anglia, but it failed. His army was decisively beaten at Thetford with profuse slaughter; and this calamity deeply wounded the mind of Edmund, who did not reflect, that to resist the Danes with energy, was not merely to uphold his own domination, but to protect his people from the most fatal ruin. 30 36"Maritus cum conjuge aut mortuus aut moribundus jacebat in limine infans raptus a matris uberibus, ut major esset ejulatus, trucidabatur coram maternis obtutibus." Abbo, MSS. p. 3. This author was so well acquainted with Virgil and Horace as to cite them in his little work. 37 Abbo remarks of the Danish nation, "cum semper studeat rapto vivere, nunquam tamen indicta pugna palam contendit cum hoste, nisi preventa insidiis, ablata spe ad portus navium remeandi." MSS. P. 6. 28 The Hill of Eagles. It is now, says Bromton, 805, called Hoxne. It is upon the Waveney, a little river dividing part of Norfolk from Suffolk. It is not far from Diss in Norfolk. Camden names it Hoxon, p. 375. 9 Ingulf, 24. Asser, 20. Matt. West. 318. |